Why limited edition design is a sustainability problem for fashion

Because growth has its fingers in every part of the fashion industry model. Sooner or later nearly every ethical fashion disruptor falls prey to the challenge of growth versus remaining truly sustainable. And there’s no better example of this than the trend of the limited edition design.

Growth vs sustainability

The general idea with sustainable fashion is that it gives customers a better quality, longer lasting, less environmentally damaging alternative.

The problem with this is that - if the concept works - then customers don’t buy as many of your products because they don’t need to replace them so quickly. They also tend not to be short-term trend driven, so again people buy less.

And when you’re starting out and recruiting more and more new customers, you make up for any lost sales to individuals through sales to more people.

But there comes a time when to keep growing without constantly trying to acquire new customers, you need to make more sales to your existing client base.

And this is where so many sustainable brands turn to the limited edition design, pattern, colourway to drive those sales - essentially importing the same trend driven, FOMO, scarcity tactics as fast fashion.

Caption - Image credit: Stanley

A whole retail industry problem

You might not consider drinkware company Stanley to be a particularly sustainable business, but its reusable steel tumblers, bottles, and storage products are designed to replace single use bottles and cups.

One person buying one Stanley flask and using it consistently probably has an environmental benefit. But a few years ago Stanley’s Quencher cup became popular off the back of TikTok and other social media trends, which transformed it from a useful object into a viral collectible.

Stanley has fed this popularity through limited edition designs, colours and collaborations, which by their nature are rarer and more sought after. New colours and designs are regularly introduced in the same way that streetwear brands have product ‘drops’.

The result is that many Stanley fans have multiple versions of the Quencher ranging from 3 or 4 through to massive collections of over 100 different designs.

And while Stanley may not market itself specifically as an ethical choice, businesses who do exactly that are also following the same playbook.

One example is refillable deodorant companies like Wild and Fussy. These businesses spotted a gap in the market for deodorant and antiperspirant products that create less single use waste and therefore offer customers a more eco-friendly alternative.

Both Wild and Fussy sell a long lasting case - made of metal or recycled plastic - and plastic-free, natural deodorant refills which quickly break down when empty.

While there are lots of good aspects to this concept, both companies have adopted a model of regularly offering limited edition cases and scents to maintain customer interest. These are often tied to different seasons, and national holidays and celebrations, alongside collaborations with pop culture characters.

This tactic means that customers may end up amassing more of the product than they need, which could lead to the waste that these brands were created to challenge.

Limited edition also impacts resale

Ethical fashion brands are also guilty of driving demand through limited edition drops.

Independent UK fashion brand Lucy & Yak is something of a poster child for more ethical, non fast fashion. Its products are made of organic cotton, recycled wool and recycled polyester, and the brand is built on inclusivity and long lasting quality.

But in recent years, fans of the brand have started questioning those core values as Lucy & Yak has continued to grow. 

One part of this has been the increasing frequency of product drops, which can be weekly. Limited edition designs and collabs with artists are part of this, with these styles quickly selling out. This drives a FOMO mentality among Lucy and Yak’s biggest fans, who end up collecting multiple different designs across one product.

But the most interesting - and possibly overlooked - aspect that has emerged from this is a reselling culture built on profit, rather than circularity.

Shoppers are snapping up limited edition designs specifically to resell them on platforms like Vinted and Depop, where they tend to go for more than they cost new. 

There’s a lot to unpack from this - Lucy & Yak themselves note that their products hold their value and this is a good thing because it means that people sell them on when they are done with them rather than chucking them in landfill. 

And this is a fair point because sustainable fashion needs to be desirable in order to encourage circularity. Again, as Lucy & Yak note, it's the unique and fun designs that encourage customers to choose a more sustainable option in the first place.

On the other hand, drop models go hand-in-hand with professional reselling and there’s an argument to be made that fewer limited edition designs and drops would reduce this. If designs are available all the time as a core product range then they have less value from a purely collectible perspective. 

Clearly, there’s a tough line to be walked between creating a desirable sustainable product and using limited edition designs to drive growth in an unsustainable way.

Many ethical brands gain an initial foothold by telling customers that what they make is so high quality, so long lasting, that they only need to invest in it once. Constant short-lived, limited edition designs run the risk of undermining that.