The fast fashion industry has a large negative impact on the environment and its workers. Consumers purchasing fast fashion are reinforcing the dominant social paradigm, the assumption that humans are superior and the Earth’s resources unlimited. Even though customers are reconsidering their fashion consumer behavior, they often fall back to making unsustainable choices. Research has shown that communication strengthens ethical consumption and supports reducing the attitude-behavior gap. This study proposes that sustainable communication encourages fashion customers to reason with themselves in a way their behavior evolves to be more sustainable. The aim is to investigate customers’ reception and interaction with sustainable communication using the example of the ethical fashion brand Nudie Jeans. Based on the theories of the attitude-behavior gap and sustainable communication, semi-structured in-depth interviews with Nudie Jeans customers were conducted. The analysis of the interview responses demonstrates the initial presence of an attitude-behavior gap and low awareness of sustainable communication among customers. The research indicates that after customers have developed an awareness of sustainable concerns in the fashion industry, a fashion brand can succeed in encouraging customers to adjust predominant consumption patterns towards more ethical ones. On this basis, it is recommended that ethical fashion brands continuously use transparent sustainable communication to educate consumers about the environmental and social maladministration in the fashion industry.

L'environnementalisme américain est un mouvement dont la première vague surgit à la fin du 19e siècle face à l'exploitation excessive des ressources naturelles. Théodore Roosevelt a mis en place des mesures pour assurer la gestion avisée de la nature au bénéfice des générations présentes et futures. A côté de la conservation du gouvernement, un autre courant appelé préservation mit l'accent sur les valeurs esthétiques et spirituelles de la nature. Les deux conceptions de la relation de l'homme à la nature suscitèrent des conflits à propos de la façon dont on devait utiliser et protéger le patrimoine naturel. Le fort développement économique après 1945 puisa dans les ressources et généra de la pollution ainsi que des dangers posés par les industries atomiques et chimiques. "Printemps Silencieux" de Rachel Carson, paru en 1962, démontra que ces risques pesaient sur l'humanité elle-même et lança le mouvement environnemental moderne. Désormais, l'aspect éthique de la protection environnementale rivalise avec l'intérêt économique. Le succès du mouvement, canonisé par une série de lois environnementales, en fit la cible du contre-mouvement conservateur qui se développe depuis les années 1980. Les valeurs écologiques représentent une menace au credo américain, ainsi créant des tensions qui caractérisent le débat depuis le début du mouvement aux États-Unis. / American environmentalism is a movement that grew out of concerns over wilderness and wildlife depletion evident in the late 19th century. Theodore Roosevelt initiated conservation measures designed to manage natural resources wisely to ensure their sustainability for the benefit of present and future generations. Preservation, another current of American ideas that stressed the esthetic and spiritual values of nature, existed concurrently. The two visions of humans' relationship to nature gave rise to conflicts over how the nation's natural resources should be used. By the 1960s rapid development had led to heightened resource use and pollution, as well as new threats posed by the chemical and atomic industries. Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" published in 1962, demonstrated that humans themselves were in peril and launched the modern environmental movement. The ethical dimension of preserving nature and human health came to rival economic concerns. The success of the movement, canonized in a series of major environmental protection laws, made it the target of the conservative countermovement from the 1980s onward. Ecological values threaten the dominant values of the American creed, causing tensions that have characterized the debate since the advent of environmental protection in the United States.