Fast Fashion or Fast Doom; What is Fast Fashion?
The first part of a 5 part series in which we will together study and analyse all about the fast fashion industry, today's blog being: what is fast fashion?
The fast fashion market is popular for its cheap and convenient options, but its impacts on the environment may be enough to move consumers
In the news article above it explains what is fast fashion, but I'm going to summarise it for you real quick and explain what it means for you:
Fast fashion is the process of making a seemingly endless amount of wardrobe pieces and selling it for cheap prices to the public. Sounds amazing and something you've seen before? Well makes sense, almost all of us, especially teenagers love to shop for aesthetics and comfy clothes and definitely at low prices. Trouble is that the amount of clothing produced is on a scale so large that not even shoppers can keep up with it, leaded to wasted materials that can't be used.
There are not only environmental concerns about the fast fashion industry but as Beth Osnes puts it: 'quick designs, quick manufacturing, quick marketing, quick retailing.. doesnt' leave time to think about the ethical setbacks into this.' And she is right as apparently 86% of clothing workers of fast fashion are severely underpaid and can't afford the basic daily wage.
Well if it is such a harmful industry you may ask why you use it. Well according to CNN's article, an entire clothing line is designed and arrives in the store in just 15 days. This makes clothing incredibly accessible to us the public and gives us new trends so quick that consumers of the product don't even have time to think about where to clothes come from. Also the transparency of clothing brands in general are low so it is very difficult to figure out if the clothes have been made using fast fashion or not. However there is still a lot of hope as action is being taken against the industry (more to come on that later..). In the mean time, I urge all of you readers to start looking at the transparency of your clothing brands and check their environmental and social impacts around the globe.
See you in the next blog!