No. SI1 (2025): Special Issue
Essays

Contrasting Hierarchical and Decentralised System Analogies to Revalue Prosperity: Decentralised System Analogies Enabling Fashion Sustainability

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  • Lisa Nel,
  • Desiree Smal,
  • Allan Munro
Lisa Nel
Central University of Technology (CUT), Department of Design & Studio Art, South Africa
Bio
Desiree Smal
University of Johannesburg (UJ), Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, South Africa
Bio
Allan Munro
Vaal University of Technology, Department of Visual Arts and Design, South Africa
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-3140

Published 14-07-2025

Keywords

  • decentralised fashion system,
  • ethic of care,
  • systems theory,
  • fashion sustainability,
  • agency

How to Cite

Nel, L., Smal, D., & Munro, A. (2025). Contrasting Hierarchical and Decentralised System Analogies to Revalue Prosperity: Decentralised System Analogies Enabling Fashion Sustainability. Fashion Highlight, (SI1), 574–584. https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-3140

Copyright (c) 2025 Lisa Nel, Desiree Smal, Allan Munro

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The hierarchical capitalist system exploits all living systems, including labour. Revaluing prosperity ideologies involves freeing the production of new systems from an opportunistic economy and fostering subject formation that values “complexity, diversity and multiple ways of belonging” (Braidotti & Regan, 2017, p. 182).

Agents in the fashion system struggle to adopt the counterhegemonic ontologies required for true sustainability. A responsive, integrated, and decentralised system and an ethic of care are needed to empower more role players to address dynamic societal challenges. This paper contributes to redefining the concept of prosperity by contrasting analogies of the hierarchical capitalist fashion system with alternative decentralised structures, thereby identifying intervention points to enable agency for fashion system participants. Drawing from Nel’s (2025), PhD research, critical discourse analysis and a constructivist qualitative methodology grounded in theory through desktop analysis are applied.

The characteristics of decentralised systems offer intervention points in the fashion system, promoting a framework that moves away from exploitation and integrates agency — enhancing economic resilience by diversifying economies and reducing vulnerability to global market fluctuations. Revaluing prosperity paradigms, from prosperity for the privileged few through capitalist profit motives to more inclusive, decentralised notions of prosperity could promote well-being for all. 

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