Reframing Fashion Sustainability Through Colonial Histories

Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis (2021) is a powerful and deeply unsettling account of how colonial violence laid the groundwork for today’s environmental and social crises. Read through the lens of fashion and sustainability, the book offers not only historical insight but a personal reckoning. For those who have worked in the fast fashion industry, contributing even unwittingly to the systems Ghosh critiques, the narrative lands with a heavy weight.

It reflects the uncomfortable truths beneath our western modern day living and foundations of the fashion industry we know today. For fashion students and practitioners, this represents a second education, one that was lacking in secondary education, design schools or later when working for high-street retailers. As part of our reading list within the MA Fashion and Sustainability at Falmouth University, The Nutmeg’s Curse frames Week One’s module, titled Reframe with a view to open our mindsets.

The Nutmeg Trade and the Origins of Extractive Fashion Economies

Nutmeg, though seemingly minor in global economic terms today, serves as a powerful metaphor for the violence that enabled Europe’s rise as a colonial and capitalist force. Ghosh recounts the brutal massacre of the Banda Islands’ population by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), not only to monopolise nutmeg but to reshape ecological and cultural life through control of land, labour and knowledge. This history is not an isolated episode. It is part of a wider pattern of colonial violence that includes the seizure of Indigenous lands, ecological devastation, and the brutal persecution of women, such as the witch hunts of the 16th century. These acts of violence built the ideological and material foundations of extractive capitalism. These acts of violence did not simply cause collateral damage; they built the architecture that supports today's consumption economies. The scale of violence documented throughout the book is staggering. Entire populations displaced or destroyed. Indigenous lands seized, ecosystems devastated. These are not incidental footnotes in the story of modernity, they are its foundation.

This history parallels the commodification of cotton, silk and dyes such as indigo through colonial violence. Most mainstream fashion conversations overlook the origins of these materials and dyes, despite their significant impact on the industry's foundations. Designers create trends and work towards a goal of growth without understanding the histories of extraction behind their choices.

For practitioners transitioning into sustainability, this realisation can be heartbreaking. The same fabrics once used to express identity or creativity become reminders of systems rooted in dispossession. In Singapore, a city deeply tied to global trade routes, these patterns remain embedded in both infrastructure and culture.

Racial Capitalism Within the Global Fashion Supply Chain

The framework of racial capitalism, introduced by Cedric J. Robinson, helps explain how race and labour remain central to global economic systems. Ghosh draws this forward into contemporary contexts, connecting historical violence with present-day inequalities.

Fashion’s supply chains are inseparable from this reality. Across factories and spinning mills, low-cost labour drives the industry’s profits. These dynamics are visible not only overseas but within Singapore’s own migrant workforce.

Singapore’s Fashion History: From Colonial Port to Consumption Hub

Singapore’s position as a regional trade centre shaped its evolution from colonial port to global consumer hub. Nutmeg once moved through its harbours, followed by silk, cotton and industrial textiles. Today, the same trade infrastructure supports the rapid movement of fast fashion, luxury goods and high-volume consumption.

While sustainability is becoming part of the broader conversation, it remains overshadowed by the dominant narrative of consumption. Singapore’s reputation as a luxury shopping destination is deeply entrenched, supported by aggressive retail marketing, tax-free incentives and the visibility of flagship fashion brands. There is little emphasis on reducing consumption or changing behavioural patterns.

Without stronger education around fashion’s impact and more accessible alternatives to current consumption habits, it is challenging to envision meaningful change. What is needed is not just more green marketing but a fundamental shift in mindset – one that acknowledges that sustainability begins with consuming less.

Reading The Nutmeg’s Curse in this context brings the city’s layered history into sharper focus. It prompts reflection on how colonial trade, economic ambition and sustainability narratives intersect.

Challenging Fashion Modernity and Reclaiming Craft Practices

Modernity in fashion often equates to innovation, speed and cheap prices. Ghosh argues, modernity has meant the erasure of slower, more situated ways of being.

Fashion has long valorised efficiency: standardised sizing, fast pace, high volume creating economy of scale. In contrast, craft practices such as spinning, knitting, weaving, patchworking are often marginalised, viewed as hobbyist or niche. Yet these techniques carry embedded knowledge about ecology, material use and place-based identity.

Storytelling as Resistance in Sustainable Fashion Education

Ghosh’s narrative strategy of storytelling matters and he does not simply present data or come across as a hard line activist. Parables create space for feeling and understanding and his approach made the book an accessible read for a student reading this literature for the first time. Listened as an e-book over the course of a week, while in taxi’s and going about my commitments, the experience was deeply unsettling, but it was manageable. The way Ghosh layers information through narrative rather than confrontation allows space to absorb and to emotionally process without becoming overwhelmed. For students encountering these histories for the first time, the structure is digestible, even as it challenges life-long beliefs.

Interdisciplinary Reading as a Tool for Decolonising Fashion

To decolonise fashion is to confront its exclusions of knowledge, of labour, of lived experience. Reading Ghosh prompts this conversation outward, reminding readers that colonialism is not a thing of the past, but an ongoing reality.

This work can be uncomfortable. It may mean questioning long-held assumptions or letting go of familiar narratives. However, it also offers a broader and more honest education. Fashion does not exist in isolation. It moves through land, language and history.

In Singapore, decolonial practice might begin by exploring regional crafts or supporting marginalised makers. It might include conversations in classrooms or community spaces. Most importantly, it involves listening and remembering our true past.

Regenerative Fashion as a Response to Extractive Colonialism

If colonialism is rooted in extraction, then regeneration offers its counterpoint. Ghosh concludes with a call for empathy, humility, and this relationship qualities that are often absent from fashion’s and modern living mainstream narrative.

Regenerative design invites deeper accountability. It values soil as much as silhouette. It asks designers to consider biodiversity, longevity, and mutual care of the planet and all its inhabitants. This vision may seem radical, but it is grounded in indigenous practices.

From flax gardens in the UK to city farming in Singapore, regeneration is a growing shift in worldview. It opens the door to forms of fashion that prioritise repair over replacement, and care over control.

Reading as Resistance and the Future of Sustainable Fashion Literacy

The Nutmeg’s Curse is not an easy book to read, nor is it meant to be. Ghosh reveals truths that many in fashion have never been taught or have been encouraged to ignore. For those with years of experience in the industry, it can be a painful yet necessary awakening.

And yet, reading informs us, and information holds power. Change becomes possible when we engage with difficult truths and allow them to shape our understanding. Sustainability literacy must include historical context and awareness of the systems that sustain inequality. Awareness and acknowledgement of this past is the first step in challenging them.

Wilde Reads – The Sustainable Bookshelf exists to hold space for this process. Not to provide answers, but to start better questions. Questions about fashion, history, responsibility and the kind of world we are making.

More Insights on Sustainable Fashion Education and Values

If this review has inspired you to explore how books can shape our understanding of sustainable fashion, you may also enjoy Worn: A Peoples History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser. If you are interested in community workshops read Sustainable Fashion Education and Climate Fresk: Rethinking How We Learn to see how creative workshops are transforming the way we approach fashion and climate awareness. You can also explore Discover the Story Behind the Name: Wilde Hippi by Tala to learn more about the values and vision that guide my work.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this post and visit Wilde Hippi. Please share your thoughts in the comments, as your voice helps shape this platform.

Tala🌿✨