The global movement to decelerate how we produce and consume things has been around for four decades, with mixed results. While its core tenets keep making inroads far beyond food, questions around affordability and accessibility persist and some companies are hijacking the "slow" label for marketing purposes.

When McDonald's opened its first restaurant in Italy in March 1986 – right next to the Spanish Steps in Rome – it was met with howls of revulsion all around, not to mention a lawsuit by the fashion designer Valentino, whose atelier was next door. Yet the most stinging and enduring critique came from the Italian journalist and activist Carlo Petrini. He staged a spectacular protest at the McDonald's restaurant's inauguration and served plates of spaghetti al dente to passersby.

Petrini then went on to launch the "Slow Food" movement. In a manifesto, he urged "homo sapiens" to "regain wisdom and liberate itself from the 'velocity' that is propelling it on the road to extinction," and to trade the "tediousness of 'fast food'" for "the rich varieties and aromas of local cuisines. "Nearly four decades later, the "slow" prefix is being appended to everything from fashion, beauty and home decoration to cities, marketing and manufacturing. It is capturing the zeitgeist as more and more voices ring out against capitalism and its damage to the health of human beings and of the planet.

"Slow" has now become synonymous with sustainable and green – and businesses big and small are adopting the adjective to signpost their respect for ethics and the environment. "In the capitalist system, time is literally money. Speed is a mark of success – living life in the fast lane – and even intelligence. If you call someone 'slow,' it can be perceived as an insult," explains Joanne Lee, an associate professor at the University of Warwick in the UK, who teaches a "Slow Movement" module together with her colleague Elisabeth Blagrove. "The slow philosophy asks us to reset our relationship with time and advocates a cultural shift towards an overall slower pace of life and towards more mindful, ethical, sustainable patterns of consumption," she adds, noting that the pandemic was an important driving force behind that philosophy. 

Lee acknowledges that the slow movement is sometimes criticized for being "elitist or even hedonistic" and "a choice available only to those who have the time and money." Another criticism lodged against it: that the moniker slow has, in some cases, "become a bandwagon, or a marketing tool, perhaps in a similar way that companies use 'greenwashing.'"

The godfather of the trend is, of course, Petrini, with the Slow Food movement that he launched nearly four decades ago in Rome. What does he think of the way in which his movement has spread? "It's a sign of the times," Petrini says in an interview. "All of the interest that today revolves around these issues indicates that the road we took was the right one, that our message prevailed. It was no longer acceptable to consider food as something disconnected from our lives and marginal. The time had come to bring food to the center of the debate, because ultimately food is a crucial focus in our daily lives, where health connects to culture and relationships connect to pleasure. From that moment a real revolution began."

Noting that the agri-food industry accounts for around one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, Petrini recalls that the Slow Food movement was also "ahead of its time" in warning of the risks that agricultural production posed to the health of the planet, to biodiversity and to local economies and cultures. "Starting from food, we have pursued crucial challenges in the field of environmental sustainability, social justice especially in the agricultural field, the protection of biodiversity and the cultural appreciation of local gastronomy." The basis of the International Slow Food Movement is "think global, act local," the 75-year-old author and activist adds. "This insight allowed the association to spread and take root within the social fabric of over 150 countries around the world."

With its prescient campaign, however, comes the responsibility to stay relevant. "If the Slow Food movement wants to stay in the front line, it will have to evolve again and focus its network on the fight against global climate change," Petrini warns. "Everything must be revolutionized: the way we travel, the way we shop and consume, the way we generate and use energy." And he has high hopes for younger people picking up the baton: "Among the new generations, the sensitivity toward environmental and social sustainability is growing."

Ranking the most polluting industries on the planet, fashion is another big one. It accounts for a tenth of all global greenhouse gas emissions and uses more energy than aviation and shipping put together, according to the United Nations. The Spanish brand powerhouse Zara alone produces 450 million garments a year.

Amid growing public awareness of the human and environmental cost of clothes, new and existing brands within the industry are adopting the adjective "slow." Even global fast-fashion chains are starting "slow" and sustainable fashion lines (albeit small and limited ones). Fashion brands are feeling the pressure to be more ethical and ecological, and more transparent about where their garments are made, by whom, and in what kind of working conditions.

It's in this highly competitive environment that smaller brands such as Encircled are trying to foster change. The Canadian slow-fashion brand specializes in a category of apparel it labels "wander leisure": elegant athleisure designed for travel but also for everyday life. It was set up by Kristi Soomer in 2012 who, in her previous career as management consultant, felt the need to travel lighter. She was "frustrated with the lack of versatility and lack of comfort in women's clothing, specifically for travel," she recalls.

