Why Fast Fashion is a Problem
Fast fashion clothing collections are based on the most recent fashion trends presented at Fashion Week (Paris and New York) in both the spring and autumn of every year. Fast fashion is the result of mass–market retailers increasing the production of inexpensive fashion lines to meet the demands of quickly changing trends.
What Is Fast Fashion
Fast fashion is a contemporary term used by fashion retailers for designs that flow quickly from the catwalk to capture current fashion trends. Fast fashion allows mainstream consumers to purchase trendy clothing at an affordable price.
How Fast Fashion Came To be
In the past, production followed the four main fashion seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. These traditional seasons have all but disappeared in the face of faster production driven by emerging trends. According to Investopedia, it is not uncommon for retailers to introduce new products multiple times in a single week to stay on trend. Fast fashion became common because of cheaper clothing, an increase in the appetite for fashionable clothing, and the increase in purchasing power on the part of consumers.
A Brief History of Fashion
To understand this phrase, it’s important to first give it context. The textile industry has always been one of the darkest corners of the world economy. The defining product of the Industrial Revolution, textiles were crucial to the development of our globalized capitalist system, and its abuses today are built on a long history. Slave labor in the American South supplied factories in both England, where they were notorious for child labor and other horrors, and the U.S., where factory fires took the lives of immigrants as recently as the turn of the 20th century.
Up until the mid–twentieth century, the fashion industry ran on four seasons a year. Designers would work many months ahead to plan for each season and predict what they believed customers would want. This method, while more methodical, took control away from the wearers. Before fashion became accessible to the masses, it was first presented to high society, and even then, there were rules to be followed.
Industrial Revolution
A lot of these dressmaking shops used teams of garment workers or home workers. It was around this time that sweatshops emerged, along with some familiar safety issues. The first major garment factory disaster was the fire that broke out in New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911. It claimed the lives of 146 garment workers, many of whom were young, female immigrants.
Of course, the Industrial Revolution sowed the seeds of what we know as fast fashion today. But it wasn’t until the 1960s that things really picked up. From that decade on, the industry quickened its pace and lowered its costs at an exponential rate. Around the 1960s and 70s, young people began creating new trends and clothing became a form of personal expression, but even then, there was still a distinction between high fashion and high street.
eCommerce and Fast Fashion
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, low–cost fashion reached its zenith. Then, it reached a point of no return in the mid–2000s when online shopping took off, and fast fashion retailers took over high street.
Major Criticisms of Fast Fashion
Calling attention to the major problems in this $2.4 trillion a year industry, fast fashion has been criticized for encouraging a “wasteful” attitude, which is why it’s also called disposable fashion. Fast fashion utilizes trend replication, rapid production, and low quality materials in order to bring inexpensive styles to the public. Unfortunately, this results in harmful impacts to the environment, human well–being, and ultimately micro and macro economies in general.
Fast fashion contributes to pollution, poor quality control, and unsafe working conditions in developing countries, where many of the clothing is manufactured. Because the clothing is made overseas, it’s also brought about a decline in U.S. manufacturing.
Generational Gap
The garments produced in fast fashion are of low quality, and most are thrown out before they have the chance to be worn out. While the average person buys 60% more clothing items than they did 15 years ago, that clothing is kept only half as long. In a year, the average person will buy 68 garments, and wear each piece only seven times before disposing of it.
It appears that this problem is worse among younger generations. A study commissioned by Barnardo’s found that a quarter of people would be embarrassed to wear an outfit to a special occasion more than once, and this figure rises to 37% for young people ages 16–24 and falls to 12% for those over 55.
Social Media
Fast fashion brands make heavy use of social media platforms, particularly Instagram, where users are able to purchase the clothes they see upon the bodies of models and “influencers,” with just a few swipes. Another study found that 17% of questioned young people said they wouldn’t wear an outfit again if they’d already posted it on Instagram.
Fast fashion brands constantly push out new product, enabling them to keep apace of rapidly changing consumer tastes. Famously, Fashion Nova took this to the limit, rolling out imitations of celebrity looks just a day or two after said celebrity debuts a new dress on social media.
Delivery is also fast and sometimes free, allowing customers to have what they desire the very next day. Most fast fashion brands in the UK promote delivery services that offer a year of unlimited, next day delivery for under £10.
