Fast Fashion and its Consequences

The idea of fast fashion is honestly quite absurd to me. It is basically extremely cheap clothing that is designed specifically to emulate the running trend in fashion. While the idea is quite profitable, it exploits the rise and fall of short-lived trends which often originate from the internet. Once these trends pass however, the massive amount of leftover clothes are just discarded, with companies looking for the next big trend to exploit. This specific part of the industry preys on rising demand through overproduction, leaving behind large amounts of waste. 

Many of these companies rely heavily on third world countries, where much of their labour is sourced from. In their quest to find the cheapest possible production cost for their clothes, they neglect the safety of their factories and often underpay their workers, who are not aware that they are simply being used. Many of these stories are shared after the damage is already done, especially in the case of the Tazreen factory fire, which killed over a 100 people and left 200 injured. 

An investigation afterwards discovered signs of gross negligence on behalf of the factory operators as well as the clients the factory was serving, with giants like IKEA and Walmart acting as major clients for the clothing products produced in the factory.  

The Chinese company SHEIN is at the forefront of the fast fashion trend now, with an estimated value of about $100 billion USD in 2022. The juggernaut not only produces clothes at an extremely cheap cost, they go one step further by advertising through social media influencers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which act as the biggest vectors for fast fashion marketing. The company has an appalling record of human rights violations. They were found to employ workers in extremely unsafe environments, working with polyester fabrics in rooms without windows or emergency exits within residential buildings to skirt Chinese tax laws. 

However disgusting fast fashion may be as a trend, it is an extremely complex situation that requires careful deliberation to fix. The global economy is taking a dive, as increasingly larger numbers of millennials are finding themselves living paycheck to paycheck. Accommodation costs are extremely high, and most jobs just don't pay enough. Until these issues are addressed, fast fashion is most certainly here to stay.