Fast fashion is an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing that focuses on making trends available to consumers quickly and inexpensively (Cook and Yurchisin, 2017, p. 143). The fast fashion movement took off in the 1980s and 90s as big brands began to look for ways to increase their profits. They did so in two main ways: First, they shifted the bulk of their production to the developing world (“off-shoring”) where labour and overhead costs were much cheaper than in North America or Europe. Second, they began increasing the number of fashion collections produced per year so that the styles would keep changing and consumers would need to keep buying new clothes to stay on trend. 

This ongoing pattern has ultimately created our cultural mindset of buying things cheaply and throwing them out. The average garment was not made to last anyway. The fabrics tend to pill, stretch, or fall apart after a few washings, so that it’s always time for something new!

Fast fashion preys on our desire for instant gratification or a quick fix. Advertisements bombard us with manufactured needs and promise to meet them with trendy ease. We can pop into outlets and superstores or click a button on an online shopping cart to get new clothes effortlessly and inexpensively. 

Buying clothes can also make us feeling like we are filling the voids we feel in other parts of our lives (boredom, loneliness, deficiency, unattractiveness, etc.), at least temporarily. We drape ourselves in fabric to boost our self-esteem. We may also gain a momentary feeling of control over our lives with our purchasing power. In an emotional and impulsive rush, we buy things we didn’t even know we wanted and call it “retail therapy.”

Fast fashion also thrives on the particular cultural attitude of “good value.” In fact, it is often called “value fashion.” Why buy a pair of jeans for $120.00 when you can get a pair for $20? I mean, do the math! Is it good value for your money? Depending on our income, we may feel we don’t have a choice but to buy clothes that come cheaply. Even if we have a more substantial income, we may feel like we are wasting money unless we buy clothing on sale or at the cheapest price possible. Besides that, we may feel that the only way to keep up with the ever-changing trends is to buy them on the cheap. Or we may live in a place where there are few shopping choices beyond big box stores or online.  After all, small boutiques, local designers, and other shopping alternatives only exist in larger cities, and even there many have gone out of business in recent years. What can we do when the draw is so strong and the options seem so limited? 

The first step is to better educate ourselves about the problems of fast fashion. The second step is to recognize the sustainable alternatives to fast fashion. The rest of this article will explore each of these two steps in turn. 

The truth when comes to “good value” is that if we aren’t paying much for something, chances are someone or something else is. What immediately comes to mind are the laborers who sew our clothes. We’ve all heard about the poor conditions, long hours, and meager pay in garment sweatshops. And most of us can point to the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, where 1100 employees were killed in 2013 because building safety codes were ignored.

We might also think of the environmental unsustainability that comes from cheaply-made, synthetic garments ending up in landfills, unable to decompose. Or the toxic pesticides contaminating the soil used to grow natural fibres as quickly as possible so that they can be manufactured into garments. Or the synthetic dyes used on these garments polluting waterways and destroying the species therein. The environment is paying for our desire for fast clothes.

We may, however, be less aware of the other hazards involved in the production of our clothing. In the sobering documentary, “The True Cost” (2015), Andrew Morgan highlights some of chilling aspects of fibre farming, like the monopoly on genetically modified seeds used to grow cotton in India; the negative effects of pesticide use on farmers’ health and the health of the surrounding community (including cancers, mental illnesses, and birth defects); and the high rate of suicides when farmers cannot keep up with the costs or produce a high enough yield and lose their farms. 

Also chilling is the production process for making some of our most popular fabric like viscose and rayon. This material is a semi-synthetic fibre branded as “plant-based” and thereby “ecologically sustainable” because it originally comes from the cellulose of wood pulp: beech, pine, or bamboo. The process, however, of turning wood pulp into a usable fibre, requires dissolving the pulp with aqueous sodium hydroxide and carbon disulphide, producing a cellulose solution that is ultimately used to spin the viscose or rayon fibres. While this may sound benign to non-chemistry lovers, medical researcher Paul D. Blanc, in his book Fake Silk (2016), shows how workers breathing in the carbon disulphide can suffer serious neurological, psychological, cardiovascular, reproductive, and liver problems, burns, and blindness. They pay the price for creating this widely used “plant-based” fibre.

