The Fashion plague: Evils of Fast Fashion

When Hennes & Mauritz launched in India, it was all that anybody could talk about. The high-end designs for somewhat affordable prices attracted millions of Indians who wanted to look rich and fashionable, including me. It was only after I visited the US did I realise, that this new craze for Indians has been a part of everyday lives of Americans. Fast fashion companies in America are equivalent to India’s Big Bazaar.

Fast fashion is a quick, cheap and easily disposable option, and for a world that craves something new every day, fast fashion proves to be an ideal choice. But this choice comes with a hefty price that endangers the very fabric of society and the ecosystem.

H&M, Zara and Forever 21 are some of the biggest chain retailers that meet the needs of today’s fashionable youth. These chain retail brands are also some of the richest too. The Revenue of H&M and Zara is higher by a huge margin compared to brands such as Calvin Klein, GAP, and Levi’s. H&M’s net sales in 2021 amounted to 23 billion U.S. Dollars while Levi’s net sales stopped at 5,763 million U.S.D.

Why do people indulge in fast fashion?

Fast fashion involves a series of chain retailers who replicate runway garments. These replicas are both fashionable and affordable but do not last very long. It has managed to democratise couture fashion for the masses at a much faster rate than other brands, but generates more waste than other companies. What takes half a year for a clothing company to create and sell, encompassing designing, sourcing, manufacturing, and distributing, fast fashion companies do in a matter of weeks. H&M claims to release 52 new seasons of collection per year while legacy brands have only 2 seasons a year with carefully curated designs and quality products. According to 'Overdressed’ by E.L Cline, Zara can design, produce and deliver in two weeks, Forever 21 in six weeks, and H&M in eight weeks.

How do these brands produce so many clothes in so little time?

Clothing retailers can accomplish rapid clothing production because of their strong connections with the producers and their strong supply chain management. They use real-time data to monitor trends so that they can streamline and update their collections frequently. This is called Dynamic Assortment. It is not very hard to counterfeit an already established design and make minor changes that help avoid the risk of copyright infringement. All there is left for the companies to do then is use cheap synthetic materials to produce low-quality products in bulk. This inevitably leads to frighteningly high rates of pollution.

According to a study in 2021, clothing production has doubled from 100 billion to 200 billion units per year and clothing utilisation has declined by 36%, almost half as often as the purchasing of clothes. In 2018, it was found that the production of the garments creates more greenhouse gases than international flights and maritime shipping combined, that is, roughly 8-10% of CO2 and synthetic materials use 342 million barrels of oil per year. Furthermore, it is also responsible for 20% of industrial water pollution from the 79 trillion litres of water it uses per year. To make the fabric, growing cotton takes 10,330 litres of water which is twenty-four years of drinking water for 1 person. As if that were not enough, 87% of the disposed clothes either go to landfills or are incinerated.

Fast fashion not only depletes the environment but also participates in the capitalist agenda of exploiting the poor for labour but enjoying the profits. While H&M and Zara are “cheap and affordable” for the developed countries, a luxury for Indians they can indulge in rarely or only if they belong to a certain class in society, much like a family trip abroad.

During the COVID pandemic, online shopping had gotten more popular than ever. With the click of a button, people could easily buy everything they wanted and didn’t even have to step out of their houses. Since then, online shopping has become all the rage. Brands such as Shein who were already known and popular for their high-end designs of “cheaper rates”, became even more popular.

Shein is a Chinese fast fashion retailer founded in 2008. Since then it has climbed its way to the top and is now one of the fast fashion juggernauts of today’s world. During the pandemic, Shein gained so much popularity that its sales rose up to $10 billion in 2020 and generated up to $20 billion in revenue in 2021. According to Reuters, it was valued at around $50 billion in early 2021. In 2022, Shein was valued at $100 billion, making it worth as much as Zara and H&M combined.

The company claims that there are almost 9,000 new arrivals every day. Shein’s clothes appearing in social trends- with influencers who indulge in ‘clothing hauls’- has boosted the retail brand’s revenue while also boosting the wastage. Shein works as an e-commerce platform for smaller Chinese suppliers, unlike western companies that outsource their products. Shein requires only 10% of its clothes to be successful thereby banking out of the select few’s popularity. The other ninety go to waste.

India and several of her neighbours are targets for low-cost labour. The clothes manufactured here are shipped to countries like the United States to be marketed. Fashion is one of the most labour-dependent industries and one in six of the world’s workers are employed in the fashion industry, the majority of them being women. A study by McKinsey and Company found that fashion consumption increased by 60% between 2000 and 2014 and only increases every year, hence the retail companies depend heavily on low-cost labour. This results in the brands directing their labour to low-income Asian countries like India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and China.

Although on paper the companies take worker’s rights violations very seriously, it is not so in real life. Because the majority of workers are women, cultural norms and strict rules against unions hinder their ability to advocate for themselves.

Women face cruelties such as denial of maternity leave, forceful feeding of contraceptives, unsanitary spaces and sexual harrassment and not to mention being exposed to toxic chemicals.

Fast fashion brands allow their subsidiaries to remain largely unregulated because it clears them of responsibility for the unethical practices being used to produce their clothing at such low costs. Less than 2% of the workers worldwide are paid a living wage for their labours.

It has however become hard for brands to turn a blind eye to the injustice as workers have begun agitating. In 2013, the Rana Plaza Building’s collapse birthed the Fashion Revolution, a global movement for a better fashion industry. In 2019 Bangladeshi workers went on strike over their low wages. Bangladesh depends on the garments produced by these low-paid workers. Majority of its exports come from clothing sales abroad with H&M and Zara being one among them.

Many of Shein’s workers are unpaid and underage. According to Abc.net, Shein’s workers usually work for at least eleven to twelve hours a day, that is seven times a week, not five. Timo Kollbrunner, a researcher for Public Eye, a Swiss watchdog, says that the workers receive holidays for one day a month. The workers do not have a contract or social security benefits.

Despite claims of malpractice, fast fashion companies vouch for their attempts at sustainable production methods and their ‘serious’ attitude over labour welfare.

Zara has created a new sustainable clothing line called ‘Join Life’, its parent company, Inditex, has also launched a program called Closing the Loop. The program lets customers drop off their used garments in-store or through the post in order for their clothes to gain a second life, and H&M’s alleged sustainable collection called H&M Conscious whose products are made from recycled or other sustainably sourced materials. But how true are these claims? Zara’s Join Life does not help reduce textile waste, and Conscious is merely a collection which suggests the other collections still use harmful methods of manufacturing. How much is their word worth?

In such cases, it lies in the hands of the consumers to help minimise the effects of fast fashion. How can we help?

It is hard to stop buying from fast fashion companies altogether. The designs look so good! But we can begin with using clothes for at least nine months longer than we do now. By using clothes for a longer period of time, we can reduce the carbon footprints by 30%. By buying one second-hand garment, we can reduce 6 pounds of carbon emission. Renting clothes enables tie-ups with companies to rent clothes, buying sustainable clothes reduces demand for fast fashion, and of course, being conscious of how much we buy and how often.