rs and tailors before mid-nineteenth century, it began to wind up mass created by the beginning of the twentieth century because of the rising of new technologies, for example, the sewing machine, the improvement of the processing plant arrangement of generation and so on (Steele & Major, 2018). These progressions expanded the amount of pollution by the fashion industry in four areas such as the production of raw materials include basically fibres and textiles; the production of fashion goods by designers, manufacturers, contractors, and others; following by retail deal and also numerous type of advertising and promotion (Steel & Major, 2018).

In the latter part of the twentieth century, the consumer awareness of clothes’ potential second life starts to emerge (Gonzalez, 2015). People start to realise the impact of the fashion industry. Fortunately, there are some hardworking individuals, companies, and organisations try to minimise the damage of fashion to our environment throughout the entire lifecycle of textile production and use. “Fashion is a language which tells a story about the person who wears it” (Durcanin, 1999). When consumers realise the importance of our environment, they start to wear green on themselves to show that they are contributing to the environment. To fulfil the consumers’ demand, the fashion companies start to apply green branding to their fashion brands, in other word is sustainable fashion. Consequently, being green becomes a significant symbol for a brand position to represent a company is environmental, eco-friendly, energy efficient, organic and so on.

Somehow, there are many types of fashion companies. Fast-fashion which always been criticised in lacking of environmental and social responsibility start to apply green to fulfil consumers’ demand. High-end fashion which usually can be moderately or very expensive which possible to be green. However, how far can a fashion company brand themselves to green? What is an ethical fashion? Are they ethical enough? Thus, the aim of this dissertation is to investigate the ethicality of fashion companies using green branding by looking through some well-known fast-fashion which are H&M, Zara and high-end fashion such as Stella McCartney and Everlane.

2.0 How did awareness of ethical clothing came about?