Fast Fashion: Definition, Problems, Examples

What Is Fast Fashion?

Fast fashion is the term used to describe clothing designs that move quickly from the catwalk to stores to take advantage of trends. The collections are often based on styles presented at Fashion Week runway shows or worn by celebrities. Fast fashion allows mainstream consumers to purchase the hot new look or the next big thing at an affordable price.

Apparel making became faster, cheaper, and easier, with dressmaking shops emerging everywhere, catering to the middle class.

While in the 60s fashion and 70s fashion, clothing became a form of personal expression, there was still a distinction between high fashion and high street mass retail.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, with the advent of the internet, low-cost fashion peaked.

By copying looks and designs from the top fashion houses, fast fashion brands mass-reproduced trendy clothes fast and cheap.

Online shopping took off, and fast-fashion retailers like H&M, Zara, Asos, and Topshop took over the high street.

Quick Facts

• Fast fashion describes low-priced but stylish clothing that moves quickly from design to retail stores to meet trends, with new collections being introduced continuously.
• Innovations in supply chain management among retailers make fast fashion possible.
• Zara and H&M are two giants in the fast fashion field. Others include UNIQLO, GAP, and Topshop.
• Fast fashion's benefits are affordable prices and instant gratification for consumers, more profits for companies, and the democratization of stylish clothing.
• On the downside, fast fashion is also associated with pollution, waste, the promulgation of a "disposable" mentality, low wages, and unsafe workplaces.

“Fast fashion is inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends.” –?Oxford Languages.

“Fast fashion is the term used to describe clothing designs that move quickly from the catwalk to stores to take advantage of trends.”?–?Investopedia.

“Fast fashion has three main components from the consumer’s perspective: cheap, trendy, and disposable.”?–?Healthy Human.

Fast Fashion Leaders

Major players in the fast-fashion market include Zara, H&M Group, UNIQLO, GAP, Forever 21, Topshop, Esprit, Primark, Fashion Nova, and New Look. Many companies are both retailers and manufacturers, though they often outsource the actual production of clothing.

In addition, traditional mass-market department stores such as Macy's, J. C. Penney, and Kohl's in the U.S. have all taken a page from the fast-fashion book. For their in-house and proprietary brands, they've shortened design and production times to better compete in the market.

The Advantages of Fast Fashion

1. Profitable for manufacturers and retailers
2. Quick to consumers
3. Makes clothes affordable

The Problems with Fast Fashion

Water usage

A byproduct from textile factories in countries that produce fast fashion items en masse is untreated toxic wastewater

• Wastewater from clothes factories gets dumped directly into rivers. In Bangladesh alone, 22,000 tons of toxic waste from tanneries goes straight into the waterways every year.
• This toxic water affects the health of the wildlife and people who live along the banks. It eventually runs into the sea and pollutes that as well.
• It can take up to 200 tons of fresh water to dye and finish just one ton of fabric.

Microfibres

How can anything 'micro' be a big deal? Microfibres and microplastics are a key part of what’s wrong with the fashion industry.

• Microfibres are microplastics that come away from synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon every time you?wash your clothes.
• Each wash?sheds around 700,000 microfibres.
• These are consumed by?aquatic organisms, which are eaten by fish, which are?eaten by us! These cheap clothes are one of the sources putting?plastic into our food chain.

"The fashion industry churns out a gargantuan 80 billion garments a year - that's over 10 for every person on earth"

Greenhouse Gasses

According to The Ethical Consumer and Greenpeace’s Journal, ‘Unearthed’, if the demand for fast fashion continues to grow at its current rate, we could see the total carbon footprint of our clothing reach 26% by 2050!

Here are a few reasons why:

• Producing, manufacturing and transporting the millions of garments produced each year uses a lot of energy.
• The synthetic fibres that most of our clothes are made of are generated from fossil fuels.
• China, Bangladesh and India are the countries that produce the majority of our clothing. They are powered almost entirely by coal.

Deforestation

In order to produce food on planet earth, we need healthy soil and healthy forests. Both absorb CO2 so they are essential for preventing global warming too.

Yet another thing that’s wrong with the fast fashion industry, is that it hurts soil, woodland, and our entire ecosystems

• Goats and sheep, raised for their wool, are overgrazed in pastures. Overgrazing leads to soil erosion, land degradation, loss of valuable plant species, food shortages and famine.
• Chemicals used in the production of fabrics like cotton also degrade the soil.
• Wood-based fibres, like rayon and viscose, cause mass deforestation.

The Bottom Line

"The benefits of fast fashion are clear: more consumer spending, more profits, and the consumer satisfaction?of being able to participate in a trend almost immediately after they see it in magazines or on their favorite celebrities," stated a 2020 article on the GlobalEdge, a Michigan State University business reference site.?"However, fast fashion creates a host of issues that make it?more problematic than it is beneficial… This industry contributes to?climate change,?pesticide pollution, and?enormous amounts of waste."?

What do you think of Fast Fashion? Comment bellow ??

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