Tech alone won’t save fashion. But what if craft could?

Hey there! Here’s a toxic idea promoted by some powerful people in fashion: We’re simply one innovation away from fixing all of our problems. The argument goes that we don’t need to change how we shop; we simply need to wait until the next tech or material innovation saves us. Fast fashion brands eagerly advertise pilot programs and startup innovations without changing anything else.

That’s not to diss legitimate innovations; investments in novel materials, for instance, are key if we want to rely on less plastic and fewer animal-derived materials. But fibre innovations do not alone change the underlying system or our role in it. 

What could change the system? Craft, argues Safia Minney, who spoke to JD for this week’s examination of the solutions that already exist to fix fashion’s mess — if we take them seriously, that is.

This one is freely available thanks to the generous support of our Founding Members. 

JD and Amy

Identifying fashion's problems is easy. It’s not hard to demonstrate how the industry’s exploitative model, from the poverty wages to the waste visible from space, is unsustainable. But what about envisioning an alternative? What about proposing a system that respects planetary boundaries and dignifies the artisans who stitch our clothes? The ultra-rich men who benefit from business-as-usual repeatedly suggest that’s simply too hard, too utopian, too costly. Safia Minney wants you to know how wrong they are. 

The fashion system many of us grew up with is a blip. A decades-old project in labour exploitation and cheap fossil fuel fibres that we've been conditioned to see as inevitable. 

Craft, on the other hand, is ancient. Hand weaving is India’s second-largest employer after agriculture, supporting over three million workers, the majority of them women. It's a labour model with radically different carbon, social, and economic implications than industrial manufacturing. And according to Minney, who chaired a symposium on the topic at London's Conway Hall in September, it's also a realistic vision for the future.

You might know Minney from The True Cost documentary. She founded People Tree in 1995, promoting Fair Trade fashion before the term meant much to most consumers. She's published numerous books. In 2022, she launched Fashion Declares, which calls for a 75% reduction in fashion production. Most recently, in 2025, she founded her latest brand Indilisi.

When I called her up, she was at home outside London, in a converted 1907 post office, tending to her garden between talks. Her mother had recently passed, and she was in a reflective mood about legacy, about what we're put on the earth to do.

I wanted to understand why craft keeps getting dismissed as too small, too slow, too "other" to matter. Why the solutions that already exist get ignored in favour of tech fixes that never arrive. Why the knowledge systems of the Majority World are treated as quaint while the industry burns. Here’s what Minney had to say:

JS: You chaired the symposium “Crafting Regenerative Fashion and Textile Futures” in September. For readers who might hear "craft" and think Etsy, what does craft actually mean in this context?

SM: We recognise that we're in a climate, ecological, and social emergency, and that every sector needs to change. Fashion needs to slow down production. Researchers suggest we need to cut production by 75% or more.

I've been working in this space for thirty years, with my work at People Tree, now with Indilisi and Fashion Declares, and as an author. For me, it's always been clear that craft is the way to slow down fashion, to spread income into economically disadvantaged areas in the Global South.

But it's also a massive positive because it revives traditional skills. It regenerates soils, nature, ecosystems, communities. This notion that doing things by hand has fallen out of fashion for the last forty or fifty years? It was absolutely central to any economy before that. We need to revive these traditional craft skills.

JS: To help readers visualise what we're talking about — weaving, block printing — which crafts were central to the symposium?

SM: We had about twenty speakers involved in different elements of craft and the supply chain, from crafting low-impact materials through to hand weaving, hand knitting, hand embroidering.

If we look at hand weaving in India, it's the second-largest employer after agriculture. People forget how robust it is, despite having everything running against it. In my book Regenerative Fashion, I cover the history of fossil fuel fibres and mechanisation. It's a blip. We've done this for just over a hundred years. But we now know that whether we're looking at microfibre pollution or extraction beyond planetary boundaries, we have to shift the model.

JS: Industrial fashion prizes uniformity. Craft has inherent variation. Is part of the solution shifting what we value, seeing imperfections as markers of labour rather than flaws?

SM: That's a beautiful question. When the alternatives are made at the cost to planet, human rights, and climate justice, we really have to start thinking, don't we?

In Japan, there was this incredible delight and appreciation of heritage craft. There was that very recent decline in the sixties of handwoven product in Kyoto, so there was a more recent appreciation. Whereas in the UK, we'd probably lost it from the mainstream at least twenty years before. Having said that, it is being revived. Even in the UK, people are starting to talk about wool more seriously. The handcrafted, locally produced item as the fashion item is something that people are coveting.

