Fast fashion is the newest thing. Over a decade ago, fashion wasn't like this, fashion wasn't fast like this. Everybody would be wearing the same clothes, as those clothes would be in the shops for weeks, wheras now, they'd be in there for about a week, then new stock comes in and new garments are out there. The design and manufacturing process literally takes a week, from it being a design, to being at the manufacturers in China, to being out in the shop.
What are the positives and negatives of fast fashion?
Positives:
- Allows people to be individual as they so much choice between what clothes they should be.
- More affordable versions of the latest trends that are out there.
- Them being more affordable means that they'll be more accessable
- More choice on where to buy a particular item of clothing from as they'll be in most shops as well as being online.
Negatives:
- Massive increase in textile waste.
- Some of the garments can't be recycled meaning that they'll go to landfill.
- More rivers being dyed blue due to more denim being made.
- Items of clothing are made in low income countries, so they have to travel to get to the shops which means more pollution.
- Items of clothing aren't being worn enough but they get thrown away/recycled.
- If the garment is made from polyester, it will take 200 years for it to breakdown even in landfill.
There are so many drawbacks with fashion being so fast, but the main thing is that landfills are worse than ever before. More landfill sites are being taken up with our clothes that can't even be used or recycled elsewhere. Last year, H&M sold $24.5 billion worth of clothes in that year, but also took back 12,000 tons of clothes. [1] That's a fair bit of clothes! The U.S Environmental Protection Agency says, "In the U.S, American's dispose of about 12.8 million tons textiles annually, which amounts to about £80 for each man, woman, and child."[1] That's so much waste that gets taken to landfill, soon we won't have any place for it to go, especially if that number will start to increase. Not all of the textiles that are used to create these garments aren't recyclable, like polyester. If dupes or other organic materials were used, this wouldn't be a massive bother or a problem in today's world.
Nowadays, everyone buys clothes monthly, and sometimes that item of clothing doesn't even get worn/worn that much before it gets thrown away. According to Juliet B. Shor, "In 1991, the average American bought 34 items of clothing each year." [2] Only 34 items a year? I know for a fact I buy way more than that and i'm a student. She also said, "By 2007, they were buying 67 items every year." That's pretty much double what it was in 1991. It's showing how fast our fashion is nowadays. I'd be scared to look at the current figures as I know that would've increased implying more environmental factors that need to be taken into consideration.
We need to be careful with what clothes we buy and where we buy our clothes from, because fast fashion isn't the main problem, it's us consumers that are the actual problem. We don't all look at a garment and think, 'I can definitely wear this over 30 times', we tend to pick up something and think to ourselves 'do I like this?' or 'will I wear this?' rather than, 'how many times will I wear this? If it's more than 30 I shall buy it'. So our consumer habits need to change in order for fast fashion to become something that is beneficial to us all. We need to think about the environmental impacts and what it will be doing to landfill before actually buying all of these garments. However though, having a wider choice of clothes, is something that is definitely better for us all, it allows us to be more individual, but not thinking about how many times you'll wear the item of clothing is the thing that is the problem. I don't think fashion would be as big if it wasn't fast, and items weren't sold as cheap, I think there would be a massive drop in the market and fashion wouldn't be a large industry like it currently is. Fast fashion is beneficial and I think it can be very good for us all if we think about our planet and our consumer habits before buying clothes. There would be a drop in sales for the businesses, but that would mean that they wouldn't have to stock as much clothes, but would mainly focus on the textiles used and whether people would actually buy it.
For us, Daintree denim, fast fashion is very important to us, as we want to be a brand that sells denim pieces that are on trend, but we want to do it in an environmentally friendly way, by upcycling old jeans. We want to give jeans a new life! With patchwork jeans, we would take in all the unwanted jeans that would be put in landfill, but instead we'd cut them up and use most of the denim there to create patchwork, upycled levi's jeans. In that case, it stops jeans from going to landfill (as they're really hard to depose of due to the rivets and buttons) and have jeans that can be upcycled in order to fit in with the current trends that are out there. Jeans won't be made until someone has purchased the trend we are offering for the jeans, so they'll be made and then be shipped straight after someone has clicked 'buy now' and paid for the item. Therefore, that means we won't be making anything until customers have made a payment, which suggests that we won't have any wasted jeans.
[1] https://daily.jstor.org/fast-fashion-fills-our-landfills/ - by Flickr user Joel Kramer, September 27th 2016.
[2] http://www.julietschor.org/the-book/synopsis/ - by Juliet B. Schor - Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
Background research:
-http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-28/the-price-of-fast-fashion-rivers-turn-blue-tonnes-in-landfill/8389156 - 28th March 2017, by ABC news.
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