Is Being a Sustainable Fashion Influencer Realistic?

#FashionCrisis is a series that kicks off the Teen Vogue's commitment to educating our readers about sustainability and fashion. We chat with experts, influencers, designers, beauty and fashion brands about what it really means to be sustainable in 2020. In this story, Laura Pitcher finds out what it means to be an Instagram influencer during a climate crisis.

Leah Thomas, the blogger behind Green Girl Leah and a Patagonia corporate employee, is reluctant to call herself an influencer — so much so that she recently took a four-month hiatus from Instagram to “re-strategize” how she uses the platform. While both her blog and her Instagram account focus on sharing sustainable fashion and green-beauty tips, she felt conflicted about recommending products. “I had an internal struggle because, even though I only write about eco-friendly companies, I was still receiving press packages with stuff that I didn’t need,” she tells Teen Vogue. Her first step towards change started by asking more questions, something that led to a popular athletic company she says “ghosted” her after she asked what sustainability and diversity initiatives they had in place.

This struggle of how to influence positivity or sustainably is not a new one, the word itself comes from the Latin word for “inflow,” relating to a transfer of thoughts from person to person. Last year, Pope Francis even tweeted that the Virgin Mary was “the first ‘influencer.’” However, throughout history, the word “influence” hasn’t been commonly associated with inherent goodness, appearing in a quarter of William Shakespeare’s plays, according to the New Yorker, as a condition that is most often not dignified. While celebrities and societal elites have always carried a level of influence or power, the invention of social media has allowed anyone with access to a smartphone the ability to cultivate their own community.

The term “influencer” is not only a commonly used one, but a legitimate career choice in this day and age. As Instagram continues thrives off consumer culture and is now more shoppable than ever, companies are investing heavily in influencer marketing. A Business Insider Intelligence research report predicts that companies will be spending up to $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022, a rise from an estimated $8 billion in 2019. Considering our current climate and ecological crisis, an increase in Instagram influencers continuing to push us towards a “buy more” purchasing mentality is an inherently unsustainable model. While the 2017 Federal Trade Commission guidelines dictate that influencers have to be more transparent about their corporate relationships, there is a clear moral dilemma.

We’ve seen Kim Kardashian West’s former assistant Stephanie Shepherd balance being a luxury tastemaker and influencer with her online activism. As a plastic-free columnist at Poosh and half of Future Earth, a platform aimed to guide people into living “clean, active and informed” lives, Stephanie flip flops between posting sustainability advice (like informing people about the microplastics in our laundry) and her more traditional influencer duties, such as sponsored posts. While her activism work is inspiring, the contrast between the two sides at play raises the question of if being a “sustainable influencer” can really exist.

With this in mind, 19-year-old sustainable fashion advocate Tolmeia Gregory Tolly Dolly Posh, whose feed consists mostly of protest pictures, would prefer to be called an activist that utilizes social media. Through her sustainable fashion blog, GIF stickers, and Instagram filters, she hopes to get people talking about the climate crisis and, while she’s gaining a loyal following, she doesn’t relate to the influencer label, and her followers agree. Tolmeia recently asked her followers in a poll what they would call her, with 87% voting that she would be called an activist rather than an influencer, she says.

“It's possible to be a sustainable influencer if we approach what that means from a different angle. If it means being an educator and an activist, then sure. Most of the 'sustainable influencers' I follow do both,” she says. “They tackle the climate crisis head-on, even if they do occasionally sell a product here and there. I think the big difference is they're not afraid to tell the truth about what's happening in the world.” Tolmeia says she hasn’t accepted gifted clothing in almost a year and calls for a “transition for influencers” to recognize the current state of the climate crisis. “People aren't pointing fingers because you've personally caused the climate crisis, they're pointing fingers because we all need to play our part in turning the system around,” she says.

For art director and stylist Zeena Shah, her online sustainability focus also doesn’t fit under the category of being an “influencer.” Instead, she uses the platform to share her work, some of which involve daily outfit posts that show how matching colors and layering can allow you to wear items more than once. “The most sustainable thing you can do is to keep things in your wardrobes and make sure you are wearing them,” says Zeena. “Don't get me wrong, I love shopping and buying new things, but it is about need versus want and sharing what I'm learning along the way.”

While many of those in the sustainable fashion space online are ready to shed their association with being an “influencer,” one research affiliate at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania, Emily Hund, argues that it has become inescapable and industry-agnostic. Calling it “the influencer economy” in an interview with Fast Company, she claims that there’s an ecosystem that has grown around the influencer which subjects us all to the pressures of influencing online.

It's also something that younger generations are increasingly aspiring to. A recent report found that nearly three quarters of Gen Z and millennials in the U.S. follow influencers on social media, with the majority saying they trust influencers more than their favorite celebrities. It also found that 86% of Gen Z and millennials surveyed would post sponsored content for money, and 54% would become an influencer given the opportunity. This desire to be seen as having influence perhaps explains the surge of influencers posting fake sponsored content.

As much as we detest inauthentic content, it seems the majority of us either want whatever product or lifestyle the influencer is showing us, or want to be the influencer themselves. For journalist and director Sophia Li, that’s why mental health, self-awareness, and sustainability go hand in hand. Her Instagram tackles a broad spectrum of topics in sustainability, from the perceptions of other cultures, to mass consumption, to what is and isn’t recyclable. She also uses the platform to shed a light on ecological disasters, like Australia’s recent bushfires. “I use [Instagram] to have others question why they want ‘more,’” she says. “Is it because it's ingrained into us to be consumers? Are we trying to fill a void with material items? Are we validating ourselves with a moving target of mindless consumption?”

Sophia doesn’t claim or appear to live an entirely sustainable life because, as humans, that notion is impossible. Sustainable fashion retail and marketing consultant Emma Slade Edmondson agrees. While her Instagram is full of thrifted and rented outfit inspiration, she’s transparent about this being something she does most of the time, but not all of the time. “Sustainability is a journey we are all on,” Emma tells Teen Vogue. “There is so much at stake in terms of the way we currently operate and the damage it is doing to both people and the planet.”

This willingness to learn rejects the idea of perfection in the sustainable fashion space, and instead positions Instagram “influencers” as activists sharing their own environmental journey and findings. “In terms of my social media platforms, I never want to think of what I do as selling, but rather as providing information that can be quite stressful to take in in a digestible, non-judgmental way, or as more of a ‘show’ than a ‘tell,’” says Emma.

While there’s no debating that there is an array of sustainable Instagrammers that have “influence,” the social media influencer role itself does not appear to have a place in the environmental space while being synonymous with sponsorship and consumerism. The state of our climate crisis makes it clear: we need less. We need fewer products to be pushed through influencers and more online activists using their platform to educate and incite a movement of direct action.

Let us slide into your DMs. Sign up for the Teen Vogue daily email.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Fast Fashion Is a Feminist Issue

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue