Why does Everyone Pay for Fast Fashion?

Written by Olivia Knapp

Would you rather have a trendy fur bucket hat or a basic winter beanie? If you asked people 15 years ago, most would prefer the latter. Clothing used to be viewed as an investment, with an optimal return of good quality and longevity. About 20% of most consumers’ income was once  spent on clothing, yet they owned fewer pieces than we see today (Josephson, 2022). Consumers also had fewer choices, considering how brands would take nearly nine months to release new lines (Gransuall, 2021). In the past decade, consumer ideas concerning fashion have drastically shifted to resemble the opposite of this. 

One of the first instances of the term coined “fast fashion” was at a Madonna concert in 2005. Fans attended the concert wearing knock-off versions of the clothes she was wearing just a few weeks prior (Gransuall, 2021). The high demand for celebrities’, correlating to large salaries, grants them access to more expensive goods than the rest of the domestic population; however, these consumers newly had access to replicated styles of these costly items. Not only did consumers have access to these goods, but they also had access to them quickly. A three week turnaround is a rapid decrease from the typical nine months it used to take to release a new fashion line. Furthermore, this instance highlights two main components of the new economic model of fast fashion: rapid production and cheap prices (Reichart, 2019).  Consumers now care less about the quality of clothing because they intend on throwing it away or getting rid of it once a trend passes. In fact, over 50% of clothing produced by fast fashion brands is thrown away after one year of purchase (Vilaça, 2022). 

Popular fast fashion brands today include Zara, Forever 21, Shein, H&M, and Boohoo (Vilaça, 2022). These brands have seen success due to low production costs and speed. On average, these companies release 14 collections annually. When you break this down, that’s a new collection every 26 days! Zara has emerged as a leader amongst these brands, with their production cycle being as low as 15 days (Gransuall, 2021). 

Shein surpassed Amazon as the most downloaded shopping app in 2021 (Gransuall, 2021). This micro trend culture has gradually accelerated and is projected to continue. With clothing production doubling in the last 15 years, we can’t expect this trend to go on without any negative effect on our society (Reichart, 2019). On the surface, cheaper clothing may seem like a good thing, but these lower costs do not come without other hidden prices. 

We have to ask ourselves, how is it that fashion labels can decrease production costs? The answer: poor labor conditions and imports. 

Companies have started to use overseas production assets to produce basic items because there is little time pressure; people will always want basic designs. Conversely, companies use on-shore assets to produce more complicated items that follow the current trends, since time is an important factor. Brands want to release collections while their items are on trend. Consumers import goods when the world price minus trade costs is less than the domestic price. Livia Firth, an activist for sustainability, referenced fast fashion companies as “drug pushers,” profiting off of the immoral production of cheap clothing through cheap labor (Josephson, 2022). They promise a quick fix to bring foreign nations out of poverty, yet, once production starts, they drive prices down through worker exploitation. Much of overseas production is polluted by low wages, child labor, and unsafe working conditions (“5 ways the circular economy will transform your fashion habits,” 2022). Fast fashion is a drug in our society; consumers are addicted and buy cheaply made goods without considering how they are produced.

The U.S. has an abundance of highly-skilled workers, capable of creating specialized medical and scientific equipment. Yet, because workers are adept, the U.S. lacks factory workers in mass manufacturing within our labor force. As a result of these demographics, domestic fashion consumption is composed of 97% imported clothes and  98% imported shoes (Josephson, 2022). 

Another question we need to consider is how these changes in production affect other aspects of society.

With the production increases, a main negative externality is environmental degradation. Putting things in perspective, the average person drinks about 4,000 to 10,000 liters of water over the span of five years. This amount of water is what it takes to produce just one pair of jeans, which doesn’t even account for the water needed to repeatedly wash these jeans (“5 ways the circular economy will transform your fashion habits,” 2022). Making just one cotton t-shirt uses about 1,750 liters of water (Gerretsen, 2022). Aside from the direct production of clothing, overseas shipping releases tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Overall, fast fashion makes up 8% of the global carbon footprint. If the fashion industry does not change in the next thirty years, it is projected that there will be a two-degree celsius temperature increase. The fast fashion industry is comparable to the oil industry as a polluter (Josephson, 2022).

Companies are not blind to the negative effects their business models have on society; however, it is hard to balance a commitment to sustainability while meeting consumers’ demand. Brands have started adding “conscious” labels to clothing to signify items that are produced with at least 50% sustainable materials, such as organic cotton or recycled polyester (Gerretsen, 2022). Although it seems these labels are a step in the right direction, their higher price stands out amongst a sea of cheaper prices of clothes that aren’t produced sustainably. 

Fast fashion is not all bad. Despite the negative externalities associated with fast fashion, the current fashion industry is worth trillions of dollars. It is a source of many jobs, and it creates a great deal of revenue (Swatski, 2021). However, something still needs to be done. 

The goal for the future should be to keep the same appeal and excitement about fashion while making it more sustainable. Second-hand clothing companies have made this possible. Consumers are attracted by the lower prices of higher quality goods as well as the potential to make more money on the future resale of an item. The ethics of buying second-hand also attracts consumers. 

Technology made the second-hand clothing industry grow exponentially, through brands like Depop, Poshmark, Rent the Runway, and TheRealReal. We are seeing a similar progression with these fashion brands as we saw with the technological revolution of Netflix and other streaming services in the media industry and Lyft and Uber in the transportation industry. The second-hand clothing industry experienced a period of growth during the covid-19 quarantine since people had spare time to clean out their closets. This growth continued in 2021, considering $36 billion was spent on second-hand clothing, while only $30 million was spent on fast fashion (“5 ways the circular economy will transform your fashion habits,” 2022). This gap should grow larger as the second-hand clothing market is projected to triple in the next decade (Mangot, 2021).

If we can make this shift to a more circular economy in the fashion industry, fewer people will have to pay for the effects of fast fashion. 

Citations

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Ellen Macarthur Foundation. (n.d.). Fashion and the circular economy. Fashion and the Circular Economy. Retrieved November 9, 2022, from https://archive.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/explore/fashion-and-the-circular-economy

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Mangot, M. (2021, February 13). Depop and the Economics of Sustainable Fashion | by Micah Mangot. Junior Economist. Retrieved November 9, 2022, from https://junioreconomist.org/depop-and-the-economics-of-sustainable-fashion-219c33d652a4

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Reichart, E., Drew, D., & Merrity, P. (2019, January 10). By the Numbers: The Economic, Social and Environmental Impacts of “Fast Fashion”. World Resources Institute. Retrieved November 9, 2022, from https://www.wri.org/insights/numbers-economic-social-and-environmental-impacts-fast-fashion

Swatski, A. (2021, June 10). The Economic Impact of the Fashion Industry. Fashinnovation. Retrieved November 9, 2022, from https://fashinnovation.nyc/the-economic-impact-of-the-fashion-industry/

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