Slowing Down Fast Fashion
As I began to write this article, a memory from a year or two ago resurfaced to mind, when I stepped into a H&M store during a window shopping spree. Nothing amidst the hangers piqued my interest, but the pamphlet displayed on the cashier counter did. In bold words across the paper read TOGETHER WE CAN CLOSE THE LOOP. The campaign encourages customers to bring their old garments to any of the store’s branches for them to be converted into new clothing. Back then, I didn’t think much of it. Now, though, I’m skeptical.
In this day and age when the fight against climate change has been made ubiquitous, it’s common to see brands advocating for greater sustainability. Interestingly, in recent years we have seen fashion brands in on the movement too, from Inditex (ZARA’s holding company), who promised to use only sustainable material to manufacture all of its clothing by 2025, to Mango, who joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition in 2020.
To address how and why, we must first recognise what fast fashion means. Fast fashion refers to the mass production of clothing, made to attract customers with their too-good-to-be-true low prices and up-to-date styles. To illustrate the extent of the industry’s growth, clothing production has actually doubled in the last 15 years. But the thing is, how did fast fashion get to where it is today? Is there anything we can do to slow down the pace of fashion today? And how does the pandemic have a part to play in this slowdown?
Fast Fashion & Its History
The fashion industry underwent its first boom with the invention of the sewing machine in the 1800s. The Industrial Revolution marked the innovation of textile machines that allowed garments to be manufactured in bulk. Still, it wasn’t until the 1960s that fast fashion began to take shape, as the younger generation began to opt for cheaper outfits that fit the latest trends showcased on runways. To keep up with the demand, retail stores adopted a new approach to the manufacturing of their clothes: instead of forecasting future trends, they started producing clothes using real-time data.
The term fast fashion made its debut appearance in the New York Times to illustrate ZARA’s newest method of sending clothes to their store racks within only half a month from the time of its design. It wasn’t just the speed that defined fast fashion, though. The fashion calendar used to consist of the usual seasonal range, with new clothing lines in the form of Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter collections. As trends became ever-changing in the 1990s, more mid-seasons were added to the calendar to meet the needs of customer demand. Today, there are 52 micro-seasons pumped out by the industry every year. Thus, if you ever feel like your outfit is ‘out of style’, that’s because it probably is. More collections means more consumer spending, and thus more profits raked in for the fashion industry.
Yet, the fashion industry isn’t all glitz and glamour. Here, we’re going to explore more about the effects of fast fashion on the environment, on society, and more.
Fast Fashion & The Environment
It comes as no surprise that the fashion world consumes great volumes of natural resources in order to convert cotton or wool into clothing garments. However, the grand scale of the industry has not only severely depleted resource supplies, but it has also negatively impacted our environment in many different aspects.
For one, let’s talk about how much water is utilised in the production process. Annually, as much as 93 billion cubic metres of water is used to make textiles and cloth. Worse still, some 17 to 20% of industrial water pollution stems from the release of textile dyes and toxic chemicals into water bodies. In particular, microfibres have been found to be washed ashore in abundance worldwide. These alarming consequences impact the health of both aquatic wildlife, as well as those consuming the water — and that includes us humans, too.
Textile waste is yet another culprit contributing to the current environmental decline. On average, a piece of clothing is worn about 7 to 10 times before it’s thrown out. Out of all the clothes produced yearly, around 84% of it ends up in landfills or incineration sites to be burnt, and in the process releases harmful fumes into the atmosphere. One reason why there’s so much waste could stem from the fact that most clothes produced are of low quality, short-lasting material, quickly discarded once they have ‘gone out of fashion’.
The industry is also responsible for its massive carbon footprint. In 2018, garment production accounted for the emission of 2.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. It’s well understood that these gases heavily impact the trajectory of global warming, trapping heat and raising temperatures worldwide. And yet, these statistics are merely a fraction of the effects of the industry on the environment.
Fast Fashion & COVID-19: A Slowdown?
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost every sector imaginable, and there’s no exception for the fashion industry. Lockdowns and preventative measures taken to curb the spread of the virus have led to a shrink in the fashion world. Demand has fallen, retail stores have closed up, and billions of dollars’ worth of orders have been cancelled. The industry’s aims have shifted dramatically, from profits to survival, all to tackle the plummet in sales.
