Fast Fasion

 Fast Fashion

Heather Sunderlage

Fast fashion has always been something you hear about but don’t fully grasp what it is or even understand how large of an impact it has in today's culture and society. Essentially, fast fast fashion is the designing, manufacturing and marketing of rapid and large amounts of clothing. Due to trend and designer garment replication, demand has skyrocketed in the fashion industry and to keep up, the supply has been met with cheap, low quality materials and mass production rates. Earlier in the year, there was a post on the blog titled “How Microtends in Fashion are Destroying the Environment” by Emily Eklund and she does a great job explaining how the high demand of trendy clothing  and heavy amount of consumption ultimately ends up quickly piling up in landfills and toxic chemical dyes in the ocean. However, I plan to inform people about the most known companies for fast fashion and how to spot them, their low moral and ethical standards, and how to stop contributing to them.

People make clothes whether it's hand sewing or sewing on a machine, and that is labor work that gets paid for their services. But it is different where fashion companies typically outsource that labor to lower class countries with very loose labor laws to undersell their workers and pay them significantly less. Sweatshops and industrial factories work long, restless hours avoiding health and safety concerns. In 2013, the Rana Plaza building collapsed which was home to a couple garment construction sites; workers had noticed serious cracks in the wall but were dismissed and even managers got an evacuation notice that got ignored--resulting in the death of 1,129 workers, and many more injured. Many of the work areas provide poor lighting which is harmful to the laborers’ eyes, as well as the possible toxic chemicals used on fabrics that they are exposed to. The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Institute of Humans Rights blog discusses that, “As of 2016, the minimum wage in $67 dollars each month...More often than not, these workers cannot simply quit and find work with better circumstances.  They must be able to provide for themselves and their families and lack the education and qualifications for more favorable employment.” Fast fashion disregards human rights and abuses them, a sufficient standard of living can only be acquired by an adequate income and they already fall short.

Fast fashion companies can often end up very popular due to up and coming trends because of their quick turnaround times from the internet and the catwalk to stores. One of the biggest and well known companies is Shein; their products are sold through their own website but also other online stores like Romwe that are just second distributors. Yet there are also well-known, in person stores that are also guilty of fast fashion: H&M, Forever 21, Nike, Urban Outfitters, and many others. You can generally tell by the quality of the clothing, if the fabric is really thin, a lot of loose threads on hems, missing buttons, plastic zippers, or even bad, processed, chemical smells. Just a good rule of thumb is that if clothes don’t seem durable or made to last, they are most likely fast fashion. The same goes for suspiciously cheap clothing, you could look at the Shein website and most items will be under $20, like cami dress could be listed from somewhere around $8-15 when at a typical store it would be at least $30 to even $60. Nevertheless, there are also some fast fashion companies that can have good products but utilize sweatshops that undermine and abuse their workers or use toxic chemicals and don’t dispose of them correctly. Those take a little more research to find. It also just helps to look at reviews of other customers on the quality and reliability of the store and its products.

Though the low prices and hot, new styles are tempting, it's often not worth the contribution to the companies profits and poor working conditions of its employees, as well as the quality of goods you are consuming. Though, I must admit something, I have bought from Romwe once before, before I fully knew of fast fashion. I really loved the design on a pair of earrings that were $3 (first red flag for being so cheap), so I bought them along with another pair of earrings and a set of enamel pins. They took a long time to ship, which also happens sometimes with scammy fast fashion websites because packages get lost and they offer no type of assistance or refund (second red flag). And then the products themselves (final flag): the first pair of earrings were really nice yet after wearing for a while, they begin to feel a little irritated, the other pair look good too however felt a bit cheapy, and lastly in the set of pins, the enamel paint was a bit messy and went outside of the lines. Overall, I do like the earrings but the fact that all the goods were a little messed up made it still feel not worth the money. In addition, now knowing that its production endangers the environment and violates people’s human rights, I, to the best of my knowledge, am trying my hardest to not shop fast fashion again. It is easy to think spending maybe only $10 won’t make a difference in the grand scheme of fast fashion, but if everyone adopts that idea, numbers pile up and we make a larger contribution that makes profit for owners and persuade them to continue production. Currently the 90s and 2000s style is popular and is late enough where trendy clothing can be found second hand; preventing clothing from being thrown in wastes or landfills.

With the production and consumption rates of clothing continuing at this speedy rate, people will spend more money, time and time again, on low quality clothing that will constantly have to be replaced over fine clothes that can be worn more than 30 times over. Fast fashion over the last couple of decades has become more of the normal construct for clothing but slowly, it’s possible to get rid of it and return to a more stable supply and demand industry for the good of the laborers behind it and the environment. 

Works Cited

Eric. “A List of Fast Fashion Brands to Avoid Now.” The Sustainable Living Guide, 4 Nov. 2021, https://thesustainablelivingguide.com/fast-fashion-brands/.

Reid, Author Lindsey. “Fast-Fashion: Unethical and Unsustainable.” UAB Institute for Human Rights Blog, 22 Jan. 2020, https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2018/04/26/fast-fashion-unethical-and-unsustainable/.

Stanton, Audrey. “What Does Fast Fashion Mean, Anyway?” The Good Trade, The Good Trade, 14 Oct. 2021, https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/what-is-fast-fashion.