Eco-Fashion Lexicon: A Never-ending Story?

Due to increased awareness of ecological and environmental issues and greater integrity by the fashion industry, the terms ‘ecofashion’, ‘ethical fashion’ and ‘sustainable fashion’ have recently been gaining popularity to refer to garments which are designed and manufactured supporting ethnic communities and without harming the environment. New terms, such as ‘environmental’, ‘green’, ‘ecological’, ‘eco-friendly’, ‘sustainable’, ‘recycled’ and ‘organic’ have been used to qualify both garments and production practices, to the point that Hanlon (2009) observed that the potential creativity of language in the field of sustainable fashion “is never-ending”. However, fashion experts as well as fashion scholars pointed out that the exact meaning of the terms related to the ecofashion movement is not always clear. This study aims to explore the lexicon of eco fashion from a purely linguistic perspective. Results support with linguistic evidence the claims regarding the cross-fertilisation of the terms related to the ecofashion movement and, in some cases, their lack of clarity.