Fast Fashion — Manipulation @ Its Finest

It's Time To Put A Stop To Fast Fashion And The First Step Starts With The Consumer—US!

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Welcome to FastFashionAlert

In a society where we pride ourselves in the way we look and appear clothing wise, we ignore the rising issue at hand— fast fashion taking over. We are too focused on what to wear and what the trends are. We don't think twice about where we’re buying and how much we’re spending. FastFashionAlert is here to bring awareness to the rise of fast fashion and give tips to help prevent further growth.

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Harsh Working Conditions

When following unethical practices throughout production workers from third world countries are trapped in harsh working conditions. Most of these textile productions take place in countries where rights are either limited or nonexistent, bad for workers but good for production sites since it allows cheaper labor cost. Workers are subdued to go after any salary welcoming in the exploitation of misery and benign taken advantage of. To state the obvious garment works are given unsatisfiable wages, long hours, and unacceptable health conditions. Brooks quotes Akter Rojina, a former worker who worked in Rana Plaza when the 2013 collapse event occurred, “We entered the factory because we need to be paid.” But the government should have overseen the construction of “Rana Plaza”, (42).  Brands are supposed to pay workers the minimum legal salary in some cases don’t, but in most cases, countries devalue their money in order to have big brands come to them for production, demonstrating the higher value of money over their citizens. The basic wages are not matching the number of hours these workers are often forced into. For example, working 14 to 16 hours a day about 7 days a week with the want to do overtime for higher pay.  To complete these long hours employees are working in environments where there is no ventilations, breathing in toxic substances, inhaling fiber dust, or buildings not coded by officials. Failure to meet daily targets leads to verbal and/or physical abuse, and adults are not the only ones. Child labour is rising! Between the ages of 5-17 years old there are 151.6 million children forced into working productions, allowed in 51 countries. Within the textile and apparel industry, young girls for the majority are stuck in assembly lines, taken from poor families in exchange for a basic wage. What is taking place can be classified as modern slavery with no future of changing. 

Source: Andrew Brooks. Clothing Poverty : The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-Hand Clothes. Vol. Second edition, Zed Books, 2019. EBSCOhost, 

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Movies To Watch

The True Cost ~ Produced by Livia Giuggioli & Michael Ross

Made in Bangladesh ~ Directed by  Rubaiyat Hossain

Minimalism: a Documentary About the Important Things ~ Directed by  Matt D'Avella

Alex James: Slowing Down Fast Fashion ~ Directed by Ben Akers

Traceable ~ Directed by Jennifer Sharpe

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Manipulation

Where does the manipulation come in? For some fast fashion companies they view ECO friendly and sustainably as a trend. With that they create headlines and collection that is market as ECO friendly and sustainable but in reality its not. 

This is an example of greenwashing

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Greenwashing is a practice of making incorporated and misleading claims about the sustainability or the “greenness” of the product sold. The article makes the claim that instead  companies are just using the concept of sustainability to increase their sales. “H&M, Zara and other fashion brands are tricking shoppers with vague sustainability claims,” (Segran). The top fast fashion companies are promoting misinformation to their consumers in which they believe they are helping the environment when reality could be far from the truth. H&M came out with a line called Conscious Collection, by ear it sounds like the perfect solution to aid in sustainability while giving a possibility to slow down the effects of fast fashion. The way it works is that customers are able to restock their closets with fashionable items that are made from sustainably sourced materials at low prices. No one would think that it's a marketing ploy. The Norwegian Consumer Authority which is equivalent to the U.S Consumer Protection Bureau is informing others of H&M schemes. It’s reported that the  Swedish multinational clothing company is misleading consumers by failing to provide details about why their garments are less polluting compared to other garments in their store. Thai illustrates as an example that consumers do not really know if they are being sustainable but infer they are due to certain titles and labels companies create. 

Source: Segran, E. (2019, August 8). H&M, Zara, and other fashion brands are tricking shoppers with vague sustainability claims. Fast Company. 

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How come no one really knows what slow fashion is?

     Research proves an alternative reasoning on why slow fashion is not progressing, which is that the price margins are more over their budgets. “The Power of Negative Publicity on the Fast Fashion Industry” (Irene Roozen & Mariet Rats 2020) looks at the perspective of the buying consumer who shops at a fast fashion brand and buyers who don’t. On one hand they discovered that those who shop at fast fashion brands are more willing to pay more when the quantity in product measures to be more, while others avoid these certain brands due to the negative social and environmental impact.

This group of people are punishing unethical behavior of companies while rewarding ethical behaviors. Consumers attached to specific brands/companies’ behavior analyses demonstrated resistance to change when in contact with negative information. Consumers that are not very much into fashion brands tend to hold more weight and responsibility onto negative news than positive. Evidence is based on three social experiments. Study 1 focuses on the different characteristics of slow fashion, Study 2 focuses on the influence of consumer’s social and environmental consciousness, while study 3 focuses on consumer’s involvement in environmental accounts. Conclusion is young adults are more likely to keep dressing on trend and enjoy the fast fashion industry, but see slow fashion as something more suitable for the older generation.

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