Fast Fashion and Consumer Culture

April, 2023

Ellie Chen

In the digital landscape of multi-thousand dollar try-on hauls, brands that add over 2,000 items to their sites each day, and microtrends that last for little more than a quarter of the year, the need for more is a desire that cannot be fulfilled. Fast fashion, defined as the quick turnover of trends combined with the mass production of clothing, has become the standard business model for the fashion industry over the course of a century. While heralded as the democratization of fashion, fast fashion has tremendous social costs and ramifications for the environment.

80 billion pieces of brand-new clothing are purchased each year, generating $1.2 trillion for the global fashion industry and 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Despite these staggering numbers, clothing consumption is projected to increase by 65% in 2030. The roots of this ever-growing demand can be traced to the turn of the 19th century, with the emergence of consumer culture. In the early 1900s, access to goods beyond the need for survival became more widespread. However, department stores remained a luxury for the upper middle class. The glass-veiled displays of opulence played into the principles of consumption theories–that envy of those one step higher in the socioeconomic hierarchy is the driving force behind economic growth. Throughout the 20th century, advertisers used the human tendency towards image to manufacture new needs and expand the scale of production. The focus of retail was no longer creating quality products but rather creating demand to generate the maximum profit. Today, the forces of envy are pervasive in every moment of our lives–we are constantly exposed to that which we want but do not have.

As the demand for clothing has increased, so has the fashion industry’s impact upon the environment. The industry’s most significant polluter is the use of raw materials for the production of clothing—342 million barrels of oil are consumed each year to produce polyester and other man-made fabrics, and massive amounts of water and pesticides are involved in the growing of cotton. The dyeing process requires 43 million tons of toxic chemicals each year, and much of its wastewater is dumped into the water systems of local communities, posing health and environmental hazards. Notwithstanding, fast fashion’s environmental consequences extend far beyond the production of clothing. As an industry that encourages consumers to view clothing as disposable, it creates hundreds of thousands of tons of solid waste each year. In the United States, 85% of the clothing that is consumed annually, amounting to 3.8 billion pounds, is sent to landfills. The rest is sent to lower middle income countries to be “graded;” in other words, sorted, categorized and compressed into thousand pound bales by low wage workers to be sold in second-hand markets. As such, the impacts of fast-fashion are concentrated in the areas of production, or lower middle income countries.

The suffering of those in lower income communities at the hands of fast fashion is a recurring theme. To obtain labor at such a cheap cost, manufacturing involves exploitative wages, health-threatening working hours, and dangerous working conditions. Although industrial disasters in the US and UK such as the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire have led to the creation of textile labor unions and improved working conditions, the exploitation of laborers has not been eliminated, but has simply relocated to developing nations. The globalization of supply chains has allowed production to be outsourced to areas with lax worker protection laws. With the majority of clothing being produced in China and Bangladesh but consumed in the United States, the lives lost to the garment industry today do not seem to generate the same outrage of the early 20th century–our distance from the consequences of reckless consumption enables apathy towards an environmental and ethical disaster that will eventually become impossible to look away from.

Limiting consumption with the intent of the eventual elimination of fast fashion is crucial in the fight for environmental justice. With the discussion of progress often comes the debate of the line between corporate and consumer responsibility. Environmentally conscious production cannot be achieved without sustainable practices and policies, fair trade and production standards, and certification organizations to inspect and evaluate company conduct. However, these necessities remain unfeasible with the eco-friendly textile manufacturing market’s proportionally miniscule size compared to that of corporate giants. Thus, it is the role of the consumer to reject participation in the culture of overconsumption. Most brands with ethical practices and transparent supply chains come at substantial price points, and a wardrobe full of sustainable pieces is not accessible to the vast majority of people. The solution is simple: buy less and use what you own longer. Mending and upcycling clothing can extend the lifetime of a piece, while buying second hand can lower your carbon footprint with the benefit of a low price tag.