“Lizzie McGuire, you’re an outfit repeater!” -Kate Sanders from the Lizzie McGuire Movie

           Throughout pop culture and society, there is a continuous emphasis on the importance of never being seen in the same outfit twice. The fashion industry and consumer culture thrives on the concept of trends and the desire to feel as up to date as possible on these trends. History tells of Kings and Queens high up in their gold-lined castles with hoards of only the most luxurious items while everyone else had to fend for bread. In the modern day, celebrities have replaced these roles with high-end luxury clothing brands tailored for the upper class at ridiculous, mind boggling prices. Except now, a movement has countered the luxury fashion market with a more affordable option that is coined as ‘fast fashion.’ It simply refers to the mass production of the newest, most sought out garments at a cheaper price. While it might seem like a blessing, it unfortunately stems from the habit of corporations sacrificing the wellbeing of their workers and the environment for their own profit. As the world becomes more industrialized and connected, fast fashion is continuing to spread, and the implications these corporations will continue to have on the globe are detrimental with issues of stolen creativity, worker’s rights, and global warming.  Many companies are slowly turning to adapt to the new standards of fast fashion and as this practice continues to manifest itself society must address the question: is the reduced price of goods worth the practices that reward them?

Fast fashion is estimated to have started around the 1990s with the use of trendy, poor-quality clothing at a cheap price for new big retail companies to be able to sell more products. These corporations were able to follow trends closely while producing these items at a rate that no other retail chains could compete at a comically cheaper price. As a result, these companies were able to grow exponentially in ways never seen before. A once small Spanish brand, ZARA, for example has become a global fashion giant with two thousand stores across eighty-eight countries, outselling many of their rival brands.  A socioeconomic researcher, Christoper Alliot, claims, “ZARA launches sixty-five thousand products per year which equals two hundred models per day and every month they replace more than three quarters of their collection, competitors will do this like every four to five months” (DW Documentaries et al.). 

 To understand the impact of these brands, it is first vital to understand the societal standards that have laid the basis for this ever growing industry. Throughout history the most sought out items have always been the flashiest and newest things on the market; except, the only people who have been able to afford these trends are the wealthy. Today this is still a truth in a global perspective since the ability to mass consume fast fashion is the result of privilege; a privilege that is usually reserved for the middle and upper classes of the western nations. The United States specifically feeds into consumer culture with traditions such as ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber-Monday’ causing customer flurries to stores and websites nationwide. With the pandemic however, Americans have been spending more than ever before through online shopping with a grossing income for retail at “$888.5 billion in sales in 2020, up 35.2% from 2019, the largest year-to-year increase of any industry in 2020” (Census Gov). 

In this current age, the biggest superpower that fast fashion brands have is the internet. Shopping malls and stores across the country are facing bankruptcy as the world shifts to an ever expanding online consumer market. Online shopping is much more convenient than shopping in person; consumers can get what they want with just the click of a button. Studies have also shown that when buying something, we as humans get a dopamine rush, an intense feeling of accomplishment; however, “with online shopping you get that dopamine hit when it arrives too, and when you open it, so it kind of this double benefit” (Lay). The brand SHEIN has used this dopamine to their advantage by basing their brand on just the internet through extreme hype mostly being advertised through the social media network, TikTok. They use advertisements by celebrities such as Katy Perry, Addison Rae, Khloe Kardashian, and Lil Nas X to market their brand to a wider audience. SHEIN and other fast fashion brands are widely approved and bought, so much so that it’s starting to seem like the muffled opposition is just the opinions of political extremists. 

For the average fast fashion brand to have tens of thousands of items on their website at any given time, it’s easy to wonder how the designers at these brands are able to come up with so many ideas. Well, the answer is pretty simple: they just don’t. Designers for these fast fashion brands have to keep up with the latest trends at such a pace that they don’t have time to come up with their own authentic pieces. Former Zara Designer, Marine Olacia, admitted to DW documentaries that during her time at Zara, she and other designers would go to high-end boutiques to catch up on the latest trends and then try to copy them closely, but not closely enough to be sued for copyright. However a small business, Rains, fought back, the founder, Daniel Brix Hesselager, says that through private investigators in China,  “two factories confirmed that they were instructed through a production agent that they were to make this same jacket for this customer Zara in Spain” (DW Documentaries et al.).  While Zara was found guilty for the crime in the spring of 2020, this case still holds as an important milestone in showing how these fast fashion companies are erasing the work of these companies. As these designs are easily accessible to be stolen by these big retailers, it becomes harder for fashion to continue to thrive. Instead as seen through Tiktok, a bleak future awaits ‘microtrends’ which are trends that are mass produced and bought in just a few weeks before dying out. Thrift stores across the country are already seeing how these microtrends will continue to deteriorate the quality and usefulness of used clothing shopping.