Soomer invented a piece that could be worn eight or more different ways and her brand evolved from there. Encircled's top-selling product today is a pair of dressy sweatpants that can be worn to work. Now with an annual turnover in the $2.5 - $3.5 million range, all of the brand's production takes place in Canada, at factories less than 20 kilometers from the studio. The majority of the fabrics are biodegradable, eventually returning to the earth, and garments are made in small batches. "We're not producing a zillion pieces and then landfilling something if it doesn't sell," explains Soomer. The brand launches roughly two products a month. Compare that with the Chinese fast-fashion e-retailer Shein, which launches thousands of items a day. "One of my biggest goals is to get women to actually wear our clothing and keep it for a really long time," because "we don't need that much stuff," Soomer explains. But "breaking through to the consumer and getting the consumer to shift their mindset around fashion" is a massive challenge, she adds, because even high-income consumers tend to buy a large number of fast-fashion garments every quarter, many of which they never wear.

Being a slow-fashion brand "is really about slowing down your consumption and exploring how these products are made and really considering every purchase before you do it," says Soomer. A recent Encircled customer survey showed that those criteria are valued. The number one reason why people buy from Encircled are its ethics and sustainability. "Ten years ago," Soomer points out, "that would not have been the case."

To be sure, Encircled customers also tend to belong to higher age and income brackets, because price tags differ from off-the-rack items at Zara or H&M. The brand's sweatpants cost $157 and a blazer or dress can cost upward of $200. The clothes last longer, but they also cost more.

The same is true of Beaumont Organic, a fashion brand headquartered in Manchester, England. A linen dress advertised on the site this spring was priced $374, while a pair of cotton trousers was priced at close to $200. The brand was set up in 2008 by Hannah Beaumont-Laurencia and produces just two collections a year of 70 pieces each. The aim is to "educate consumers that you really only need to buy one or maybe two pieces per season, if that," she says. All products are made within a 30-mile radius of the town of Braga in Portugal, by certified factories employing people who are paid a living wage. The garments are transported to Manchester by car. Beaumont-Laurencia bemoans a lack of transparency when it comes to defining "slow fashion." She says some high-street brands are launching ethically and sustainably produced fashion lines identified by the adjective "slow," but these labels are "not genuine because they're not doing it across the full business" and "a lot of it is a commercial act."

One advantage is that they're raising awareness of the perils of fast fashion and helping educate the public. Because when it comes to consumer behavior, "there's still a massive gap in society" between those who are "still very much shopping in Primark and H&M," and those who are "at least dipping their toe" in slow fashion and "starting to feel the benefits. It's a long game to convert that bottom half, who are still very price-driven," according to Beaumont-Laurencia.

Beauty is another sector in which the adjective "slow" is taking root. Globally, the beauty and personal care industry is huge, by some estimates worth $646 billion in 2024 and growing steadily. Yet more than 120 billion units of plastic packaging are estimated to be produced each year by the industry. Breaking that mold is not easy. Kindred Black is a plastic-free artisan skin and body care brand set up in 2015 by two women, Jennifer Black Francis and Alice Kindred Wells, who previously worked for a handbag brand. At Kindred Black, oil-based products and scents are made of pure ingredients, come in bottles and vessels handmade in a glassblowing factory in Mexico, and are typically priced at more than $100, if not $200. 

Francis acknowledges that Kindred Black is a luxury product aimed at a luxury consumer. "I can sit here on my soapbox and talk about it all, but I'm also then offering you something that's $165, or whatever the price may be. I wish the product was more accessible," she says. "But when I have to buy small quantities and am working with farmers and glassblowers, and I'm not going to try to talk them down on their pricing, it's almost impossible to get a more accessible price point."  

The ethos of Kindred Black as well as other slow-beauty brands is to offer long-lasting quality products that don't come in polluting packaging, and that can be kept and used over a long period of time. That ethos is one that is completely at odds with the behavior patterns of 21st century consumers. "At the same time that you have people like us saying this, you have the Kardashian culture, and that culture is just: 'keep buying and keep spending and keep adding to yourself and trying to make yourself different and better,'" Francis explains. "That's a wave to come up against that sometimes feels very hopeless."  

Concerns around high prices and accessibility raise the question whether businesses committed to the ethos of slow will eventually take over and chase away the fast way of doing business in the global economy? Most certainly not, concludes Lee of Warwick University. "We live in a fast world, in a fast capitalist system with increasing demands on us, and I don't see that going away anytime," she says. "I don't see our society as a whole moving back to a completely slower way, because it would require a complete revolution, a complete dismantling of the structure." Instead, slow and fast "will coexist," she explains. "Individual people and businesses will have their own ways of accommodating slow within their lifestyles."