Trend Replication and Rapid Production
An essential aspect of the fast fashion business model is the offering of hundreds of new products, every week, or even every day. Some websites list an incredible 284 items under “New in Today,” while others list 639 under “New This Week.”
Nowadays fast fashion brands produce about 52 “micro–seasons” a year. This means at least one new “collection” every week. This trend was first set by Zara back in the early 1980s by shifting to bi–weekly deliveries of new merchandise. From then on, it became the norm to have a supply of stock at all times.
With the amount of inventory that each retailer carries, there are few young people left out of their target demographic. Today, fast fashion brands get daily shipments of new styles, some can even introduce up to 400 styles a week on their websites.
Most fast fashion brands are currently replicating streetwear and fashion week trends as they appear in real–time. This means the lead time can often be less than a couple of weeks. By creating new, desirable styles weekly, these brands can ensure that their customers never tires of their store’s inventory.
Low Quality and Low Costs
With the increased rate of production, corners are inevitably cut. Because the clothing is made in such a rushed manner, there isn’t enough time for proper quality control.
The fast fashion manufacturing process is shoddy at best and pieces are often thrown away after no more than one or two wears. Each rapidly produced garment isn’t built to last and is made to be “disposable.”
Fast fashion brands are greatly concerned with their bottom line and are dependent on the massive quantities of clothing they churn out. These brands are able to earn millions while selling pieces cheaply because of the sheer volume of sales, no matter the cost or markup.
Why Fast Fashion is A Problem
A mainstreaming of concern about the social and environmental impacts of the garment industry. Fast fashion is fast in the production rate, the decision to purchase, the delivery, and the wearing of the garments. It is a model that is, in its entirety, unsustainable.
The Impact of Fast Fashion
On The Environment
All of the elements of fast fashion–trend replication, rapid production, low quality, competitive pricing–add up to having a large negative impact on the environment and the people involved in its production.
The pressure to reduce costs and speed up production time means that corners are inevitably cut. Fast fashion’s negative impact includes the use of cheap, toxic textile dyes—making the fashion industry the second largest global polluter of fresh water, following agriculture. Through its detoxing fashion campaigns, Greenpeace has been attempting to convince brands to remove dangerous chemicals from their supply chains.
According to an article in The Guardian, one of the reasons to rethink the way we manufacture garments has to do with the environmental impact on river, lake and ocean ecosystems. Every time they are washed in residential washing machines, microfibers from synthetic fabrics are released into our waterways. From there, they flow into rivers, lakes and oceans. The small size of the microfibers means they can be consumed by fish and other wildlife, as well as end up in groundwater and used for irrigation in farm lands.
Animals are also impacted by fast fashion, by the toxic dyes released into waterways and the microfibers often ingested by sea life. And it’s even worse when animal products such as leather and fur are used. Numerous scandals reveal that real fur, including cat and dog fur, has often been passed off as faux fur to unknowing shoppers. Fur farms are producing real fur under such terrible conditions that it’s actually become cheaper to produce than faux fur.
But even “natural fabrics” can become a problem at the scale that fast fashion demands. Conventional cotton requires enormous quantities of water and pesticides to grow in developing countries. This increases the risk of drought and puts undue stress on water basins, as companies and local communities compete for resources.
There is also undue stress on other environmental factors such as land clearing, biodiversity, and soil quality. Read further on the sustainability of the many different fibers available for textile use in our post. The processing of leather has its impact on the environment, as 300kgs of chemicals are added for every 900kgs of animal hides tanned.
Then there’s the inordinate amount of textile waste. In Australia alone, more than 500 million kilos of unwanted clothing ends up in landfills every year. According to the United Nations Environment Program, 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are attributable to the garment industry—more than air travel and shipping combined. Each year, the clothing that is simply thrown away amounts to about 11 million tons in the U.S. alone. These garments, full of lead, pesticides, and countless other chemicals, spend their lives releasing these toxic chemicals into the air. Fast fashion’s carbon footprint is quickly gaining on the previous two biggest leaders: air travel and oil.
Of the clothes produced, approximately 20% are never purchased, and quickly find their way to landfills. Famously, H&M found itself with $4.3 billion in unsold clothing back in 2018.