For me, the conviviality around craft tools, the fibres, the connection to the wearer? The product has incredible soul. People in my shops in Tokyo would say, "When I wear a handwoven product, I can feel the energy." My landlord would turn items inside out and say, "I cannot believe how beautiful this is."

The soul of imperfection resonates with us as humans. We have strengths, weaknesses, shiny bits and shadows. When you see a bit of cotton seed in a fabric, I would like people to celebrate that. I've chosen to keep those little black dots in an unbleached fabric because I want to remind the customer that it comes from a plant. Shouldn't we have some connection with the plants, the backgrounds, and the people that make our clothes?

JS: One thing we don't talk about enough in sustainable fashion is the mental health of garment workers. We discuss the psychology of fashion as it relates to consumers — micro trends making us feel inadequate — but rarely the wellbeing of workers in the modern industrial system. How does craft intersect with the wellbeing of the people who make our clothes?

SM: Massively. It's a huge disruption to the dystopian way we treat garment factory workers. For me, the test has always been: would I like to work in this environment? Even the best factories I've visited, I would not want to work in.

The meditative process of hand weaving, the socialisation of bringing women together around hand embroidery or hand knitting, the making of a whole garment? That brings pride to somebody rather than just sewing cuffs, 2,000 of them in a day.

When I researched my book Slave to Fashion, it became clear that what we currently have as a fashion manufacturing system is based on excessive overtime, on violence. Because poverty is violence. People paid less than minimum wage, very rarely living wage. Putting up with sexual harassment. Borrowing money just to pay for food. That is an enormously mentally stressful situation.

When there’s dignity for artisans, I’m sure that craft equals better mental health. 

JS: How do we avoid sucking craft further into fashion's exploitative global supply chain? Are there models centred on justice?

SM: The World Fair Trade Organization's standards help ensure accountability, transparency, living wages, gender equality, environmental innovation.

The report from the League of Artisans, which looks at transparency of craft within luxury supply chains, is really interesting. When you look at it, you realise how lacking in transparency luxury is. When arguably they have the margins. We know from what's spent on advertising that it would be easy to embrace accountability. And luxury riffs off craft, doesn't it? They're constantly talking about how unique their crafts are. I expect that to be followed up with ensuring craftspeople are paid decently.

JS: With Fashion Declares, you're calling for a 75% reduction in production. What would that mean for the millions of garment workers currently employed?

SM: The majority of greenhouse gas emissions are on the materials side, so transitioning to low-impact materials is key. But there are displaced workers who require livelihoods. This is where craft can make that difference.

We're not talking about some quaint cottage industry. Hand weaving is the second-largest employer in India. It's robust in Bangladesh, other Asian, Latin American, and African countries. There's no shortage of skills that could contribute to fashion and provide a much more democratic sharing of its benefits.

How could that be scaled? There are lots of initiatives now using renewable energy to speed up some of the more laborious craft activities. There are the linkages from artisans to organic certified cotton that need to be financed and supported.

The problem is that big finance, big institutions love big solutions. We've been all about the big. But actually, the just transition requires funding a myriad of small initiatives that will have profound social impact, that will regenerate local areas. Research and development funding in this country [the United Kingdom] is inherently racist and colonialist, in my opinion. It doesn't believe in ancient knowledge or ancient wisdoms. It only believes that white people from this country can go out and teach people in other countries things that will help them. We're really at this fork of understanding how incredibly institutionalised our racism and colonialism is.

JS: It makes me think of how people ask, "How can we possibly imagine a system that's not like the current system?" — when there are many places around the world where better systems exist, and the intrusion of fast fashion is actively disrupting them.

SM: Exactly. The solutions exist. They just need support. Part of that comes with drawing awareness to craft and how beautiful it can be. Craft can be sexy. 

We've learned, working closely with craftspeople over these last thirty years, that they do have the skills and know-how to produce really high quality clothing that has been handcrafted, handwoven, and hand-embroidered.

JS: You've been advocating for this for three decades now. What keeps you going when the industry seems to actively resist what you're advocating for?

SM: Nature keeps me going. The beauty of nature, its resilience reminds me that we need to be more resilient too. But really, it's the young people I work with. I'm working with people in their twenties and thirties, as well as industry professionals my age. I feel an intergenerational excitement about being a climate and social justice activist at this time. I feel energised by their demands, their grasp of very complex issues, their creativity, and drive to find solutions.

I think if you are in a position of privilege to act and to do something, then that's your role. My mother recently passed, and it's been a time of great personal reflection. She came from a family of social entrepreneurs. My grandfather was an environmentalist and a singer. And I've just realised that she so loved me doing what I did. It's always nice to take a step back and say, well, actually, this is what I was put on the earth to do. So I'd better just keep doing it.