International Journal of Consumer Studies International Journal of Consumer Studies ISSN 1470-6423 Sustainable fashion consumption and the fast fashion conundrum: fashionable consumers and attitudes to sustainability in clothing choice Lisa McNeill and Rebecca Moore Department of marketing, University of Otago, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand Keywords Behaviour, clothing, consum, eco, fashion, sustainable. Correspondence Department of marketing, University of Otago, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand. E-mail: lisa.mcneill@otago.ac.nz doi: 10.1111/ijcs. 12169 Abstract The fashion industry has recently heeded the call for sustainability and ethically sound production. There has been, however, a reluctant uptake of these products with many consumers and a seeming conflict with existing 'fast fashion' desires in this area. This study explores the attitudes of fashion consumers toward sustainable products, ethical fashion purchasing and their subsequent behaviour. The research applies the developmental theory model to a fashion context, finding fashion consumers can be categorized into one of three groups: 'Self' consumers, concerned with hedonistic needs, 'Social' consumers, concerned with social image and 'Sacrifice' consumers who strive to reduce their impact on the world. These different groups view fast fashion in conflicting ways and subsequent implications for marketing sustainably produced fashion products to each group are, thus, significantly different. Introduction As fashion cycles become increasingly fast paced, some sectors of the fashion industry have adopted increasingly unsustainable production techniques to keep up with demand and increase profit margins. However, in response to a global interest in sus- tainability and its related ethics, other sectors of the industry have begun to offer sustainable options in their product lines. Consumers have, however, been reluctant to adopt sustainable changes to their consumption choices, a phenomenon common to many industries offering sustainable products in a market based on rapid turnover of goods. Many producers in the fash- ion industry are attempting to change its unsustainable nature, but this is only feasible in the long term if consumers support sustainable fashion by purchasing it. Consumers are said to increasingly care about unethical behaviour, but this attitude does not always translate to behaviour (Bray et al., 2010), par- ticularly in regard to fashion items (Joergens, 2006). This presents a challenge for marketers in an industry defined by rapid turnover of trends and associated disposal of 'unfashion- able' apparel (Birtwistle and Moore, 2007; Morgan and Birt- wistle, 2009). The growing strain on environmental and social welfares caused by non-ethical fast fashion practices, and the potential to alleviate this strain through sustainable fashion practice, deems this research necessary. Consequently, the cur- rent research aims to explore fashion consumers' attitudes toward the consumption of sustainable fashion and identify the impact of the 'fast fashion' psyche on these attitudes. Fashion consumption Consumption across many product categories is influenced by the human desire to express meanings about oneself and to cre- ate an identity, but this is perhaps particularly the case with clothing, which is constantly on display (Berger and Heath, 2007). Clothing is used to emanate meanings about the wearer to others and also to reinforce meanings to oneself (Belk, 1988). Consumers have