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| Fashion is Fast by Anna-Sophie Berger Source: TouristMagazine.co.uk |
The problem with fast fashion, lies in
it's name. The supply and demand of the industry is unbalanced and because of
that there are vast consequences. Yesterday I watched Vice's Podcast which
featured the founder of American Apparel, Dov Charney discuss his take on the
fast-fashion industry or to be blunt, sweatshops. We talk about multinational
companies like H&M and Zara who market their products as being
"affordable luxury" but the reality is that even companies such as
Target, K-mart, Big W and Cotton On are outsourcing their production to countries
such as Bangladesh because of their low wage production costs.
The demand in the fast fashion industry is
unbelievably quick and it needs to stay that way to ensure it's profitability.
But we also need to acknowledge that fact that fast-fashion is here to stay
because of the differing socio-economic classes in our society today. The
fast-fashion industry prefers quantity over quality simply because quantity is
easier and less time-consuming to fulfill than the notion of quality. The
luxury market is based on the idea that quality is better than quantity.
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| Fashion is Fast by Anna-Sophie Berger Source: TouristMagazine.co.uk |
Another problem with fast fashion is that
it is the solution to the problem of the democratisation of fashion. I've
argued on my blog before that, the democratisation of fashion is an
ideology which right now does not exist although many companies have made
millions of dollars of profits upon the idea of the "democratic"
fashion. The idea that fashion (more notably, high fashion) is for all, is
something which people can only dream about both now and in the distant future.
Fast fashion can never supplement the luxury and more importantly quality of
high fashion. After all, high fashion is founded on the notion that quality is
better than quantity, for this reason many of the top fashion labels in the
world often manufacture in their respective domestic origins rather
than outsourcing their production to cheap labour overseas. The
reason behind this decision is that when buying high fashion you are inevitably
buying a ticket into the exuberant grandeur of the fashion industry. It's the
same as how design houses often market their perfumes or beauty lines, the
consumer is inevitably buying into affluence which is
most often associated with fashion.
In reality, the fast-fashion industry is rather unsustainable in the future. The rate of consumption by the fast fashion consumer is one which occurs at a rate far greater than the high fashion consumers. This is because fast-fashion does not have seasons or presents collections in the same way that the high fashion does. Fast fashion is extremely trend-obsessed, it's the reason behind the success of the industry. Garments do not take a lot of time or money to produce because usually they are copied from other stores or high fashion collections and are simply adjusted to suit the production means of the company.
A few years ago, I was on the Topshop website browsing through their tops and I remember I had found this black top with parrot's printed on it, it was in the sale section of their store. A week later I found the exact same top on Sportsgirl's website in the new arrivals section.
Not only are these companies competing to keep up with the latest "trends" but also each other. For this reason, the fast fashion industry is one which is now notorious for exploitation through it's production process.
I'm not encouraging all of you to start to save up and spend hundreds of dollars on a simple cotton T-Shirt, but I think we should all think about the consequences of the methods of production implemented by the fashion industry and in particular the fast fashion industry.