In sum, there are two key areas where the hazards of fast fashion are most palpable: First, on the people growing and making our fabrics and those sewing our garments. And second, on the natural environment taking the brunt of our manufacturing processes and waste. Below are useful data and well-researched statistics to consider in these regards:

• The success of the fashion industry is propped up by global inequality. In developing countries, workers across the supply chain in the garment industry are exploited so that companies are able to produce low cost clothes for their customers. Many workers fit into the category of “slave labour” because of how little they are paid, how many hours they work per day, and how unsafe their working conditions are.  

• At the far end of the supply chain are the textile farmers. Growing cotton textiles profoundly affect the lives of agricultural workers on cotton farms. This is a huge industry in India, Uzbekistan, and in most parts of Africa. Farmers involved in cotton production, for instance, “are at the very end of the supply chain and are most squeezed by the fast fashion price demands.” In India, thousands of cotton farmers have committed suicide because of low market prices and massive indebtedness to predatory lenders.   

• As we continue up the supply chain, garment factories in developing countries are notorious for not meeting local construction standards, let alone international rules. Since 2005, at least 1800 garment workers have been killed in factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh alone (International Labour Rights Forum) and this problem affects many other countries where cheap clothing is manufactured. 

• Occupational and safety standards are often not enforced in garment factories due to poor political infrastructure and organizational management. The result is a myriad of occupational hazards in factories where fibre is produced and in factories where garments are sewn. These include: respiratory hazards due to poor ventilation (such as cotton dust and synthetic air particulates), and musculoskeletal hazards from repetitive motion tasks. Reported health outcomes include debilitating and life-threatening conditions such as lung disease and cancer, damage to endocrine function, adverse reproductive and fetal outcomes, accidental injuries, overuse injuries, and death.

• In many countries that export clothing (like Bangladesh, India and Vietnam), dangerous and unhealthy working conditions in the clothing industry are common because many factories engage in subcontracting and outsourcing their work to less reputable suppliers. Workers who are subcontracted are hidden within the supply chain; so while human rights obligations may exist for overt employment situations, subcontracted workers tend not to experience the basic human rights.

• Companies that are off-shoring clothing production lack due diligence to ensure that working conditions are safe, fair, and healthy for all their garment workers. Just because there is a certificate that says a factory building is safe doesn’t mean the building is safe. Just because there is a document that says there is a union and workers are paid a fair wage doesn’t mean that document is true. Companies need to find trusted outside parties to validate for them so they are not complicit in human rights violations.    

• Many designers are not acknowledged or compensated for their designs, as these designs are “stolen” by fast fashion companies and turned into knock-offs to make quick and cheap sales. With the click of a smart-phone camera, digital prints can be taken and designs can be easily looted and copied. Fashion design artists are not being protected in the process.

• The fashion industry is one of the largest consumers of the global water supply and produces 8-10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions. That’s more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. 

• Despite our recycling and donation programs about 85% of textiles still end up in landfill. If those textiles are made of natural fibres, they will eventually break down. But synthetic fibres are essentially forms of plastic, which do not biodegrade.

• Garments are made of natural (from plants & animals) or synthetic fibres (plastic polymers in polyester, nylon, acrylic, spandex, rayon, viscose, etc. which come from petroleum oil). Over-producing garments means we are extracting excess natural resources that we don’t need.

• Toxic pesticides are used on farms growing natural fibres like cotton. Agro-chemicals result in physical toxicity for farmers and damage flora and fauna. In places like India, mono-crops and genetically modified cotton crops are degrading the environment, and adverse climate conditions, extreme water consumption, failure of crops, excessive deadlines, and growing debts have led to agrarian crisis and numerous farmer suicides. 

• The production of synthetic fiber involves toxic chemical processes to transform the raw materials into wearable fabric. This is true not only of straight up synthetics like polyester and spandex, but also the processing of so-called “natural fibres” like bamboo rayon. These toxic chemicals negatively affect the health and longevity of workers in this field and produce hazardous waste.

