6 Reasons To Give Up Fast Fashion in 2020 (And How to Do It!)
January is all about abstaining from bad habits and forming new habits that will improve our lives. While it’s great to resolve to eat fewer sweets, drink less alcohol, etc. there’s another habit you might consider giving up that you didn’t even know you had. Fast Fashion.
What Is Fast Fashion?
Fast fashion is the result of the fashion industry’s effort to ensure that the latest runway trends matriculate into affordable, accessible stores. Think Miranda Priestly’s iconic speech to Andie Sachs about her cerulean sweater from The Devil Wears Prada. While it might sound great to make the trendiest clothes available in affordable versions, they are created using a linear production system that prioritizes high-volume and frequent production. While they might not hit your wallet hard, these items come at a great cost. Here’s why you should avoid fast fashion:
Fast Fashion Production is Modern Day Slavery - Fast fashion is one of five key industries implicated in modern slavery practices, resulting in workers having to survive inhumane situations for the benefit of our wardrobes. This includes things like workers being forced to work unpaid overtime, forcing children to pick cotton instead of attending school, threatening female workers with violence for not completing orders on time, or taking workers’ passports away until they can work off the cost to transport and feed them. Additionally, in order to make the clothes affordable, they must be mass-produced for mass consumption using inexpensive production methods and materials. This means cutting major corners and oftentimes companies use textiles made with dyes and harmful chemicals that are exposed to factory workers.
Fast Fashion Disenfranchises Women - If you want to support and empower women around the world - something that can seriously help our chances in the fight against climate change - then you can’t support fast fashion. Garment workers for fast fashion brands, the same facing conditions of modern day slavery, are mostly women working to support their families. If we want to do our part to help these women, we need to support brands that provide healthy working conditions and pay garment workers a livable wage.
Fast Fashion Creates a TON of Waste - The average American throws away about 80 pounds of clothes per year, and according to the Pulse of the Fashion Industry report about two million TONS of excess product and fabric scraps are thrown away annually. Most of these scraps are made with synthetic fibers (i.e. polyester), meaning they won’t biodegrade. According to The Hidden Water Calculator, it takes more than 3,000 gallons of water to make a pair of leather shoes, 2,000+ for a pair of jeans and 600+ for a cotton t-shirt. Need I say more?! While plenty of brands are combating this by looking for ways to use less water in production, fast fashion brands are not. And, they churn out more collections each year to keep up with changing trends, so their water usage and waste are increased even more! Not to mention the water waste washed into rivers and oceans is laden with the harmful chemicals mentioned above along with bits of plastic and materials harmful to marine life.
Fast Fashion Creates Tons of Greenhouse Gases - According to a study by Quantis, the fashion industry is responsible for around 8 percent of global carbon emissions, and while it is incumbent upon every brand to do their part to reduce and reverse this, fast fashion brands are an easy culprit to identify and avoid perpetuating further damage.
You DO Deserve Nice Things - If you’re thinking “I can’t afford anything else!” I hear you. Why spend $100 on a sweater or pair of boots when you could get the same for a quarter of the price? While it may seem like a no brainer, often what ends up happening is the cheaper sweater or boots quickly rips, frays or breaks, and you need to get a replacement. Otherwise the cheaper option is too trendy and quickly goes out of style, as fast fashion profits from making super trendy, ripped-from-the-runway clothes vs quality, classic closet staples.
Fast Fashion is Bad for Your Health - Did you know clothes are sprayed with formaldehyde to prevent mildewing and wrinkling during shipping? In addition, toxic chemicals used to produce the clothes and the synthetic fabrics used to make them can create lead to severe adverse skin reactions at best, and serious illness from prolonged exposure at worst.
How Can You Avoid It?
So, now that I’ve convinced you to avoid fast fashion (I have, haven’t I?), I wanted to share a few easy tips for shopping more sustainably, as well as a few of my favorite sustainable brands.
Thrift and Vintage Shop - One of the most sustainable ways to buy new clothes is to, well, not buy new clothes. Purchasing previously owned items perpetuates the circular cycle the fashion industry desperately needs to adopt. There are plenty of ways to get trendy items, such as browsing sites like Poshmark and ThredUp. These are also great places to move clothing items you no longer want out of your closet, rather than throwing them away.
Rent, Don’t Buy! - Renting clothes is a great way to perpetuate the circular fashion life cycle. If you have a short trend attention span, weddings or events coming up, or aren’t sure how certain trends are going to work on you, then renting is a great sustainable solution! Sites like Rent the Runway or Nuuly are great places to rent everyday or special occasion items.
Look for Items Made with Sustainable or Recycled Materials - When shopping for new items, check labels to see if they are made with sustainable materials. Look for labels like “Made with 100% Recycled Polyester.” You can also keep an eye out for items made with sustainable fabrics, like Tencel.
Shop These Brands: These brands are ones I know have taken great strides to incorporate more sustainable and ethical practices into their manufacturing processes -- and they’re cute AF!
Avoid These Brands: This is simply a sampling of brands notorious for fast fashion practices. I encourage you to continue to research ways these brands are potentially addressing these concerns, as as well as the sustainability and ethical practices of every brand you purchase.
Forever21
H&M
Zara
Topshop
Victoria’s Secret
Urban Outfitters
GAP
Fashion Nova
Unfortunately, this barely even scratches the surface. Dana Thomas’ book Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes is a great resource if you’re interested in doing a deep dive on this topic.