Forget Fast Fashion with FCCLA

What is Fast Fashion?

Fast Fashion is defined by Merriam Webster as an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers.

Prior to the industrial revolution, fashion ran on four seasons a year: fall, winter, spring and summer. Designers would work to come up with the trends they predicted consumers would be looking for in each season. With fashion functioning this way there really wasn’t much agency left for the wearers. Post-Industrial Revolution, when garments could be produced much more efficiently and the textile industry was booming, is when fast fashion really became a problem. There was finally a way to mass produce articles of clothing at break-neck speeds, and as new cheaper materials were discovered, garments were being produced not only rapidly, but at a lower cost. The goal of fast fashion was simply to bring trends to the general public as cheaply and quickly as possible, but in doing so, the harmful effects of the whole process were greatly overlooked.

Fast fashion has many negative effects on not only the environment, but people's lives as well. Each year, approximately 11 million tons of clothing is thrown away in the US alone. This happens because trends change so quickly that consumers are ready to move on to the next big thing after barely wearing the clothing they had bought from the previous trend. These cheaply made, cast-out garments, filled with lead, pesticides and so many other potentially harmful chemicals, almost never break down. They sit in landfills and release these toxic chemicals into the air. However, even with zero negative environmental impacts, fast fashion would still prove harmful to society overall. Fast fashion not only encourages wastefulness and keeps consumers constantly spending money on things they don't even need in order to fit in with the latest societal standards of what people should look like, but is also proves harmful to many of those who work to produce the actual garments.

Over 50% of workers within the fashion industry are not paid the minimum wage in countries like India and the Philippines, and in Pakistan’s garment sector, 87% of women are paid less than the minimum wage. A lot of the time the people working to produce fast fashion garments are under-payed, work under terrible conditions and are often treated very poorly by their superiors. If you take a look at the tags on most of the clothing items that you own, there’s a very good chance you’ll find that those items were made in one of the previously mentioned countries. Once I had discovered these facts I was almost brought to tears every time I looked at the tops I had bought brand-new from stores like Forever 21 because I knew that with every purchase of a fast fashion garment, I was supporting the fast fashion industry, the environmental impact that it has, and the treatment of it’s workers. For years I have been inadvertently giving my money to something horrible, and I don’t know about you, but I just can’t go on continuing to support something of this nature.

Now That You Know About Fast Fashion, Where Are You Going to Shop?

A big way to help with the movement to end fast fashion is to try and avoid brands that are using it and try to find more sustainable options instead. Completely sustainable brands can be expensive and hard to find, but there are some amazing and affordable brands out there. Below I have created a little table to help you navigate this a bit. Major fast fashion retailers are ones to avoid, retailers working to make a change are ones that may not be completely sustainable, but are making an effort to get there, and sustainable fashion retailers are the ones who have completely gotten out of the fast fashion industry. There are many more retailers than the ones I have listed, but these are some very prominent ones to help get you started!

Another great way to shop sustainably is to go to thrift or second-hand stores! This can actually be one of my favorite ways to shop because you can find very interesting and unique pieces for very little cost.

Below is an image of one of me in one of my favorite outfits, which is made up of only items I found at my local thrift shop!