If you have social media, I know you have seen an ad or two promoting a fashion company selling trendy styles. Websites such as FashionNova, PrettyLittleThing, MissGuided, and more all promote their trendy clothing on their Instagram and pay influencers to wear their clothes and tag them on their own pages. These companies make millions in revenue all based off of fast fashion. This is a term people may not have heard of but recognize what it is. According to Merriam-Webster:
“Fast Fashion is an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers.”
As recently as this week, Kim Kardashian posted a picture wearing this dress, and FashionNova was selling a replica on their website hours later.
These websites have the means to see influential people post an outfit and recreate something similar in hours to then sell it on their website at a cheap price. As a large company they are able to do this quickly while the item is still trending. This also raises the question of the ethics of the clothing. How are they able to design and produce these items so quickly? How are the items so inexpensive? But their millions of followers and consumers continue to buy their products and support these businesses.
Unfortunately, smaller businesses do not have the ability to do things like this. Smaller fashion designers focus on ethical manufacturing and use locally sourced products. Usually the owners design products and make them theirselves to then sell on their own websites. This usually takes longer and comes at a higher price. Consumers may not always want to pay this price so they turn to websites such as those mentioned above.
This graph shows just how quickly popular fashion retailers can create and produce products compared to a traditional retailer.
Fast Fashion is not only a problem for the economy, but an even bigger problem for the Earth. This cycle of mass producing large amounts of clothing every other week to keep up with trends is creating massive amounts of waste. If people continue to support businesses like these, the fashion industry could be responsible for 25% of the Earth’s carbon budget by 2050.
Overall, fast fashion is clearly harming many of the aspects of our world. Social media posts and influencers have a large impact on the way that these brands have such a dominance over the fashion industry. These companies are growing stronger with the more popularity they gain, and they have no plans of stopping anytime soon.
Beware of Fast Fashion 