Going Dark: Gen-Z Are Demanding The End Of Fast Fashion For Good

I am currently in the process of finishing the book Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes, and let’s just say, it’s quite soul-crushing. The author of the text, Dana Thomas, began her career writing for the Style section of The Washington Post, before working for 15 years as a cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris.  Now, her book envisages a future that is free from the production models currently destroying our world, investigating the demand for fast fashion and arguing that we as consumers should be dressing with intention and purpose instead. In this text, Thomas foresees renewal via a host of developments, including printing 3D clothing, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling, and even 'lab-grown materials', highlighting companies both big and small that are leading the crusade. This exposé is the beginning of an academic evaluation of fast fashion, and, with recent findings concluding that fast fashion is losing its mass appeal, it is perfectly timed. I’m not trying to say that evaluations of fast fashion have only just begun, but predictions about its potential downfall have only started to be made over the last few years. It is now a fundamental time to be discussing unsustainable production models and why over-saturation in fashion will never work.

An Extinction Rebellion Protestor at the Christian Dior Spring 21 Show, where 200 people were invited into a small tent during the prime spread of Covid-19.

A survey by OnePoll looking at 1,500 people aged between 16 and 35 found that around 66% of participants would like to ditch fast fashion indefinitely. 40% of participates would rather be sustainable than fashionable, with one quarter already making their own clothes in an attempt to be more eco-friendly. Though this seems small, the poll is key in discussing the demand to deconstruct fast fashion giants and how effective green activism can be. As the sustainable fashion industry has grown and more luxury fashion houses are switching to eco-friendlier production models, discussions surrounding green appropriation and green washing have also substantially increased. Companies like Zara and H&M have created ‘sustainable’ collections, which, as Dana Thomas discusses in her text, can never be considered sustainable: “To keep the prices low, fast fashion slashes manufacturing costs — and the cheapest labour is available in the world’s poorest countries. Sustainable? No. Ethical? I think not.” Fast fashion companies pride themselves on using recycled materials, but their business models often contradict their pledges to the environment. “Even if garments are collected in-store, the capability to recycle clothing at the scale needed for current fast fashion production rates does not exist. It’s typically more energy-intensive to recycle than to produce new products”, says The Conversation on ‘Fast Fashion Lies’. With the average consumer purchasing 60% more clothing in 2014 than in 2000, but keeping each garment for only half as long, the amount of clothing produced globally is projected to rise by 63% in the next 10 years, with less than 1% of it being recycled. You see, the difference between fast fashion companies and smaller brands is how much they prioritise their environmental impact. Smaller brands focus on sustainability as a cheaper initiative, creating made-to-order products so that garments don’t end up in landfill. Fast fashion companies focus on producing as much as possible, purposefully making their clothing cheap - and often low-quality - so that consumers return more quickly. While smaller brands create garments under an 'anti-fashion calendar', fast fashion has sped up the fashion seasons, making over 30 collections a year where previously there were only four. Now, multiple sources online suggest that there might be up to 52 micro fashion seasons a year, with products expected to last five weeks on average. Yikes.

Stella McCartney sending fur protesters down her Winter 2020 Collection dressed in animal costumes.

On top of this, new research by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) has found that 49% of 10,000 new items being sold by fast fashion companies such as Boohoo, Pretty Little Thing, Missguided, and ASOS are made from polyester, acrylic, nylon and elastance - virgin plastic. 60% of Boohoo’s women's clothing and 57% of Pretty Little Thing’s (also owned by the Boohoo Group) are made entirely from new plastics. The RSA also concluded that only 3% of clothes which contained any plastics were made of recycled plastics. Missguided head of sourcing and product technology, Paul Smith, said that the company is “proud of the progress it had made” with the brand's products being packaged in 100% recycled plastic, but what use is this when he product inside is made from virgin plastic anyway? If I’m being honest, it’s incredibly tedious to watch fashion giants give themselves a pat on the back for wrapping up new forms of plastic in recycled plastic packaging. Fashion is the second-most polluting industry in the world, after oil. If you are still creating products with new forms of plastic, your sustainability progress is not applicable and does not deserve any sort of applause. With the RSA urging the government to create a plastics tax to combat the issues surrounding microplastic consumption, this report could be a powerful influence in highlighting that plastic facilitation might need government interference.

