Fast Fashion: The Cost of Affordability

From fast fashion to ultra-fast fashion to real-time fashion with brands like Shein and Temu, the fashion industry is constantly evolving with hundreds of new styles and prices only getting lower. Fast fashion, as we know it, is trendy and stylish clothing that is rapidly produced at cheap prices, and from one perspective, that sounds great—who doesn’t want good clothes for cheap prices? Only, it isn’t so simple. When you buy from a brand like Zara or H&M, you pay two prices: the cheap one on the price tag and the hidden cost behind it.

To understand this, let’s start by questioning how these billion-dollar industries produce so much revenue despite maintaining bargain prices. Surely, a business can’t make a profit selling products with prices as low as one dollar, right? Well, fast fashion brands have, and here’s how they make this business model plausible:

Cost-Cutting Measures

To maximize profit, companies like these minimize their losses as much as possible using unethical and harmful methods:

• Exploitative Labor Conditions
  During the 19th-century Industrial Revolution in England, textile mill owners exploited thousands of workers, imposing long hours and poor conditions for meager wages. Many toiled up to 100 hours a week, facing numerous injuries. This allowed industrialists to maximize profits by minimizing production costs. Fast forward to the 21st century, and the fashion industry still sees exploitation, with 1 in 6 people employed but only 2% receiving a living wage. Tragic incidents, like the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse, highlight ongoing negligence, resulting in 1,100 deaths and thousands injured.

• Plagiarism in Designing
  Fast fashion brands are known for releasing new styles and products at a rapid speed, but, of course, employing the number of people required to design new styles every single day would result in high production costs. So, what do these brands do instead? Plagiarize the work of other creators and brands. Companies like Shein are especially notorious for this, having copied several independent designers' work and selling them. Just like that, not a single penny goes to design costs, adding to their profits.

• Low-Quality Material
  Using low-quality materials like rayon and acrylic over sustainable and higher-quality materials lets fast fashion brands produce clothing at a fraction of the cost and encourages frequent purchases. Low-quality materials are much less durable, leading them to wear and tear faster than better-quality materials, which in turn creates an endless cycle of consumption where customers purchase an article only to dispose of it soon after and buy from the newest collections. This allows fast fashion brands to maximize profits while keeping their “affordable” tag.

High-Volume Sales and Customers

• Aggressive Marketing
  We live in a world where everything is marketing. Everything we see around us influences our decisions, and the fast fashion industry, in particular, uses this strategy of persistently promoting products and creating a feeling of urgency to prompt customers to make quick, impulsive decisions by building a sense of exclusivity and excitement around their products. That feeling of anxiety that forms when companies use tactics like “Only 2 left in stock!” or that sense of FOMO when there’s a big hype around a product are all techniques that create a large customer base.

Influence of Social Media
Social media is one of the fast fashion industry's biggest advantages. Not only do they heavily rely on social media for marketing and advertising without paying directly for it, but the clothing culture portrayed by these platforms also significantly influences fast fashion brand sales. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram normalize the idea of overconsumption and rapid disposal of garments, whether that’s influencers doing a $500 haul from Shein or the rise of another microtrend. Content like this is one of their biggest marketing strategies, and it is often targeted toward younger demographics who are more eager for the latest fashion and vulnerable to impulsive buying.

Health Impact of Fast Fashion

Fast fashion's impact extends beyond environmental and societal concerns to significant health risks for consumers. Research has identified hazardous substances like lead, often found in certain fast-fashion garments. Prolonged exposure to such chemicals can pose serious health risks, including neurological and developmental harm, as lead is toxic even at low levels. Additionally, the extensive use of polyester and other synthetic fabrics in fast fashion contributes to microplastic pollution. These tiny plastic particles shed from clothing during use and washing can infiltrate human systems through inhalation, ingestion, or skin contact, raising concerns about their potential long-term effects on health. Such findings underscore the urgent need for greater transparency and regulation in fast fashion production processes to safeguard consumer well-being.

So that’s how fast fashion brands sustain their billion-dollar companies: through the most unsustainable and unethical methods. As of 2024, the fast fashion industry is estimated to produce between 1.2 billion and 2.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. To put that into perspective, that’s more than the entire aviation sector. Around 50 million people globally are being exploited by the industry in some way, with some earning as low as 2-6% of the retail price of the clothes they make. It’s clear how this business model is built off nothing but exploitation and waste.

So how do we stop this?

As Dana Thomas writes in her book Fashionopolis, slow fashion is about returning to old practices with a modern twist. Slow fashion is a movement within the fashion world that emphasizes sustainability and promotes conscious consumption over rapid disposal and constant buying. Many complain that for the sake of sustainability, they’d have to give up being able to wear what they want, but this isn’t true. Slow fashion doesn’t mean losing anything—it’s about giving your clothes value and purpose and developing a personal style that lasts. Clothes are so much more than just accessories; they carry memories, and like many of our possessions, clothes are something to cherish and care for. Every garment you own has been sewn or manufactured by the hands of someone, and discarding the effort and time woven into every strand of its fabric overlooks the value of skilled labor, natural resources, and the planet’s limited capacity to handle waste.

Let’s try to make this industry a little better through small, intentional choices. Support sustainable brands that deserve more exposure, remove any negative influences that impact your fashion decisions (like influencers and celebrities who endorse the industry and overconsumption culture), upcycle your clothes if you regret a purchase, and spread awareness about the perils of the fast fashion industry.

It’s worth mentioning that individuals from lower-income backgrounds who purchase from fast fashion brands are not the primary issue. As long as clothes are not immediately discarded after a few uses, they don’t contribute significantly to fast fashion’s negative effects. The problem lies more with consumers of higher wealth who buy far more than they need and discard items quickly, perpetuating this cycle of excessive consumption.

Our clothes are a part of our identity, a way to express ourselves, yet fast fashion brands have turned them into a soulless money-generating commodity to be disposed of as soon as the newest trend arrives. But clothes, like many other items, hold memories, emotion, and value and aren’t just pieces of cloth to be discarded at the onset of a new trend. What seems affordable on clothing racks often comes at the expense of our environment; what seems to be the latest trend will expire within weeks, and what seems like “just a t-shirt” is the result of tireless work by the hands that sewed it. Your style cannot be dictated by what companies or social media tell you to wear. So, instead of “shopping like a billionaire,” as Temu’s tagline suggests, why not shop like someone who cherishes every piece—valuing what we own, attaching memories and meaning to each item, and holding onto them instead of tossing them after one wear?