A Practitioners' View on Sustainable Fashion in an Emerging Market: A Grounded Theory Approach

The rapidly growing fashion industry is producing harmful environmental results because of its unsustainable practices. Thus, sustainable fashion is receiving much attention from both practice and academia as it can be a potential solution to sustainability issues in the industry. Although past research explored various factors of sustainable fashion, most of it is only from the consumers' perspective. Hence, to explore the practitioner's perspective, this research used grounded theory to explore sustainable fashion perceptions and practices amongst industry professionals to identify and understand key themes and categories related to sustainable fashion. The data was collected in the form of semi-structured interviews with the 14 industry professionals in the fashion and sustainability area. The data was coded (open, axial, and selective coding) and analyzed using the software ATLAS.ti 24. The analysis identified and discussed in detail the environmental impact, ethical considerations, consumer behaviors, social influence, economic factors, and sustainable practices as core categories of sustainable fashion. Based on findings, the authors proposed a contingency-based sustainable fashion framework. The proposed framework can guide practitioners and policymakers in the decision making. The study contributes by exploring sustainable fashion from a practitioner perspective, addressing a significant gap in the literature.