More than 60% of fabric fibers are now synthetics, which are derived from fossil fuels, one of the most popular is polyester. About 85% of textile waste in the U.S. goes to landfills or is incinerated, so if and when our fast fashion clothing ends up in a landfill, it will never decay. Neither will the synthetic microfibers that inevitably end up in freshwater and groundwater, including the deepest parts of the oceans and the highest glacier peaks.
On The Workers
According to research by Global Labor Justice (GLJ), female garment workers in H&M and Gap supplier factories in Asia have faced exploitation and mistreatment that includes abuse, poor work conditions, low wages and forced overtime. A garment worker’s health is in jeopardy through long working hours, lack of resources, exposure to harmful chemicals, and often physical abuse. The workers making fast fashion are underpaid and pushed to their very limits.
Aside from the environmental cost of fast fashion, there’s also a human cost. Some garments and accessories contain dangerously high levels of lead. Exposure to lead increases risk of infertility, heart attacks, among many other health concerns. Fast fashion impacts garment workers who work in dangerous conditions, for low wages, and without basic human rights. Down the supply chain, there are the farmers, who work with toxic chemicals. Human skin is highly permeable and our largest organ, exposure to these chemicals can have a devastating impact on their physical and mental health, a bright light shone by the documentary The True Cost.
Brands in the fast fashion space are caught exploiting workers domestically and internationally. Fast fashion’s low price points rely on the lowest manufacturing costs. To keep margins as high as possible, brands outsource production to companies all over the world in search of the cheapest labor. This poorly regulated supply chain has created unacceptable working conditions for people around the world.
Then in 2013, the world had a reality check when the Rana Plaza clothing manufacturing complex in Bangladesh collapsed, killing over 1,000 workers and injuring another 2,400. That’s when consumers really started questioning fast fashion and wondering what was the true cost of those $5 t–shirts.
Although the news seems not to have affected U.S. consumer’s desire for cheap clothing. In fact, that same year Americans spent $340 billion on fast fashion, much of it produced in Bangladesh, some of it by Rana Plaza workers in the days before the collapse.
But this isn’t just an international problem. Contractors in the U.S. producing clothes for fast fashion companies have been caught paying employees far below the minimum wage. A recent New York Times investigation revealed that workers creating Fashion Nova clothing in Los Angeles were paid as little as $2.77 an hour.
Yet, whenever a brand is called out for substandard working conditions, they often claim ignorance, noting that they commission third party companies to produce their products. As one Amante designer told the Times.
As trade union Unite points out, clothing producers continually attempt to drive down wages for profit. It is no surprise that fast fashion brands rely on a workforce comprised largely of migrant, temporary workers, who are underpaid and overworked.
Reshoring
While most fashion companies still source the majority of their garments from overseas, some UK fast fashion brands have “reshored” a substantial part of their production, sourcing garments from within the UK.
The sourcing from within the UK means (theoretically) these online retailers can drastically reduce their lead times, allowing them to quickly react to changes in consumer tastes. But how these brands managed to source their stock from the UK, with high labor costs and yet keep prices low still remains unclear.
Fixing Fashion: a House of Commons report
In February 2019, the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee released a damning report on the fashion industry, “Fixing Fashion: Clothing Consumption and Sustainability.”
The report examined the environmental and social costs of the fashion industry, especially fast fashion. It argued for legislation to secure business compliance, as opposed to the system of voluntary cooperation that was in place.
An exposé by the Financial Times in 2018 discovered workers at factories in the UK were paid as little as £3.50 an hour, under half the minimum wage for people 25 and over.
As part of the Fixing Fashion report, two UK fast fashion brands, Boohoo and Missguided were asked to respond to the issues of worker exploitation. Missguided stated that it joined the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI) in 2017. Boohoo, however, remained reluctant to join the ETI.
Fast Forward
Fast Forward is a UK, company–led initiative, developed in 2014, to address concerns of fast fashion exploitative practices in the UK going undetected by existing social compliance audits. It is essentially an in–depth audit assessment which aims to expose labor abuses previously gone unnoticed.
On The Consumer
Finally, fast fashion can impact consumers themselves, encouraging a “disposable” culture and attitude towards personal style. Because of the cause–and–effect the speed at which trends are produced having built–in obsolescence to the products.