In 2015, a woman in Michigan unpacked a pair of little girl’s underwear for her  daughter to find a horrifying message that read, “Help me: Plz.” On the back of the small cardboard cutout, the note claimed to be the Phillipines from a girl named MayAnn with a phone number in scripted below. Fast fashion companies will go to extreme measures to ensure that the conditions within their manufacturing companies are hidden. The company SHEIN has become famous within the fashion supplying world for refusing to explain where exactly they source their products from, denying the accusations of child labor and unethical working conditions. However, according to a Business Insider article, United Kingdom broadcasting Channel 4 and The i newspaper were able to go undercover at two factories in China that supply clothing for the fast fashion brand. In one factory, “workers get a base salary of 4,000 yuan per month — the equivalent of roughly $556 — to make at least 500 pieces of clothing per day” (Jackson). To uptake the high demand for products by the brand, workers reported working eighteen hour days on a regular basis, seven days a week, with the only break being one day off the entire month. SHEIN has grown to  a “$100 billion valuation in April, more than H&M and Zara combined” (Jackson). Yet as time continues, it has become more and more apparent what they do to make sure that those sought-out products they sell for just a few dollars are from the grueling sacrifices of exploited workers, not their brand. 

The fashion industry emits almost two billion tons of carbon dioxide each year which is more than the international flight industry. Except, most of the damage done to the earth by fast fashion is from how consumers get rid of these items. Many Americans feel better when giving their clothes to thrift stores with “the average American throws away an estimated 81 pounds of clothes and textile, nearly five times more than 1980” (Lay). Clothing in the current age is worse quality through fast fashion and easily deteriorates; this makes it harder for thrift stores to sell these clothes so most of these items will end up in landfills across the world. In Ghana there’s a famous market, Accara, that gets almost fifteen million used textiles from thrift stores in western countries. Forty percent of clothes transported there are deemed useless and end up flooding landfills that are plaguing Ghana’s beaches and lands. Solomon Noi,  a man trying to save Ghana from waste catastrophe, “I’m not sure they’ve ever been conscious to ask, where is the final destination of that thing they are discarding, but if they come here, like you’ve come, and you see the practicality for yourself, then they will know that, no, we better take care of these things within our country and not ship that problem … to other people'' (Besser). 

Throughout the fight against fast fashion, the question has persisted on: how can the average American avoid fast fashion? As inflation continues to break records, it is almost impossible to truly buy from sustainable brands since most have soaring prices. Many activists argue that consumers can go to thrift stores, but this can only go to an extent. People deserve to have the clothes they like and they deserve to feel comfortable in their own body. Even though thrift store shopping is becoming more popularized, there is still a stigma that surrounds thrift store shopping. The one thing that some people have a hard time understanding is that the average working class Americans are not contributing to this problem; owning a few pieces of fast fashion is okay. The problem comes from those who mass consume these brands by wearing certain pieces only once or twice, if they even wear them at all.  If a shirt costs five dollars from SHEIN and it’s only worn once then that cost five dollars for one wear, but if a shirt costs fifty dollars from Levi and was worn a hundred times then that item was fifty cents each time it was worn. The best thing to remember when looking at clothes or a personal wardrobe is to ask: how many times will I really wear that?

The world is continuing to deal with the long lasting effects of fast fashion on society and the globe with these corporations stealing from small businesses, violations of worker rights, and environmental destruction. It seems that fast fashion is here to stay, but every little thing that is done to prevent it has bigger effects than imaginable. Online, there are ways to find out how sustainable and ethical different brands are when looking for clothes.  However at the end of the day, the best outfits are the ones that we already own. There’s nothing wrong with being an outfit repeater; in fact, I aspire to be one.

for more info, look at these sources:

Besser, Linton. “Dead white man's clothes: How fast fashion is turning parts of Ghana into toxic landfill.” ABC, 11 August 2021, abc.net.au/news/2021-08-12/fast-fashion-turning-parts-ghana-into-toxic-landfill/100358702. Accessed 5 December 2022.

Census Gov. “U.S. Retail Sales Top $5,570 Billion.” U.S. Census Bureau, 13 January 2022, census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/annual-retail-trade-survey.html. Accessed 2 December 2022.

DW Documentaries, et al., directors. Fast Fashion-The Shady World Of Cheap Clothing. JAVA Films, 2022. Youtube, youtube.com/watch?v=YhPPP_w3kNo. Accessed 22 November 2022.

Fall, Jim, director. The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Performance by Ashlie Brillault, Disney Channel, 2003. Disney +, disneyplus.com/. Accessed 15 November 2022.

Jackson, Sarah. “Shein Factory Employees Work 18-Hour Shifts, Make 4 Cents Per Garment: Report.” Business Insider, 16 October 2022, businessinsider.com/shein-factory-workers-18-hour-shifts-paid-low-wages-report-2022-10. Accessed 4 December 2022.

Lay, Jackie, director. America's Dopamine-Fueled Shopping Addiction. The Atlantic, 2019. Youtube, youtube.com/watch?v=_qWHJ29-s4U. Accessed November 2022.

Park, Jane. “Detroit woman finds "Help Me" note in underwear.” 10News.com, 27 September 2015, 10news.com/entertainment/trending/local-woman-finds-mysterious-note-in-pack-of-underwear-connected-to-family-of-issac-mizrahi-092715. Accessed 4 December 2022.

Wang, Evelyn. “How Fast Fashion Became Faster — and Worse for the Earth.” The New York Times, 22 June 2022, nytimes.com/2022/06/22/learning/how-fast-fashion-became-faster-and-worse-for-the-earth.html. Accessed 22 November 2022.