For many, thrifting is a way to combat the issues surrounding fast fashion consumption. Though thrift shopping is considered a sustainable practice, it is unethical when you consider how over-saturated and gentrified it has become. Its sustainable benefits include reduced energy consumption, air pollution, mountains of landfill space and trashing of the ocean, but now fast fashion is infiltrating its stores: “people often justify their careless consumption habits by donating their garments to thrift stores when they are no longer in style. While in an ideal world this would be a fantastic option, it simply isn’t cutting it. Due to the massive amounts of donations thrift stores get daily from fast fashion lovers, only 10% of clothes are sold. The rest goes into landfills.” Over time, thrift stores have become affiliate stores of fast fashion companies due to reckless consumption habits, which, for thrift stores that are supposed to be giving people from poorer backgrounds the ability to purchase clothing that lasts a long time whilst being affordable, is detrimental to their progress. Prices of nostalgic vintage products have skyrocketed, while apps like Depop that translate thrift shopping online are now inaccessible for many working class families on the poverty line. Like a weed climbing over a blooming flower, fast fashion has quite literally destroyed its competitors.

The Independent: “What Happens to your clothes after you discard them.”

Many eco-conscious fashion consumers now know about the detrimental effects of purchasing from gentrified thrift stores, and this has led to activist groups searching for new ways of purchasing fashion without impacting mother nature. In the aforementioned OnePoll survey, 30% of participants said that despite wanting to be more sustainable, but weren’t sure what alternatives there were. Many consumers believe the pledges made from corporate businesses, but there isn’t any external verification to these claims, so they should be taken with a pinch of salt. Rather than looking for guidance from businesses, individuals should start making their own decisions about how they want to improve their environmental impact. For example, fast fashion sustainability activism has started to include a demand for repair and tailoring services, as clothes that fit better will last longer and be of greater value. Personally, I save money by purchasing a smaller wardrobe of items made from better resources and materials. Reusing and keeping products is the most sustainable approach, as product transportation costs a lot of energy. And this way, you can experiment with creating multiple DIY looks from a few garments! I’m not afraid to purchase shoes that are made from leather, as I know from personal experience that vegan leather doesn’t last remotely as long as real leather. In knowing this, I purchase a pair of expensive luxury leather shoes that will keep for multiple years, but the material of which can be used to create something else even after the shoes are worn out. In most cases, I make sure the shoes can be repaired by the brand and send them back for repairs when needed. This is sustainable and resourceful, as I’m only consuming one item for a long period of time rather than many in a short amount.

It isn’t all bad though, with many luxury brands converting their production to more sustainable models. According to Harper's Bazaar, online fashion platforms like Net-a-Porter, Matches Fashion, Selfridges and Browns have all chosen to make sustainability more visible on their websites. According to Selfridges, more than 60% of its customers want to shop sustainably and 90% want to buy less, but better quality. Matches Fashion complements these statistics, with 60% of their consumers also wanting to live more sustainably. This year's G7 summit has seen a collaboration between 67 leaders and fashion retailers to create a pact to fight the climate crisis and protect biodiversity and the oceans. Fashion retailers, including the owner of Gucci, Kering, and Zara’s parent company, Inditex, have signed the Fashion Pact, which is promising considering G7’s global influence. The deal is a by-product of the backlash created by young people concerned about the fashion industry's impact on the climate crisis, and demonstrates that campaigning and activism can create positive results. Without action, the industry could account for a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2050. The UK parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee has created a report naming and shaming brands like Boohoo, JD Sports, Sports Direct, and TK Maxx, which have been slow to take action. Both the government and businesses have recognised that the public has a completely changed attitude towards sustainability and fashion, but when that recognition comes from sustainability managers within fast fashion companies, it’s difficult not to see the irony.

Many luxury retailers are embracing sustainability programmes. Farfetch recently announced a collaboration with Thrift+, an on-demand donation service for pre-owned clothes. Shoppers who order a Thrift+ x Farfetch donation bag get part of their purchase donated to charity and back to the customer as Farfetch credit. Stella McCartney, a fashion connoisseur and sustainability genius, recognises this change in fashion mentality as one which is more circular than linear: “Right now, the equivalent of one dump truck of textiles gets landfilled or burned every second, and by 2025 the clothing waste accumulated between now and then will weigh as much as today’s world population. We can’t ignore it.”

Indeed, circular fashion is our only choice moving forward. Fashion design should be an exploration of concept and impact, not about price tag and landfill. Let this be a reminder: even though the industry is working to reduce the environmental footprint of its products, we as consumers must shift our insatiable appetite for fashion consumption. It is this our spending that triggers businesses to make more and more clothes, and maybe a shift in public mindset will see the paradigm surrounding fashion reach greener pastures.