Fast fashion makes us believe we need to shop more and more to stay on top of trends, producing a perpetuating sense of need and ultimate dissatisfaction. The trend has also been criticized on intellectual property grounds, with some designers alleging that their designs have been illegally mass–produced by retailers.
How to Spot a Fast Fashion Brand
There are some key factors that are common to fast fashion brands:
- Thousands of styles, which touch on all the latest trends.
- Extremely short turnaround time between when a trend or garment is seen on the catwalk, or in celebrity media, and when it hits the shelves.
- Offshore manufacturing where labor is the cheapest, with the use of workers on low wages without adequate rights or safety, as well as complex supply chains with poor visibility beyond the first tier and of subcontracting.
- Limited quantity of a particular garment. Pressure to buy their clothing due to limited availability.
- Cheap, low quality materials, where clothes degrade after just a few wears and get thrown away.
The Big Players in Fast Fashion
Many of the retailers that we know today as fast fashion players, like Zara or H&M, started as smaller shops in Europe around the 1950s. H&M is the oldest of the fast fashion giants, having opened as Hennes & Mauritz in Sweden in 1947, expanding to London in 1976, and before long reaching the U.S. in 2000.
It was then followed by Zara, which opened its first store in Northern Spain in 1975. It was when Zara landed in New York at the beginning of the 1990s, that people first heard the term “fast fashion.” It was coined by the New York Times to describe Zara’s announced mission to take a mere 15 days for a garment to go from the design stage to sold in their stores.
More traditional department stores such as Macy’s, J. C. Penney, and Kohl’s in the U.S. have all followed Zara’s example, shortening design and production times to better compete in the same market.
Other big names in fast fashion today include UNIQLO of Japan, GAP and Forever 21 of the U.S., Topshop and Boohoo of the UK. Read our post for a more complete list of fast fashion brands to avoid. Thankfully, there are ethical alternatives worth checking out.
The Advantages of Fast Fashion
Fast fashion’s advantages are exclusively a boon for the retailers:
- The constant introduction of new products gets more frequent visits and purchases from customers.
- The speed at which fast fashion moves helps avoid markdowns that cut into profit margins.
- Rather than replenishing its stock, sold out items are replaced with new ones.
- Loyal customers will purchase items they like when they see them no matter the price because they won’t be available for long.
- It makes for huge profits.
- If there are any losses, retailers can quickly recover by launching a new clothing line or product.
The Rise of Ethical Fashion
Although the fashion industry as a whole is guilty of committing many crimes against people and the environment, it is most evident when it comes to fast fashion. Ethical fashion is a movement towards mindful manufacturing, fair labor rights, natural materials, and lasting garments.
What We Can Do To Avoid Fashion Waste
Buying less is one way, so creating a capsule wardrobe is something well worth considering.
Choose well is another, and choosing a sustainable fabric can be daunting. There is a new movement in the fashion industry toward creating products from sustainable materials, such as hemp soil, 100% cotton (organic, unbleached), organic linen (unbleached), denim (dyed with organic indigo and woven without any “stretch”) and bamboo—these are known as vegan fabrics.
Finally, we should make it last by caring for it properly, check out posts in our laundry series, and wear clothes until they are worn out. See our post for a list of some of our favorite ethical fashion brands offering consumers an alternative to fast fashion by embodying a slow, circular, sustainable way of wearing.
“Greening” Fast Fashion
As an increasing number of consumers call out the true cost of the fashion industry, and especially fast fashion, we’ve seen a growing number of retailers introduce sustainable and ethical fashion initiatives such as in–store recycling schemes. These schemes allow customers to drop off unwanted items in “bins” in the brands’ stores. But it’s been highlighted that only 0.1% of all clothing collected by charities and take–back programs is recycled into new textile fiber.
In 2020, H&M launched a program to accept and recycle its branded clothes at return stands. But inventory sales aren’t the answer alone. The solution is a long–term one that requires a cultural shift
The real issue with fast fashion is the speed at which it is produced, putting a huge pressure on people and the environment. Recycling and small eco or vegan clothing ranges (when they are not only for greenwashing) are not enough to counter our “throw–away culture,” the waste, the strain on natural resources, and myriad other issues created by fast fashion. The whole system needs to be changed.
