The Dangerous World of Fast Fashion

The industry is facing a challenge

The emergence if the so-called fast fashion provides consumers with cheap and fashionable products. But problems are becoming un-ignorable. The fashion industry is the second largest polluting industry and creates a row of problems in its countries of production. After the collapse of the garment factory Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013, this became public to a wider audience and a media discussion started. Still, after all these little change has happened.

What is Fast Fashion?

The term Fast Fashion refers to business model with a quick response in production and a highly rationalized supply chain management. This makes possible a short time span between a garment’s design and its sales in store. The goal for companies is to be able to change goods as fast as possible with new products coming in frequently to the retail stores. This leads to impulsive buying behavior on the consumer side, because it is always unclear for how long a product will be available for purchasing.

A Women’s Industry

The fashion industry is unique in the case, that it is an industry mainly targeting women — while made by women. For most women in countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, working in garment factories is an opportunity to gain control over their lives by making their own living, despite their discontent and the inhuman conditions in a lot of these factories. Often, there is just no alternative for them.

Transforming the dirty business

The current fashion industry is a dirty business, causing waste and problem for workers and environment: polluted rivers, poisoned soil and an increased rate of illness through chemical usage.

Clothing is not only a necessity. It affects our emotions, our mood and takes part in how we communicate in the social world. Fashion, therefore, can be seen as a representation of our inner self to the outside world.

With our clothing, we can present an image of ourselves and certain meanings to others. That is why we tend to constantly enhance our image and looks through clothing. Changing fashion trends enable us to constantly change and reinvent us

That is why, in times of social media, people get more and more enthusiastic about fashion and ever faster emerging trends.

We need shifts and changes in all stages of production: Improving the working conditions, reducing pollution and waste creation are perhaps the most urgent.

Our Option: Circular economy

The model of a circular economy has been highly discussed for some years now. It acknowledges the issues the industry is facing and considers the finite nature of resources. As a rejection of the current, unsustainable linear model, it aims to stop the sheer endless creation of waste and pollution, imposing changes already in the design process. The circular model exceeds the ambition of merely selling products, instead selling service and value.

Besides only blaming the industry, we need to change our buying behavior. We need to re — discover long term relationships to the products we purchase.

Sustainable Fashion

By making more informed and considers purchasing decisions and as far as possible preferring sustainable products, a deeper value can be attached to a product. And if a garment is more appreciated, it will probably be worn more and better cared for.

Credits:

Global Fashion Agenda

LIFE Photo Collection