Vivienne Westwood and the ethics of consuming fashion

Our paper examines ethical consumption using the case study of Vivienne Westwood, the fashion designer, and her eponymous firm, and shows how consumers of fashion might be considered ethical. The fashion industry has figured prominently in ethical debates, notably its role in encouraging overconsumption of resources and promoting an idealised lifestyle that is often neither materially nor psychically sustainable for consumers (Buchholz, 1998). We acknowledge this, yet suggest the purchase and use of clothing carries with it the potential to be ethical insofar as customers find themselves personally implicated with and caring for a designers' work