What is fast fashion and what are its harms?

Fast fashion is a relatively new phenomenon in the fashion industry that is causing a lot of damage to the planet, exploiting workers, and harming animals.
 

A sad reality in fashion

In the past, buying clothes was not a common and repetitive process, something that happened a few times a year when the seasons changed or our clothing sizes shrank. But about 20 years ago, that changed. Clothes became cheaper, trends accelerated, and shopping became a hobby. But what is fast fashion? Why is fast fashion so bad? And how exactly does it affect people, the planet, and animals?

 

In 2013, when the Rana Plaza garment complex in Bangladesh collapsed, killing more than 1,000 workers, the world began to take stock. That’s when consumers began to question fast fashion and think about the true cost of those cheap clothes.


 

What is fast fashion?

Fast fashion can be defined as cheap, trendy clothing that samples ideas and patterns from the catwalk or celebrity culture and transforms them into clothing at breakneck speed in high street stores to meet consumer demand. The idea is to get the latest styles on the market as quickly as possible so that shoppers can easily buy them and, unfortunately, throw them away after a few uses. Avoiding repetition is a fashion faux pas, which fast fashion actually contributes to the idea that if you want to stay in style, you have to look new and up-to-date. This is a major part of the toxic system of overproduction and overconsumption that has made fashion one of the world’s biggest polluters. Before we can change that, let’s take a look at the history of fashion.


 

How did fast fashion come about?

To understand how fast fashion came about, we need to go back a little. Before the 1800s, the pace of change in fashion was slow. You had to source your own materials, such as wool or leather, prepare them, weave them, and then manufacture the clothes.


 

The Industrial Revolution introduced new technology, such as the sewing machine. It became easier, faster, and cheaper to produce clothes. Tailoring shops sprang up to cater to the middle classes.


 

Many of these tailoring shops involved teams of garment workers or home workers. The first major garment factory disaster was when a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York in 1911. It killed 146 garment workers, many of them young immigrant women.


 

In the late 1990s and 2000s, low-cost fashion reached its peak. Online shopping took off, and fast-fashion retailers like H&M, Zara, and Topshop took over the high street. These brands took looks and design elements from fashion houses and produced them quickly and cheaply. Given the general public’s easy access to new, trendy clothing and the ease with which it can be purchased, it’s easy to see how this phenomenon has occurred.


 

Characteristics of a fast fashion brand

Thousands of styles and variations, all of which are in line with the latest trends. Very short turnaround times between when a trend or garment is seen on the catwalk or in popular media and when it hits the shelves.

Mass production using low- or no-wage workers and inadequate safety. Cheap, low-quality materials such as polyester, which cause garments to wear out and be thrown away after a few wears.


 

Polluting our planet

The impact of fast fashion on the planet is enormous. The pressure to reduce costs and speed up production times means that environmental aspects are likely to be overlooked. The negative impacts of fast fashion include the use of cheap and toxic textile dyes, which make the fashion industry one of the largest polluters of clean water globally. That’s why Greenpeace has been pushing brands to remove hazardous chemicals from their supply chains through fashion campaigns for years.


 

Polyester is one of the most popular fabrics in fast fashion. It’s derived from fossil fuels, contributes to global warming, and can release microfibres that, when washed, add to the rising levels of plastic in the oceans. But even natural fabrics can be problematic on the scale of fast fashion. Regular cotton requires vast amounts of water in developing countries. This leads to drought risks, puts severe stress on watersheds, and creates competition for resources between companies and local communities.


 

The speed of clothing production also means that more clothes are thrown away by consumers, creating a lot of textile waste. According to some estimates, in Australia alone, more than 500 million kilos of unwanted clothes end up in landfill every year.


 

Exploitation of workers

In addition to the environmental cost, fast fashion also has a human cost.

Fast fashion affects garment workers who work in dangerous environments, for low wages and without full pay.

Harm to animals

Animals are also affected by fast fashion. In nature, toxic dyes and microfibers released into waterways are absorbed by land and sea animals alike through the food chain, with devastating effects, and when animal products such as leather, fur and even wool are used directly in fashion, animal lives are put at risk. For example, numerous scandals have shown that real fur, including cat and dog fur, is often passed off as faux fur to unsuspecting buyers.


 

The truth is that so much real fur is produced on fur farms in appalling conditions that it is cheaper to produce and buy than faux fur.


 

Consumer coercion

Ultimately, fast fashion can influence consumers themselves, encouraging a culture of “throwaway” as products become obsolete and new trends emerge quickly. Fast fashion makes us believe that to stay on top of trends, we need to buy more and more, which creates a sense of neediness and eventual dissatisfaction. The trend has also been criticized on intellectual property grounds, with some designers claiming that retailers have illegally mass-produced designs.


 

What can we do?

Buying less is the first step, try loving the clothes you already own again and styling them in different ways or even “repurposing” them. Why not turn those old jeans into trendy, hemless shorts, or spruce up that old baggy sweater by turning it into a cropped blouse!


 

The second step in making the right choice is to choose a high-quality garment made from eco-friendly fabric.


 

Finally, we should take care of them by following the garment care instructions and wear them until they are worn out, repair them as much as possible, then responsibly recycle them at the end of their life.

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