Fast fashion as a term and a phenomenon came into existence around two decades ago and refers to garments that are inexpensive, fashionable and sold for mass consumption. The term ‘fast fashion’ was inspired by ‘fast food’ and the commonalities extend to their status as exponentially growing industries.
Fast fashion is, quite literally, fast, with newer designs and products being moved into stores every other week, frequently imitating the works of top fashion designers as seen on runways and celebrities. It has altered consumers’ perception of fashion and clothing, resulting in shorter life cycles for the clothing they purchase. On average, consumers bought 60 per cent more clothes in 2014 than in 2000, but on the contrary, they retained these clothes for a duration reduced by fifty per cent (McFall-Johnsen, 2020).
The Origin of Fast Fashion
Earlier, shopping for clothes used to be an occasional event and people treated each piece of clothing in their wardrobe as an investment, which meant that clothes were bought sparsely and with a great deal of focus on their quality and durability. This, however, changed around two decades ago when a Spanish apparel house named Zara started a revolution in the fashion industry. While most retailers stuck to a nine-month cycle of getting an item from the design book to the consumer’s hand, Zara figured out methods to slash that period into just 15 days (Idacavage, 2016), making it a game-changing feat. The company pushed out clothes so quickly that fans were able to wear what their favourite celebrity had worn only two weeks ago. And boom, fast fashion came into existence.
Fast fashion allowed consumers to get more product differentiation at lower prices, as well as afford designs from prestigious brands, all while promoting a culture of impulsive shopping with a hyper-awareness of ‘what’s hot’ and zero awareness of ‘what it actually cost’, the cost being the impact of these incessant purchases on the industry, the workforce producing it, the resources expended, and even the consumer’s own psyche. Although the fast pace accounted for a huge chunk of this revolution, the rest was based on low cost and expendability.
When prices were reduced to the point where even the growing middle class had the latest fashion at their fingertips, fast fashion retailers were able to tap into a massive market. Furthermore, since it was easy and cheap to just buy another pair of newer, trendier jeans than mending or laundering the previous ones, it thus gave rise to an increasingly shorter lifespan of clothes. This limited shelf life was all part of the allure; genius marketing turned something as simple as wearing your own clothes more than a handful of times, which was once considered to be normal, into almost a taboo now. So, who wouldn’t want to keep changing out their closets and not have to ‘re-wear’ outfits?
Other clothing manufacturers quickly emulated the ‘fast fashion’ model and gained success, with H&M, Benetton, and Shein all reaping profits and gaining larger market shares, effectively turning what used to be a model of two to four seasons of new collection launches a year into a 52 ‘micro seasons’ model (Barrera, 2021) that pushed out newer collections before the previous ones had even reached the racks.
Hidden Costs of Fast Fashion
Fast-paced production and low prices often translate into many fast fashion manufacturers putting profits before human welfare. The brands push for lower production costs to increase their profit margin while simultaneously requiring things to be done at a lightning-fast pace in order to keep up with the consumer’s demand.
This, in turn, means that the manufacturers keep the wages of their workforce low without undertaking the requisite spending to ensure safe working conditions, all while extracting unreasonably long hours of labour from them. The manufacturing for these brands is done in developing countries while the products are majorly consumed by developed ones. So ironically, the functioning of these factories, which would be illegal and “unethical” in the places where these clothes are sold, is, on most occasions, perfectly legal in the lagging economies where they are produced. In these poorer countries, labour is cheap and abundant and the governments are often observed to be willing to compromise on strict labour laws in favour of increased foreign investment. The promise of any employment, even under dangerous conditions, is sought out by numerous people who are largely devoid of other opportunities and have families to support.
The environmental cost of fast fashion and its negative impacts on the global equality of resources can simply not be overlooked. A staggering amount of resources which would have otherwise been utilised for a better purpose are used up in making a single item. The opportunity cost of these resources being allocated towards fast fashion weighs heavily, especially at a time when the majority of the world population lacks access to even basic resources. For instance, one in three people worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water (UNICEF, 2019) while two thousand gallons of water are being used up to produce a single pair of jeans (Maiti & Thomas, 2022).
Furthermore, all the discarded clothing, thanks to the expendable and fast-changing nature of this industry, is exacerbating the preexisting man-made waste predicament. Many of the discarded clothes are composed of non-biodegradable fabrics in part at the very least, which can sit for up to two centuries in landfills (Brown, 2021), contributing heavily to land pollution.
The Way Forward
Lately, a growing number of consumers are becoming aware of the realities of fast fashion. Consequently, they are raising questions about the sustainability of this model as well as concerns about its environmental and social impact.
While some fast fashion retailers like H&M are responding to this by ‘green-washing’ their products and putting up manipulated half-truths on their tags declaring their clothes to be sustainable (Stern, 2022), the actual solution will come when a new textile economy emerges which follows the principles of a circular economy. The linear cycle of make-sell-discard has to transition into a more regenerative and circular one where clothing and materials are repurposed and reused.
Numerous platforms like Le Tote and Style Lend, that let users rent clothes instead of buying them have already emerged, and the idea of upcycling clothes is increasingly being accepted as well as celebrated. Nonetheless, a radical transformation of the entire fashion industry and how we as consumers view clothes must occur sooner rather than later.
Neelanjana Pant is a second-year student of Economics at Indraprastha College for Women.
References
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- Barrera, T. (2021). Fashion Seasons Explained: How It Started & How It’s Going In 2022 And Beyond. The Tech Fashionista. Retrieved November 11, 2022, from https://thetechfashionista.com/fashion-seasons-explained/
- Brown, R. (2021). The Environmental Crisis Caused by Textile Waste. Road Runner. Retrieved November 13, 2022, from https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.roadrunnerwm.com/blog/textile-waste-environmental-crisis%3fhs_amp=true
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