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Fast Fashion And It’s Negative Impacts On Society By: Amiah Duddy and Penny Freidlin

PHS FASHION CLUB


Fast Fashion is negatively affecting the fashion world. Although fast fashion is a fairly new concept, the trend has risen with popularity.We have provided three different pieces of evidence we will provide for this statement. The first evidence is that fast fashion devalues the process of clothing making. The second piece of evidence is that microtrends and overconsumption are “trendy” now and over popularized on social media. The last piece of evidence I will be using is that fast fashion is being too accepted and the effects it has on the environment.

Fast fashion devalues the process of clothing making. Have you ever heard someone say “This dress is way too overpriced!”, or maybe you’ve even thought something like that yourself. Well the word overpriced implies something is not fairly priced, but sometimes that’s extremely untrue.
In a twitter thread written by Cora Harrington who is an american writer and lingerie excpert she talks about how she’s photographing a $1,000 lingerie set. Yes you heard me right. A thousand dollars. It is understandable why someone would think that this is overpriced, but the process of making it is much more labor intensive then you would expect. She states, “In truth, the set is constructed of French Chantilly Lace made by Sophie Hallette in the Calais region of France with Leavers Lace machines that are over a century old and take at least 2 people 2 months to thread by hand.Loading the loom with a new pattern takes at least a day. All lace patterns are drawn by hand - down to every thread. .Once the lace is made, any faults or defects are corrected by hand.The lace is then marked up appropriately (because none of these employees are working for free), to be sold to, most typically, fashion houses and designers.”, from the information Cora has shown us you can see how in-depth the making of this item is, and we haven't even gone to the construction of the garment. “The designer then had to create a set of patterns, hand-dye all elastics, casings, and fastenings, and acquire other fabric components, such as tulle for the bra and silk for the brief. The designer also had to purchase all the other metal components (which are plated in 24k gold).”

Although this is definitely a lot of information to take in, it accurately shows how people really don’t understand the process of making clothing and why it’s sometimes very expensive. With most of us getting used to cheap prices like $15-20 dollar price tags of our clothing items there’s no surprise to why someone would think an item over 60 dollars is overpriced. It’s good to learn about how the creation of fashion is a very labor intensive thing to do.
Microtrends and overconsumption are “trendy” now and over popularized on social media. Now, you might be asking yourself what even is a “microtrend”? Well to answer your question, a micro trend is a fast pace trend, it rises quickly in popularity and falls even faster, then leading to people throwing out their clothes after 2-3 months. Shein, one of the most popular fast fashion sites, has made ten billion dollars in november of 2020 according to the Business Insider, when Insider visited the shein site already over 4,000 items were added. Having so many pieces of clothing– or really anything is so unnecessary for yourself and the environment. These 4,000 will soon be out of style in the next 2-3 months anyways so there really is zero point into investing in these cheap pieces whilst mass buying them. You might be wondering how fast fashion works into this? Well an easy way to buy bulk clothing items while still keeping a “cheap” budget is fast fashion brands. An argument many people like to touch on when defending their interaction with fast fashion is how there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and that most people do not have the money to buy expensive sustainable clothing. Now when talking about fast fashion in no way is this putting the blame on people with lower income because in truth, they are not keeping the fast fashion industry a float. The people who are keeping it healthy are the people who spend 100+ at shein for a mass amount of items (contributing to overconsumption), vs buying a couple sustainable clothing items that will not only be in style for more than a month, but also last a lifetime because of the better quality. Better quality clothing is also so much better for the environment, saying this flows me to my next point.

Fast fashion is being too accepted and its effects on the environment. Because of things like overconsumption and micro trends- that means the land fill is full with your idiotic purchases. Not only that, but fast fashion warehouses have a big impact on the environment. When producing fast fashion toxic chemicals, dangerous dyes, and synthetic chemicals. The fashion industry produces between 2 - 8 % of global carbon emissions Every second, the equivalent to one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned. If nothing changes by 2050 the fast fashion industry will have taken up a quarter of the worlds carbon budget
In conclusion, if we want to change the view of the fashion industry in a way that is positive we must try our hardest to contribute in good ways and educate ourselves and others on the dangers of fast fashion. “Fast fashion isn't free. Someone, somewhere, is paying.” (Siegle)




Painting by : Amiah Duddy

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