The Decline of Fast Fashion
We are starting to see some changes in the fashion industry. The anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse is now Fashion Revolution Week, where people all over the world are starting to take an interest in who made their clothes. Fashion Revolution declares that they don’t want their clothes to exploit people or destroy the planet.
Millennials appear to be rejecting the fast fashion model. Some have argued that this generation has grown too clever for mindless consumerism, forcing producers to become more ethical, more inclusive, and more liberal.
Fashionopolis—A Treatise
In the book “Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes,” by Dana Thomas, she launches an investigation into the damage wrought by the colossal clothing industry and the grassroots, high–tech, international movement fighting to reform it.
Thomas convincingly connects our fast–fashion wardrobes to global economic and climate patterns and crises, rooting the current state of the fashion biosphere as a whole–production methods, labor practices and environmental impacts–in the history of the garment industry.
The book focuses on today’s global fast–fashion and regular fashion industries and how they came to be so enormous, voracious, and so seemingly uncontainable. It includes a fascinating account of how NAFTA made possible the international success of fast fashion. It presents alternative, even opposite, approaches to making clothing as “slow fashion”: locally grown materials, often domestically manufactured or sourced on a relatively small scale. Lastly, Thomas opens a dialog for trying to reform the system entirely, from the materials we use to how clothes are produced and the ways we shop.
There is also a growing interest towards moving to a more circular model of textile production, reusing materials wherever and whenever possible. A lot of faith is placed here in the idea of a circular–or closed–loop–system, in which products are continually recycled, reborn, reused. Nothing, ideally, should ever go in the bin.
Tips to Avoid Fast Fashion
There is nothing wrong with wanting to buy a new outfit and low prices can seem enticing. But while fast fashion prices might seem low, the environmental and human rights costs are high.
Buy From Ethical Brands
There are many more than you might think. Take a look at our post on Ethical Fashion Brands to Know.
Minimalism is King
Buying less is the first step, so creating a capsule wardrobe is something well worth considering on your journey.
Quality Over Quantity
Here are a few quick tests to check for quality that won’t take long:
- check the stitching, hold it up to a bright light to check it’s not see through
- check the zippers are marked with “YKK”
- check if there are any spare buttons or thread attached
Shop Secondhand
Check out the listings on eBay, Craigslist, Goodwill, the St. Vincent DePaul Society, or any other thrift store.
Share–Swap Clothes with Friends
If you’ve got a friend or family member who wears the same size, consider buying garments you can share. You’ll not only cut your financial costs, but you’ll be reducing your environmental impact as well.
On Special Occasions—Rent
If you need a cocktail dress or ball gown, why not rent one? You’re only wearing it once anyway.
Sources:
Fast Fashion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_fashion
What Is Fast Fashion, Anyway? – The Good Trade
https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/what-is-fast-fashion
By Audrey Stanton
What is fast fashion and why is it a problem? | Ethical Consumer
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/fashion-clothing/what-fast-fashion-why-it-problem
By Alex Crumbie, Thursday 5th of September 2019
Fast Fashion Definition – Investopedia
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fast-fashion.asp
By Adam Hayes, Reviewed By Gordon Scott, Updated Apr 10, 2020
What Is Fast Fashion? – Environmental & Labor Impact Explained
What Is Fast Fashion, and Why Is Everyone Talking About It?
Some fast facts about fast fashion
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/style/fashion-trends/a30361609/what-is-fast-fashion
By Chloe Foussianes, Jan 17, 2020
How Fast Fashion Is Destroying the Planet – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/books/review/how-fast-fashion-is-destroying-the-planet.html
By Tatiana Schlossberg, Sept. 3, 2019
Tatiana Schlossberg, a former climate reporter for The Times, is the author of “Inconspicuous Consumption.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 13, 2019, Page 18 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: You Are What You Wear.
Fashionopolis — The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes
By Dana Thomas
What is Fast Fashion? – Good on You
https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion
By Solene Rauturier, 10 May 2020
Council Post: Three Reasons Why Fast Fashion Is Becoming a Problem (And What to Do About It)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2019/05/13/three-reasons-why-fast-fashion-is-becoming-a-problem-and-what-to-do-about-it/
By Hadari Oshri, May 13, 2019, 08:30 am EDT
Hadari Oshri is the CEO of Xehar Technologies, a fashion technology company building innovative solutions for the fashion industry and inventory management