What is Seasonless Fashion?

When it comes to sustainable fashion, it isn’t just about highlighting the detrimental effects of fast fashion, but also the effects fashion seasons have.

In the fashion world, whether it’s fast fashion brands or luxury fashion houses, the fashion calendar revolves heavily around the different seasons. With new capsule collections and fashion shows every Fashion Week and Spring/Summer, Fall/Winter seasons, there are new clothes to get excited about year-round.

However, due to the speed at which fast fashion moves today, we’re looking at a daily and weekly dose of new clothing drops from many brands equalling hundreds of thousands of pieces. Our planet and garment workers deserve a slowdown in the clothing industry, but instead of cutting back to just 4 or 2 fashion seasons, why not drop seasonal collections altogether?

When it comes to sustainable fashion, one aspect that’s incredibly important to learn about is the meaning and movement behind seasonless fashion and getting rid of the fashion calendar altogether.

What is Unsustainable Fast Fashion?

Fast fashion is an incredibly detrimental means of producing clothing today with horrendous working conditions and pieces that are low-quality and made to be thrown away in a short amount of time. The majority of affordable brands that customers buy from today follow an unsustainable model, with a new collection being dropped every single week or even every day. 

While it’s difficult to completely dismantle fast fashion in one swift blow, movements made by every seasonless fashion brand, every seasonless collection that big designers release, and brands opting out of Spring/Summer and Spring/Winter season collections every year are doing more for sustainable fashion and setting an example for others to follow suit in recent years.

Additionally, individual consumers can learn to take care of their pieces from a beloved brand can help lessen waste and encourage more thoughtful habits when it comes to clothing. 

What is Seasonless Fashion?

As its name suggests, seasonless fashion does not follow typical seasonal trends or schedules. On the contrary, seasonless collections – which is usually one collection a year or even less – are produced with the intention of being both sold and worn throughout the year.

Seasonless collections mean usage throughout the year, timeless design, less textile waste, durable clothing, and a slower, more sustainable supply chain with a lessened environmental impact. With luxury brands and designers like Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and Michael Kors opting out of the seasonal calendar, we’re seeing a positive shift toward a greener future.

While brands like Gucci are making a positive shift towards sustainability by opting out of new collections every season, there are many big-name brands already championing less waste and a slower fashion model today.

In the time of digital and social media, seasonless fashion has found an opportune time to gain traction. Consumers are more influenced by creativity and novelty as opposed to seasonal needs, and a modern society that now has the ability to view fashion globally means that a seasonal fashion and design schedule is slowly but surely being pushed out of fashion.

Adopting a seasonless model in fashion means getting rid of trends, new collections every season, and the latest fashion trends on runway shows that keep speeding up at unsustainable rates every year. If every brand in the wider industry followed suit and released a seasonless collection, we’d find pieces being worn more often by customers and less waste being produced.

While the main challenge of discarding trends and choosing seasonless fashion heavily depends on the fashion industry, from large designers to smaller brands, seasonless fashion also means consumers taking a seasonless approach to shopping and building a more sustainable wardrobe.

Why is It Called Slow Fashion?

Slow and sustainable fashion involves a more thoughtful production cycle with sustainably-sourced materials, which also involves better wages and thus better-quality clothing and less reckless actions by every fashion brand in the slow fashion industry. 

With a much better impact on the world compared to the modern industry today, customers will find that a slower and more meaningful production will produce seasonless pieces and styles that can be worn for years to come.

Final Note

While it may be slow-moving, a fully sustainable future in the fashion industry is still possible. As long as brands continue this shift into trendless and seasonless clothes, by for example, lessening every new pre-fall, summer, or winter season fashion show or collection, we could potentially see a new era in clothing, with less waste, short-lived new styles, or workers left unpaid. These are all the things we hope to get left behind and be seen as last season.