Fashion Designer Sustainability & Ethical Fashion 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Fair Trade certification in the fashion industry primarily ensures:
- Products are priced fairly and affordably for end consumers
- Workers receive fair wages, safe working conditions, and protection from exploitation (Correct answer)
- Fabrics are exclusively made from certified natural materials
- Designs are original and protected from intellectual property theft
Correct answer: Workers receive fair wages, safe working conditions, and protection from exploitation
Fair Trade certification guarantees that workers throughout the supply chain receive fair wages, work in safe conditions, and are protected from labor exploitation.
Question 2: The 'circular fashion' model is based on which core principle?
- Designing clothes that rotate back into style every few years
- Creating a closed-loop system where garments are reused, repaired, recycled, or composted (Correct answer)
- Selling fashion products exclusively in circular or boutique retail spaces
- Designing only circular or rounded silhouettes and accessories
Correct answer: Creating a closed-loop system where garments are reused, repaired, recycled, or composted
Circular fashion aims to eliminate waste by keeping garments in use as long as possible through reuse, repair, and recycling, mimicking natural cycles with no endpoint.
Question 3: Which natural fiber is well known for requiring very little water and no pesticides to grow, making it highly sustainable?
- Conventional cotton grown in irrigated fields
- Cashmere wool from Mongolian goats
- Organic hemp (Correct answer)
- Viscose/rayon derived from wood pulp
Correct answer: Organic hemp
Hemp grows quickly, requires minimal water, naturally resists pests without pesticides, and improves soil health, making it one of the most sustainable natural fibers available.
Question 4: The 'true cost' concept in ethical fashion refers to:
- The actual retail price of a garment after all markups are removed
- The total environmental and social impact of making a garment that is not reflected in its retail price (Correct answer)
- The cost of professional alterations needed to properly fit a garment
- The price difference between designer labels and generic brands
Correct answer: The total environmental and social impact of making a garment that is not reflected in its retail price
The 'true cost' encompasses the hidden environmental and human costs — pollution, worker exploitation, resource depletion — that are externalized rather than reflected in a garment's retail price.
Question 5: Which of the following best describes the 'slow fashion' movement?
- Designing clothes that are hand-sewn and therefore take a very long time to produce
- Emphasizing quality, durability, and ethical production over rapid trend cycles (Correct answer)
- Fashion shows structured over several days to showcase more collections
- Wearing the same outfit multiple consecutive days to reduce laundry
Correct answer: Emphasizing quality, durability, and ethical production over rapid trend cycles
Slow fashion is a philosophy that prioritizes quality craftsmanship, ethical production, fair wages, and longer garment lifespans as a countermovement to fast fashion's disposable model.
Question 6: The 2013 Rana Plaza disaster is significant to ethical fashion because it:
- Destroyed a major historic fashion archive in central Paris
- Caused a devastating fire at an international fashion show venue in Milan
- Collapsed a factory building in Bangladesh, killing over 1,100 garment workers and exposing dangerous labor conditions (Correct answer)
- Led to a worldwide boycott of all synthetic and petrochemical-based fabrics
Correct answer: Collapsed a factory building in Bangladesh, killing over 1,100 garment workers and exposing dangerous labor conditions
The Rana Plaza building collapse killed more than 1,100 workers in Bangladesh and became a catalyst for global reforms in worker safety, supply chain transparency, and brand accountability.
Question 7: What does 'traceability' mean in the context of sustainable fashion?
- The ability to accurately track garment measurements across different size standards
- The ability to verify every step of a garment's supply chain from raw material sourcing to the finished product (Correct answer)
- Monitoring how many times a consumer has worn a specific garment
- Following emerging fashion trends across social media platforms
Correct answer: The ability to verify every step of a garment's supply chain from raw material sourcing to the finished product
Traceability means having transparent, verifiable documentation at every stage of the supply chain — from fiber sourcing through manufacturing to final retail sale.
Fashion Designer Sustainability & Ethical Fashion 2
Fair Trade certification in the fashion industry primarily ensures: