“Alex James: Slowing Down Fast Fashion” - a review by Anouk Trethowan

Our work experience student, Anouk Trethowan, has been busy learning about sustainable fashion and the problems that our fashion industry faces. She has put together a review of the film ‘Slowing Down Fast Fashion’ - she explains that the film is full of information, and values the different perspectives that it shows but believes more time should be spent on the solutions.

“The documentary slowing down fast fashion (2016) was presented by Alex James, a cheese maker and musician. He was taking a critical look at fast fashion, the increase in disposable fashion within society, it’s affects and who’s to blame. He also looked at who’s taking action on this issue and how we can all do something.

It was interesting how he spent time looking into different materials and finding the pros and cons which made it clear to the audience how the fabric your wearing can impact the environment greatly. He also clearly highlighted how bad practices in fashion can affect and even destroy peoples lives.

One of the main things I learnt was how bad synthetic materials are - because it’s clear they are not great but the documentary went into a lot of depth to show why. This was one of the main focuses but it also included the public a lot which I liked because it makes the problem of fast fashion seem manageable - and also a problem that we all have to take responsibility for - if everyone is involved. It also made the information seem more accessible because there was variety of how the information was shown along with the graphics and it was all understandable as it seems this documentary had everyone as a target audience.

I think this documentary could have highlighted urgency further because although James talks about how fast fashion and the problems of it have increased significantly and some solutions I don’t think he emphasises how this is an urgent issue. At the end of the documentary there is a list of solution such as hand down clothes, shop from charity shops, buy less clothes and consider wool and natural fibres for your clothes that biodegrade quickly.

Although there were many solutions offered, it felt as though not enough time was spent on them compared to the rest of the documentary. However, overall I would recommend this documentary due to its perspective on materials which was presented very clearly and was really interesting.”

Thank you so much to Anouk for putting this together. Try and give it a watch and let us know what you think on socials!

All the best,

SFW Team xx