Relocating sustainable fashion: intercultural reciprocity in ‘more than local’ fashion-making

Rimi Khan.

Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol 35(6), pp.838-852.

2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2021.1993570

This article examines the relations of creativity, enterprise, and activism that define Aranya, a luxury fashion brand based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It argues that these relations disrupt existing theorizations of the local and global in fashion scholarship, and help to undo the knowledge practices which position the global North as fashion’s centre. The brand is instructive for understandings of ethical and sustainable fashion because it reveals the interdependencies and productive engagements between diverse people and places that underpin sustainable fashion-making. These practices are described as ‘more than local’ because they embed mobile, intercultural relations of scale and reciprocity. It is argued that maintaining these relationships across scales is a form of labour that can generate intercultural knowledge and is integral to a model of entrepreneurship that can encompass generosity and solidarity.