When you think of clothes does anything in particular come to mind? Lately, we have been trying to make a concerted effort to reduce our spending on clothing. It’s hard when constant ads and sales by fast fashion brands like Joe Fresh and Old Navy permeate your every waking hour. Thankfully there is an antidote. Raina Delisle’s Fashion Forward: Striving for Sustainable Style is a comprehensive guide to the problems in the fashion industry and how we can make changes in our own shopping habits to better protect our environment, workers all over the world and our waterways.

Throughout this Orca Footprints title, Raina Delisle explains how fashion has gone global, the impact of the fashion industry on climate change, how we can affect change in the fashion industry and how we can be better consumers. Written for a middle grade audience, it’s fantastic for future consumers to learn these important lessons before they have the means to really enter the market place. For the adults who still do most of the shopping, it’s an eye opening book. There was so much that I didn’t know about how clothing is produced and I was very appreciative of the reminders to help reduce my family’s shopping.

The writing was easy to digest, clear and straightforward making the book a pretty quick read. I would have loved a few more side bars with quick information to break up all the text. The photographs were fantastic and all the descriptions of the photos did provide more information but the typeset was small so could easily be missed as photo credits.

Overall, Fashion Forward is an excellent middle grade non-fiction title to help young fashionistas navigate their style in an ethical and environmentally conscious way.