Retired to Reinspired: Displaying Sustainable Practices in Visual Merchandising

It is a widely accepted fact that the fashion industry is the second most unsustainable industry in the world, just behind oil (Qutab, 2016). Although some research would like to suggest that fashion is more sustainable than it actually is, it is indisputably a huge contributor to waste and something obviously needs to change (Friedman, 2018). When people hear about how unsustainable the fashion industry is, they usually think about fast fashion and how quickly clothes are being produced, purchased, and then discarded. What most people probably do not think about is that visual merchandising is also a large reason the fashion industry is considered so unsustainable. Visual merchandising is the act of displaying merchandise in a way that makes it attractive to consumers (Business Dictionary, n.d.). For example, most of the props, signage, decor, and fixturing that are used to create the whimsical window displays seen on Michigan Avenue or Rodeo Drive are simply thrown in the trash after use. This is a problem because the turnover for window displays is almost as fast as it is for merchandise. Tons of materials are trashed week after week, season after season, and year after year. As a fashion minor and someone who works in visual merchandising for two different companies, I have seen firsthand just how much waste is created from making a store look beautiful. Because of this, I wanted my creative project to highlight the issue of sustainability in the fashion industry, and more specifically, in visual merchandising. The goal of this project is to demonstrate that you can create a beautiful and captivating window display using recycled materials. To do this, I created three pieces to be used in a window display that I constructed out of discarded props, signage, and decor that I collected from different stores such as Crate & Barrel, Michael Kors, and Free People. A display that is made out of recycled materials does not need to look like a pile of garbage, but can look just as beautiful and inspiring as a display made entirely of new materials. In creating these three pieces out of recycled materials, I aim to prove that visual merchandising can be more sustainable in ways that are not as difficult as one might think, and help spark a change in the fashion industry as a whole.