Fast Fashion
Over Halloweekend 2022, my social media feeds were brimming with costume photoshoots. While I admired my friends’ creativity, I wondered where the costumes would end up — repurposed for next year or in a landfill?
ISABEL LI // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
The Waste and Resources Action Programme estimates that about one in four people in the U.K. will buy clothes for the holiday season and discard them shortly afterward. On this side of the Atlantic, Americans throw away a whopping 81 pounds of clothing every year.
Against the backdrop of looming ecological degradation, Generation Z seems to be taking up the mantle of environmental activism. Research shows that over 70% of Gen Z prefer to buy clothes from sustainable brands and are willing to spend 10% more on eco-friendly items.
Yet members of Gen Z are also the biggest consumers of fast fashion. Without a real shift in mindset, the efforts of our generation to set the industry on the right track will remain futile.
In recent years, “ultra” fast fashion companies like Shein, Boohoo, and PrettyLittleThing have begun to supersede the original fast fashion powerhouses like H&M and Zara. Operating primarily online, these companies eschew the traditional trend cycle and use algorithms to scour the internet for the latest “it” clothes. Thus, Shein can release more than 7,000 new items every day at jaw-droppingly low prices.
We simply do not need this much stuff. And yet, despite growing awareness of the fashion industry’s degradation of the planet, the industry seems to be on steroids. In the words of former Timberland COO Kenneth P. Pucker, all the sustainability efforts “over the past 25 years have failed to lessen its planetary impact — a loud wake up call for those who hope that voluntary efforts can successfully address climate change. . . .”
COURTESY IMAGE // STEFAN MÜLLER
If it doesn’t seem this way to the average consumer, you can blame greenwashing. When you walk into Mango or Arket these days, odds are that the brand tags will boast that the items are “sustainable,” “responsibly-sourced,” or “recycled.” While these gestures are a step in the right direction, the effort shouldn’t stop there.
Another example is Shein’s latest resale platform, Shein Exchange, which is an app that will allow users to buy and sell used Shein clothing, which, according to the company, is a bid to address textile waste. But when Shein’s clothes typically sell for $5 or $10, it’s hard to imagine how they could survive twenty more washes in another person’s closet. The marketing is merely a ploy to trick consumers — particularly younger, and more easily swayed shoppers — into thinking that they do not need to change their shopping habits.
Moreover, the sheer amount of social issues that activists and concerned consumers advocate online overwhelms our processing capacities. Veronica Barassi, a professor of media and communications at the University of St. Gallen, explains this difficulty in her essay “Social Media, Immediacy, and the Time for Democracy”: the need for conciseness and relatability inevitably forces activists to condense the “space and time to articulate their political reflections.”
Many in Gen Z are familiar with Instagram photo carousel infographics highlighting various injustices around the world and what people can do to help. Plenty of them cover fast fashion’s toxicity and exploitative practices, but they do not create real channels for reform. Sure, they might link a petition for brands to sign an accord guaranteeing workers’ rights, but merely feeding people this information does not spur a collective effort to make the industry prioritize the planet and people over profit.
For a meaningful effort to materialize, Barassi argues that it must come from “action on the ground. . .face-to-face interaction, discussion, deliberation and confrontation.” This means that tweeting angrily at Boohoo for naming Khloe Kardashian their sustainability ambassador is merely a form of complaining. It’s a superficial level of backlash that a Kardashian can deflect by issuing a lazy statement about wanting to promote change. Without a grassroots effort, centering our resistance against fast fashion falls prey to one of social media’s biggest pitfalls: the fleetingness of social media networks. As Barassi says, online networks are “often based on a common reaction / emotion” rather than “a shared understanding of social conflict.”
COURTESY IMAGE // AARON JOEL SANTOS
In other words, people vent and then move on — which is exactly what the industry wants. An inundation of bad news numbs us to the abuses happening every day. Remember Rana Plaza? In 2013, a sweatshop in Bangladesh producing for Walmart, Primark, Benneton, and other global brands collapsed, killing at least 1,132 people and injuring more than 2,500 people. With the breakneck speed at which ultra-fast fashion companies are pushing, another Rana Plaza catastrophe is bound to happen soon.
Meanwhile, the workers who produce our clothes under horrendous conditions stand alone in their protests against injustices committed by brands and manufacturers. The global supply chain remains as murky as ever as companies subcontract to companies that subcontract to still more companies in pursuit of greater profit margins.
So, here is my appeal to you: STOP BUYING!
COURTESY IMAGE // MARKUS SPISKE
Yes, really. But this is not a tirade against anyone purchasing fast fashion — I understand the financial, size-inclusivity, and convenience reasons — this is an appeal to you, a student of the College of William & Mary who will graduate with a degree that lands you a well-paying job, granting you purchasing power that allows you two choices: perpetuate the fashion industry’s sins or push for change?
The next time you want to purchase clothes, ask yourself three questions:
1. Does this fit my style?
2. Will I wear it 30+ times?
3. Do I already own something similar?
You can easily save yourself the hassle of getting rid of unwanted items by not making an unnecessary purchase in the first place.
Alternatively, the booming secondhand market contains troves of beautiful, unique items in excellent condition. eBay, Depop, Poshmark, Vinted, and Mercari are just a few online resale platforms one could shop on. When the pace of production far outstrips our ability to generate renewable solutions, it is difficult to overstate the importance of giving clothes a new life. This step is key to forging a “circular fashion economy” and reducing the demand for virgin materials.
Perhaps the most striking example of the consequences of overconsumption is the Kantamanto Market disaster in Ghana, where five million pounds of discarded clothing (or “dead white man’s clothes”) were exported weekly until a fire gutted the market in December 2020.
Though consumers should be responsible for making more conscious choices, they should not stand alone in the fight. The government could compel retailers to abide by labor conventions and release more environmental disclosures. In New York, legislatures introduced the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act, which would require all companies making more than $100 million to make more environmental disclosures and guarantee they conduct ethical business practices. But currently, Congress has not tried to rein in fast fashion companies’ unchecked production methods, flooding our landfills with more toxic waste.
The industry’s woes are not any one consumer’s fault — but that does not absolve you of responsibility. Instead of turning away from actionable solutions because you feel like small changes are futile, we should all reframe our thinking and clean up the mess that our overconsumption-oriented psyches created. You do not need to be a perfect consumer or even reject fast fashion altogether.
Instead, we all need to be more self-aware of our universal participation in this global system of structural inequalities. Supply chains and labor laws are surely complex, but the path to justice is crystal clear. Remember that it is never just a cotton t-shirt — every garment you own is a reminder that you are inextricably connected to the marginalized and exploited workers who “supply” your closet and keep you warm. Complacency has no place in this collective struggle — what will you choose?
COURTESY IMAGE // VIKRANTH