• Textile production also involves many chemical and physical transformations during the dying and printing processes. As the environmental laws in many countries are questionable, it is normal for dyeing mills to throw their polluted water directly into rivers, releasing heavy metals and other toxicants that adversely impact the health of animals in addition to nearby residents.

• Animal products used in fashion—fur, leather, wool, cashmere, mohair, feathers, etc.—are often linked to animal cruelty, especially in countries where animal welfare laws are virtually non-existent. 

• In recent years, there are been more reports of increased textile dermatitis, eczemas & allergies. This is likely due to the toxic components in/on the garments (like dyes) or synthetic fibres that do not allow the skin to breathe. 

• The synthetic textiles used in the majority of clothing production go on to pollute the oceans with micro plastics. When we wash our garments the rotation of the washing machine causes friction and break down the edges of the fibres. This causes micro pieces that are too small to be caught in water treatment plants to end up in our waterways and oceans creating a toxic environment for marine life.

“Slow fashion” is an alternative to fast fashion. The term "slow fashion" was coined by Kate Fletcher in her 2007 article for The Ecologist, where she compared the eco/sustainable/ethical fashion industry to the slow food movement. Just like slow food, slow clothes are good quality, cleanly produced, and fairly acquired: 

• GOOD: quality fibers: organically grown or produced out of recycled materials

• CLEAN: growth, production, and recycling practices do not harm the environment

• FAIR: accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay for producers on all      levels of the supply chain

We can also add other elements like “locally made” (or made in Canada), “up-cycled,” “naturally dyed,” and “vegan” to the mix. 

Currently, one key goal in the slow and sustainable fashion movement is to adopt a “closed system loop,” in which garments and their components are “designed, manufactured, used, and handled so as to circulate within society for as long as possible, with maximum usability, minimum adverse environmental impacts, minimum waste generation, and with the most efficient use of water, energy, and other resources throughout their lifecycles” (“The Issues: Waste”). I think we can all agree that this is an excellent ideal and goal to aspire to. 

But here’s the rub: Fast fashion is a vicious cycle because there are so many incentives to keep buying without changing the system. Most of us are drawn to buying clothes quickly and cheaply; to save money and get more for less; or to be consistently on trend. We may know that fast fashion is ultimately an unsustainable model—with a terrible strain on the environment and deplorable conditions for workers in developing countries—but often our immediate needs, our limited budget, or our aesthetic desires trump our ethical principles.  This phenomenon is called the “intention-behavior gap” by researchers. 

Statistics show that “30% of consumers have the initial intention to purchase responsibly. However when this is to translate into behavior, only 3% of the original group of consumers actually purchase responsibly” (James and Montgomery, 2017, p. 13). 

Here are some reasons why our good intentions don’t necessarily translate into responsible purchasing behavior: 

• It’s hard in the moment of purchase, to make ethical choices about our clothing when we are completely removed from their backstory and their unhappy ends. We probably don’t personally know any of the workers in the supply chain. We aren’t regularly seeing brown sludgy waste water pouring into our waterways or piles of garment-waste in landfills. The off-shoring practices of the garment industry makes it easy to slide into an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality when we shop. 

• It’s hard to purchase responsibly when it’s very expensive to do so and there’s a lack of sustainable choices available. Many sustainable clothes are not exactly “on trend” or may not fit our aesthetic. We may want to buy sustainable clothes, but not actually like or look good in the options available. Sustainable clothes may also not fit our budget. We might wholeheartedly support the concept of local, sustainable, ethical clothing, but not have the financial resources to purchase these wears. 

• It’s also hard to purchase responsibly when we feel like our contribution to the cause is not enough to make a real difference. When we believe our actions have little to no effect, we tend write off our ethical choices as futile. 

• And if those reasons weren’t enough, we are fundamentally creatures resistant to change, even when we want to do things differently. It’s very difficult for us to shift a pattern of behavior when it’s well ingrained. 

So how do we take action and make the shift from fast fashion to ethical and sustainable “slow” clothes? To answer that question, check out the second article in this series, “Embracing Slow Fashion”! 

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