Facing this obstacle has prompted fashion brands to look towards long-term sustainability. Most notably, the push for a circular textile economy has intensified in recent years. But what exactly is it? In simple terms, under a circular economy model, garments are to be produced, used, and then reused with minimal damage to the environment. This would be achieved by sourcing durable, biodegradable fabrics for apparel, wearing the products for as long as possible, and sending them for recycling or composting by the end of its life cycle. You can find a full report behind this circular economy here.
“The future of fashion is circular. It has to be.” — Stella McCartney
But how certain are we that fashion brands will continually commit to this act of sustainability in the post-pandemic setting? After all, it’s a collective effort — all fashion companies need to take responsibility to make changes to each aspect of the production process, from outsourcing sustainable materials to designing long-lasting clothes. This leads me back to the first point I raised in the beginning: I’m skeptical, because the work of one retail store cannot possibly reverse the effects of the entire industry on the environment — everyone needs to be involved.
And let’s not forget the digitalisation of our world today. For example, Shein, one of many online retail stores, has become a familiar name among younger customers. With the rise of the pandemic comes the rise of online shopping, too. Whilst other fashion brands were suffering, Shein earned around $10 billion from sales in 2020. Their key to success stems from how the Chinese brand has been able to utilise customer demand effectively and churn out about 1,000 new styles each day. These astonishing numbers leave us wondering just how much resources are used up to churn out new clothes every day, and the environmental impact their actions cause.
Fast Fashion & The Society
When we talk about slowing down fast fashion, one factor we have to look upon is how the garment industry exploits the less fortunate. To reduce costs, fashion labels often outsource cheap labour in third world nations, with extremely low wages being paid to overworked garment workers. In 2016, the average worker in Bangladesh toiling in a sweatshop or factory earned around $2 per day. And we can’t possibly forget one of the most infamous cases concerning the safety of garment workers: the collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh 8 years ago, which took the lives of 1,134 workers.
The thing is, these countries rely heavily on the fashion industry for employment, with this sector accounting for 80% of Bangladesh’s export earnings. When the pandemic hit shores, around $2.81 billions worth of orders were cancelled, leaving millions laid off from work. Thus, aside from the changes needed to be done to the clothing production, we also need to take into account the factory workers, and the role of major companies in ensuring better working conditions and incomes.
Additionally, boycotting fast fashion isn’t as easy a solution for all consumers as you might think. Sustainable brands are the ideal, but high costs of ethical production bleed into the price tags of ‘slow fashion’ apparel. For lower-income customers, their pay checks limit them from switching over from fast fashion. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t conscious of the negative impacts of fast fashion — slow fashion just isn’t accessible to them. At the end of the day, we can certainly play our part as customers, but if anything, we should not be fuelling the divide in societal classes, but instead focus on fighting for a change for the better in the fashion world.
Fast Fashion & The Future
As we move forward into the future, and as climate change has taken its turn for the worse, it’s become a dire situation for us to constrain this cycle of fast fashion. Companies in the fashion industry need to take action — and quickly — if we wish to flatten the curve of climate change, and to aim for a progression in the working force as well.
In order to drive the movement forward, we as consumers too can do our part through cost-effective practices, from purchasing second hand clothes or swapping clothes with others, to buying from more ethical and transparent companies. Additionally, when buying new clothes, it’s good to check if they’re fairtrade certified apparel, if they’re made from organic cotton and the like. If restructuring your wardrobe is not an option for you, you can always contribute with your worn-out clothes by sending them out for recycling. This allows the textiles to be remade into new garments, instead of being discarded away and accumulated in a landfill site.
Even just educating ourselves is a move forward in slowing down fast fashion. As this article only covers this topic on a surface level, I highly encourage you to read extensively about the drastic effects of our fashion industry on the environment, and what we can do to help tackle the issues of climate change. Our efforts, combined with the measures taken by fashion brands, will hopefully drive the fashion industry towards a better and more sustainable future for all of us.
Collaboration is vital if we are to develop a truly sustainable industry, and to do so as quickly and effectively as possible. — François-Henri Pinault
[Written by: Siow Chien Wen]
