Binge-watch Chronicles: Interrogating Sustainability on Season 2 of Next in Fashion

By: Guest Contributor Gabriela Chagas

This article was contributed by a member of our beloved Sustainable Baddie community. Sustainable Baddie exists in part to share perspectives outside of our own and to present a rich array of diverse voices. The opinions presented are those of the guest contributor and do not necessarily reflect or represent Sustainable Baddie’s voice, tone, and point of view. 

Queer Eye’s Tan France is back, now with Gigi Hadid, to present Season 2 of Netflix’s Next in Fashion. If you’re asking yourself if this is another reiteration of Project Runway or an upgrade, the answer is: it depends. Replacing the Parson’s workroom at the heart of New York City with a Jeopardy-like TV sound studio at an unmentioned location gave me mixed feelings. Don’t expect a million-dollar prize or a catwalk at Lincoln Center.

PC: via Reddit

That said, this can actually be a good thing. Fashion Week’s hallmarks of opulence have turned lackluster for many; it’s hard to look at a Birkin bag without considering the seedy underbelly of garment production, not to mention the inaccessibility of luxury goods. Next in Fashion gently takes the sustainability cat out of the bag for the first time on the mainstream platform, translating 2023’s zeitgeist in a fresh, relatable way.

Making the Cut, another show often compared to Project Runway, is more faithful to its original iteration, bringing back Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn as hosts. This Amazon Prime production has an outrageous budget, flying participants multiple times across the globe and handing out the biggest prizes in monetary value. Nevertheless, its partnership with Amazon is a bit too present, and for every challenge won, a scalable version of the high fashion look becomes instantly available on Amazon.com. While Making the Cut is extremely entertaining, it’s sadly oblivious to the dangers of mass production.

Both shows follow a similar structure, where every episode presents a new theme, from bathing suits to evening wear. An audience favorite is the “unconventional” challenge, in which contending designers have to make garments out of plastic wrappings, plants, or any other material that was not intentionally made to clothe. When the first episodes with this theme came out, almost 20 years ago on Project Runway, they tested the designer’s resourcefulness or creativity. It was never used, however, as a measure of success because there has always been an unspoken understanding that this unconventional approach is not how clothes are really made. It wouldn’t matter if the dress was made out of recycled plastic bags because only Lady Gaga (c. 2010) would pay for a dress like this.

On Next in Fashion, this unconventional challenge changed when it asked contestants to design looks made entirely out of discarded, thrifted garments. Creators who would normally do this out of necessity had the upper hand and made beautiful outfits. Those who did not succeed defensively excused themselves with “I don’t do this”, dismissing upcycling and remounting the worn-out concept that high fashion is created from new bolts of fabric.

And that’s when I pinned it: 2023 is the year when sustainability stops being a “good thing to do” and becomes stylish, a thing that the cool kids do. Tan, Gigi, and the guest judges praise designs that are sustainable, sure, but all in all, fashionable. 

At a moment when every TikToker has suddenly become a sustainability advocate, it's hard for me to believe that reels with the top things you “shouldn’t” actually make a difference. I’m exhausted from opening up new articles and finding out more ways climate change is harming mother Earth. Guilt does not create long-term positive behaviors.

If guilt is the Bad, persuasion is the Ugly. But what is the Good? I’d never put much thought into it until I invested 12 straight hours of my Saturday binge-watching NIF. I realized the show offered real-life practical examples of planet-friendly designs, as we frequently see here on Sustainable Baddie, without a preachy intro or those videos of the infamous plastic islands in the ocean. 

However, does it matter that the show promotes sustainable looks for the looks – with the ethical part being just a plus? Nigel, one of NIF’s contenders, uses his trademark patchwork technique, where he first creates a fabric and then cuts the patterns out of this new textile. Patchworking has been used for hundreds of years to make scraps look beautiful and has recently had a strong comeback. Nigel, like many designers, has adopted variations on this theme to make new clothes out of thrift/trashed goods and built his brand identity around minimum waste and a green method. As a result, this quilted aesthetic has become synonymous with sustainability.

However, it did catch my attention that in a few episodes, we could see Nigel cutting patchwork samples from fresh rolls of fabric - and the results were still called “sustainable”, even though they merely resembled upcycled items. This has recently generated a lot of buzz with fast fashion brands appropriating the regenerative fashion appearance but not its construction method and supplier systems. It is now usual to see patchwork or mismatched remade-looking clothes in every mall, interestingly, made from new materials. Imagine buying bread and waiting for it to get stale to make bread pudding when you already have a kitchen overflowing with old loaves.

When combined with a Conscious or Green label, it’s hard to call this anything but greenwashing. Remaking and reusing require different processes, making them more expensive. First, sourcing discarded garments and sorting by color and textile is much harder than placing an order for the exact fabric you are looking for. On top of that, there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to fabrication, as pattern pieces have to be adapted to each item's existing seams - making it particularly hard to mass produce. The general agreement is that fast fashion wants the marketing benefits but is not willing to put in the work.

I see a silver lining. This reappropriation may have been the push that consumers needed to put sustainability where it deserves to be: in the hall of cool. If large retailers are promoting it so much with their beautifully shot ads, the consumer market will at least check what this remaking is all about, and some may even investigate further. After all, copying is the ultimate form of flattery. Next in Fashion used the term “sustainable” in loose ways at times, but introduced me to a fresh, streetwear vibe that I was craving from the sustainable fashion movement. The presence of copycats makes the real deal so much more valuable.

It’s the difference between Michelle Pfeiffer’s “I made my own cat(woman) suit” and buying the accessible version from Amazon.com. What will we be seeing next? I feel like making our own fashion moments using what we have has never been so in.

Let me know what you think, baddie to baddie. Just leave me a comment.

Gabriela Chagas (she/her) is a writer based in Los Angeles. She has over 10 years of experience investing in social impact businesses and helping them grow. She specialized in sustainable fashion at Parsons School of Design and shares her conscious perspective on clothes through her newsletter http://www.mindofgab.com/.