Monday & Thursday, Hot Off The Press
Zara seems to be every broke college girl’s ticket into “high fashion.” Color trends, style trends, pattern trends, Zara is always ahead of the game and cranks out designs faster than a blink of the eye. Former employees at Zara shared that the store receives shipments of new designs twice a week, Monday and Thursday.
Zara is the ring leader of the fast fashion industry. The term “fast fashion” was coined by the New York Times to describe Zara’s business mission to bring designs from the design stage to the rack within 15 days. Since the opening of Zara’s doors in 1975, in Spain, even cheaper and faster alternatives have taken over the fast fashion industry. Clothing is changing at a quicker rate than the price of crypto, and what ends up on the racks grows more and more unpredictable. While ‘fast fashion’ is always talked about in the conversation of the environment, the waste that comes out of the rapid rate of novel designs has an impact on the economy, too.
The classic four seasons are changing to 52 seasons and consumers have the drive and desire to constantly shop. While the demand for more designs and more clothing is growing, consumers lack an understanding of the impact of their spending on the clothing industry. While people are constantly buying, there is leakage and money is being wasted. More than $500 billion is lost each year due to a lack of reuse and recycling textiles and fabrics.
The rate at which new clothes are being sent out has doubled in the past 15 years yet not even 1% of textiles are being recycled into clothing. The world is slowly getting polluted by wasted fabric and ‘fast fashion’ needs to be brought back to a more circular model, yet there is no doubt growth in the fashion industry due to the nature of fast fashion. The industry expects fast fashion to reach $713 billion in 2022. Although the industry is growing in dollar signs, there are detrimental losses. There are losses in the environment. There are losses in the ethics of the workforce. There are losses that could halt the ever-growing industry. People will continue to buy too much. Although people buy much they don’t keep most clothing. According to The Atlantic, Americans send 10.5 million tons of clothing to landfills every year. Eventually, landfills and the environment will react in a way that the economy can not induce any more hope.
