Purity, Pollution, and Position: Spatializing Ethical Buycotts and Boycotts in Indian Fashion

Brands regularly face consumer backlash when they are seen as crossing ethical lines. When Sabyasachi, one of India's best-known designers, partnered with the fast-fashion chain H&M in 2021, the reaction was swift and severe. What made this collaboration different from the designer's many earlier tie-ups with Western labels was the scale of the backlash it provoked among consumers and artisans alike. The episode is consistent with a broader pattern documented in prior work: boycotts of fashion brands over perceived ethical lapses tend to be selective rather than uniform. Even as ethics plays a growing role in shaping how people buy clothes, we still know little about how 'ethical space' in fashion actually gets built - and how culture, religion, and politics shape that construction. This is a notable gap, given how far the idea of ethical fashion has traveled as consumers push brands toward greater social and environmental accountability. This paper examines the case of Sabyasachi, an Indian designer whose collaboration with fast-fashion retailer H&M triggered a consumer boycott, to show how consumers treat certain fashion spaces as 'sacred' and react strongly when that sanctity is perceived as breached.