The Rise and Challenges of Sustainable Fashion in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia’s apparel market is expected to be worth US$51.4 billion in 2024, according to Statista. This is set to grow further, with the region’s middle class projected to reach 65 per cent of the population by 2030. Meanwhile, the Southeast Asian fashion market is forecast to have an average annual growth rate of 8.62 per cent for the next five years. However, the region’s insatiable appetite for fashion has led to the degradation of the environment. One example is the severe chemical waste contamination from textile factories in the Citarum River, West Java’s longest river, causing contact dermatitis and respiratory problems for residents along the river.

Besides environmental issues, the fast fashion industry has faced heavy criticism as its desire for higher profits has led to outsourcing production to countries with poor labour rights, such as Cambodia. Corruption is rampant in Cambodia’s labour inspectorate system, which comprises officials tasked to enforce Cambodia’s labour laws. To escape prosecution, companies bribe officials with amounts of US$100 to $200 to receive reports that claim they abide by the law. Nevertheless, since consumer demands drive fast fashion, consumers can “vote with their dollar” and buy less from unscrupulous companies. In response, firms such as H&M are improving transparency by disclosing their suppliers and manufacturers, allowing the public to scrutinise their operations and alert them of suspected malpractices in their supply chain.

While increased transparency helps to improve conditions, cases of harassment and abuses of garment workers still happen. Due to these concerns, in the mid-2010s, the region started to see a rise in demand for sustainable fashion (apparel produced in an environmentally and socially responsible manner). In 2017, a directive by Vietnam’s Ministry of Trade and Industry placed limits on the amount of formaldehyde – which can cause skin irritation – in clothes’ dyes. Concerns about synthetic dye usage on the environment and the health of humans have led to growing demand for sustainable natural materials and dyes. One sustainable option features the Hmong, along with other ethnic minorities, who use indigo dye obtained from the indigo plant that grows in the mountains of Northern Vietnam. Extracting indigo dye is a time-consuming process, where the leaves need to undergo harvesting and fermenting before the dye is extracted. Despite the difficulty of procuring indigo dye, it is increasingly used, as its extraction process is more environmentally friendly.

Meanwhile, local worries that traditions are being lost or made obsolete have led to a rise in the promotion of traditional apparel production methods. If cultural practices are lost in favour of homogeneous production methods, societies will lose an intangible part of their cultural heritage that makes them unique. Therefore, in countries like Cambodia, there are efforts to revitalise and preserve the millennium-old cultural heritage of golden silk production and weaving. This process requires workers to rear silkworms on a diet of native mulberry leaves and extract the silk from them when they spin their cocoons, by boiling the silkworms. The extracted silk is then spun and woven. Despite these efforts, Cambodia’s golden silk industry faces competition from foreign textiles which are cheaper and faster to produce, brought by large multinational companies who set up garment factories there.

While embracing sustainable or heritage fashion is commendable, challenges prevent it from becoming a viable alternative to fast fashion. First, the high production costs and the relatively niche market make it challenging for sustainable fashion to be affordable for the masses. Firms that sell sustainably made clothing aim to capture the demand of environmentally conscious individuals willing to pay a premium for higher quality sustainable products. An example is a kebaya (traditional Indonesian clothing) from Sejauh Mata Memandang, an Indonesian brand known for its hand screen-printed fabrics that can cost 1.1 million Indonesian rupiah (about US$80). However, the price of such a kebaya is about 12 per cent of Indonesian women’s monthly per capita expenditure of clothes in 2018. The high costs of sustainable fashion make it unaffordable for the average consumer, causing them to pick more affordable (but thus unsustainable) options instead.

Second, popular consumerism remains a big issue. As the e-commerce penetration rate increases in Southeast Asia, more Southeast Asians are buying clothes online. The average annual growth rate of the apparel e-commerce market is expected to range between 20 and 30 per cent from 2021 to 2025 for the Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore markets. To entice spending, e-commerce firms have rolled out “buy now, pay later” programmes where consumers can either defer payment for their purchases or pay in instalments. This has the potential to fuel over-consumption for instant gratification, going against the ethos of sustainability.      

Third, a lack of transparency hinders the viability of sustainable fashion. In 2023, Fashion Revolution, a non-profit organisation formed by Carry Somers and Orsola de Castro, conducted a study on firms’ supply chain traceability (the documentation of how goods are made along a supply chain). The organisation gave 45 per cent of the largest 250 fashion brands studied a low score of zero or one out of 100 – indicating near complete opaqueness – of their supply chain traceability. Thus, consumers would find it hard to believe any sustainable claims made by these companies due to the lack of evidence.  A market survey found that 63 per cent of Southeast Asians from the six core markets mentioned above do not believe in companies’ sustainability claims. Firms thus need to improve their supply chain traceability by following through on their sustainability claims and making this information accessible. Doing this would strengthen consumer trust and ensure the viability of sustainable fashion.

Finally, the overproduction of clothes hinders the sustainable fashion movement from taking off. Low wages and lax labour rights in most of Southeast Asia largely mean that foreign firms could achieve economies of scale and produce cheap apparel by outsourcing to this region. As fast fashion picks out and manufactures the latest fashion trends, the quick speed of change in tastes leads to unsold inventories.  According to the Asia Europe Foundation, an estimated 30 per cent of apparel produced annually in the world remains unsold. This is compounded by difficulties in accessing retail markets faced by sustainable fashion firms. With the convenience of readily available fast fashion apparel, fewer consumers would be aware of the existence of sustainable fashion houses to support the work they do. 

The growing sustainable fashion movement is a response to rising regional consumer awareness of the adverse effects of fast fashion. However, high prices, consumerism, transparency issues, and overproduction make it hard for sustainable fashion to be a viable alternative. Companies must ensure their supply chains are sustainable and traceable to gain consumer buy-in and encourage a permanent shift from fast fashion.

Editor’s Note:
ASEANFocus+ articles are timely critical insight pieces published by the ASEAN Studies Centre.