Fast Fashion Anonymous

This week I began to re-read Cline’s ‘Overdressed- The shockingly high cost of cheap fashion’.

This week I also broke my self induced fast fashion ban for the first time in 11 months.

Confused and ashamed I decided to channel my emotions into a blog post.

Hoping to seek some clarity on the matter, I wanted to explore just what it is that drives our addiction to these quick and easy wardrobe ‘fixes’. The term fast fashion refers to a phenomenon in the fashion industry in which clothes are produced cheaply at an extortionate rate, in the hopes of them reaching the shelves as quickly and inexpensively as possible, ultimately to generate a profit. The presence of outlets such as Zara, H&M and Uniqlo are inescapable. Their unmistakable branding pervades both the physical and digital world, enticing customers with their affordability and (often bloody good) designer knockoffs. I fell victim to Zara. In desperate need of a ‘smart’ outfit to collect my Duke Of Edinburgh award and armed with £100 from my Grandma, what else was a poor university student to do? A more sustainable option out of my price range, and depop and charity shops proving lack lustre, I found myself on Zara’s oh so minimalist site. Before I could make sense of what I was doing, a navy dress and a pair of Stella McCartney rip off platform brogues landed themselves in my basket; of course with my card details already saved I was rendered powerless. However, much to my enjoyment I was glad to learn this purchase on a whim was not my fault at all, and that science was to blame for the whole thing. According to a 2015 article from The Atlantic, “It’s no accident that shopping has become such an absorbing and compulsive activity: The reasons are in our neurology, economics, culture, and technology.” Arguments have been made that the pleasure of shopping is exaggerated by the idea of getting a good deal, with cheap prices making us vastly more inclined to indulge in a habit, regardless of its detrimental impacts. Who can resist a dress dropped from £40 to £25? (Not me clearly.)

One of the key issues with fast fashion for me is the toll it takes on our environment, it is estimated that the average american throws away around 70lbs of clothing a year, with similar figures in much of Western Europe. Over 10.5 billion tonnes of textiles end up in US landfill each year, the materials used very rarely biodegrade easily, and more often than not, toxic chemicals used in the process permeate the soil, posing a threat to wildlife and even human food or water supplies. Despite me knowing this, I could still find it in me to press ‘purchase’ on that navy dress. I was thankful to learn that the obsession with looking at products, even if no purchase is intended, is especially prevalent amongst Millennials. Glad that I wasn’t alone in my scarring of our planet, I felt reassured we can collectively take the blame for the trail of destruction we’re blazing. As the generation that grew up in the age of the Internet it came as very little surprise to me that my kind spend up to an hour a day on ecommerce sites. Personally, I rarely browse with the intent of purchase, more often than not it becomes a time filler; Topshop.com acts in the same way that Instagram and Twitter do, flicking the V’s at my potentially productive hours. Pissing away the day on Farfetch has been dubbed by The Atlantic as forming problematic online shopping behaviour. As April Lane Benson puts it “Shopping is a way that we search for ourselves and our place in the world. A lot of people conflate the search for self with the search for stuff. Proving shopping to be a quick fix” Glad to know that not only have I destroyed our environment with my navy dress and platform brogues, but that I am also manifesting my internal psychological strife in the acquisition of new garments, I was feeling increasingly positive.

A small existential crisis later, I began to accept my failings and develop a new mantra. A limit of 4 fast fashion purchases per season. I am well aware of my failings don’t get me wrong, but like cigarettes and social media, a cold turkey approach is a recipe for disaster. Maybe one day when I have the financial stability, and a truly guilty conscience, I can take my wardrobe to full on sustainability, but for now looks like I’ll watch our planet crash and burn around us in knock-off platform brogues.