Month: February 2022

What is fast fashion? Fast fashion is a term referring to any article of clothing that is made in a large batch in a short time. The idea behind fast fashion is to take styles from the runway or from major trends and put them into stores quickly and cheaply. Then, because of the low production costs, the clothes are able to be sold at a low price point in stores. Fast fashion exists as a cyclical model, where the clothes are made fast, and also made to fall apart fast. This allows the wearer then to feel the need to replace the clothes at a faster rate, and thus perpetuate the cycle. This also reinforces the trend cycle of clothes, which has also increased exponentially in the past century. When the clothes fall apart, it causes consumers to feel the need to replace their clothes with newer and trendier items. Who are the perpetrators of fast fashion? Any store who subscribes to this model, and sells clothes in large numbers. There are the obvious offenders, mall brand stores like Abercrombie, Hot Topic, American Eagle, etc. Then there are those who take fast fashion to the next level, releasing new styles weekly, or even more extremely, daily. Stores like Shein, Forever 21, Boohoo, Fashion Nova, etc have completely set the precedent for clothing production. There are stores and businesses that are slow-batch fashion, these are stores that often make their items made-to-order to avoid waste, or are made with much more sustainable materials. Many of these stores are online, in order to better control their production numbers. Examples of these stores are Girlfriend Collective, Reformation and CHNGE. Many fast fashion stores have received backlash for their practices, and are now marketing ethical collections and trying to appear more sustainable. Often this is an example of greenwashing, and the clothes are still produced under unethical conditions. However, as previously mentioned, these fast fashion stores do have the major advantage of selling their clothing at lower price points, which is objectively appealing. For some, this is their only option, so completely switching clothing stores isn’t possible. However, it is something worth looking into.

One thing that defines a generation is the major fashion trends it follows. You can always tell what time period a photograph was taken in because of the clothes people are wearing. It’s an important part of culture and individual identity. However, while fashion itself is still an important facet of our lives, there are aspects of it that have changed going into the 21st century. Namely, how much of it there is. Over the last decade, the trend cycle has sped up exponentially, to the point where trends go out of style in a matter of months. This is a huge contrast compared to the 20th century, where we can find trends that lasted an entire decade. This is due to the concept of fast fashion. This is a scheme to make clothes as quickly and cheaply as possible, with styles going from the catwalk to store shelves in a matter of weeks. Starting in the late 20th century, when new poly-combination fabrics became introduced to mainstream fashion, it became possible to create more clothes for less money. This coupled with the hyper-consumerist lifestyle that began in the 90s, people began buying more. Obviously, this has a detrimental impact on the environment. The biggest challenges to sustainability are overconsumption and overproduction. With stores trying to keep up with new trends, they end up using much higher number of materials, and end up creating a lot more waste in the process. Waste that ends up in a landfill, and takes hundreds of years to decompose. Fashion has such an important role in our culture, but it might be killing our world in the process. While there are ways to more sustainably partake in fashion, at its current rate, we’ll be up to our necks in old turtlenecks in no time.