There are issues with 'bushfire merch' but it's better than nothing

The fashion industry often cops a bad rap. It's not diverse enough, it's consumerist, it's shallow, and so forth. But occasionally it does something really good.

Tessa (left) and Beth Macgraw have made T-shirts to help raise funds for bushfire relief.

Over New Year, designers large and small rallied to raise funds and divert proceeds from sales to help bushfire relief. At a time when many people were feeling helpless and struggling to know where to put their money, the fashion industry offered an avenue that was familiar and easy. And in some cases, people walked away with something new (or pre-loved).

The initiatives, which numbered in their hundreds at last count, were varied. There were brands that donated all of their sales on one day, or a portion of their sales over a period. Two markets, in Sydney and Melbourne, invited designers to part with excess stock and samples, raising a combined $250,000. And some brands created special items or collections, with sales going to one of the registered fundraisers. In total, the fashion industry's efforts must be in the several millions.

So it came as a bit of a shock to read an article on respected fashion website Fashionista this week suggesting a lot of this good work was an irresponsible waste of resources.

Brooklyn-based freelance journalist Sara Radin interviewed academic Anika Kozlowski, who said brands that engage in making charity products such as T-shirts are "reaping the benefits without actually using [their] own money" by effectively handpassing the charitable "work", that is the money part, to their customers.

But if half of something is better than half of nothing, shouldn't we be giving Australian brands more credit for their efforts, even if they are imperfect?

Byron Bay-based brand Spell raised more than $950,000 by pre-selling its Unicorn Tears collection; The Daily Edited gave nearly $250,000 from a combination of sales and donations; Sydney-based brand Macgraw sold hundreds of $95 relief T-shirts before they had even been released. And there are many, many more examples.

Would it really have been preferable for those funds to not have been raised?

Radin makes some valid points about the irony of fast-fashion brands such as Pretty Little Thing donating more than $200,000 to fire relief while continuing to peddle environmentally-damaging, cheap clothing. But cleaning up the fashion industry is a long game; helping bushfire victims, including the millions of injured animals, required immediate action.

It's hard to ignore that some of the fashion brands that raised the most connected with a demographic – young, affluent, engaged on social media – that traditional fundraising methods may have missed. The fact they "benefited" from their charity by getting something in return, namely a T-shirt or whatever, doesn't mean the act is without merit.

The world doesn't need any more cheap T-shirts, that's for sure. But if brands are creating collections that they would have done anyway or creating something of high quality that people will wear and love beyond the fire season, shouldn't they be praised for diverting some of their profits and not merely criticised for adding to fashion's environmental problem?

It's easy to dismiss these initiatives as PR stunts designed to create positive feelings around these brands. Indeed the level of "bushfire shaming" of brands that didn't make grand public donations or gestures suggests there is a definite image cost-benefit at play here. But to do so is to undermine the efforts of an industry that is often criticised for being inward looking and superficial doing something that actually made a difference, that is, raising a ton of cash.