The Fast Fashion Impact
October 4, 2020
So what is fast fashion? Fast fashion is a type of mass produced clothing made by big companies that are very similar to new fashion trends that come from Fashion Week. This type of clothing can be considered knock-off fashion.
So that clears up the basic explanation of fast fashion, but you may be asking what’s Fashion Week? Fashion Week is a 4 week long fashion event that takes place in New York, London, Paris, and Milan, and there’s a week in each city. Some top designers such as Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Christian Siriano, Michael Kors, and more create big runways during fashion shows to show off the new clothing they created in the last year or so.
Buying fast fashion has some benefits to it. Fast fashion is usually very affordable, which means trendy fashion can reach everywhere and to almost all groups. That means young people and people who have a lower spending budget can still shop affordably and have the clothes they want. It’s definitely a good way to buy new clothes for cheap! It’s also available all over the world, there’s usually a clothing store that participates in the fast fashion industry in every town in the U.S. For example the local Wal-Mart in Pahrump, NV sells two clothing brands that are called Time and Tru and No Boundaries. These brands are two of the many fast fashion clothing brands out there and they’re sold in every Wal-Mart in the U.S.
Although buying fast fashion has some pretty good benefits, the downsides to it are pretty notable as well. Did you know that buying mostly fast fashion can actually cost you more down the line? Because it’s so cheap to buy it also means that it’s cheaply made, so it tears, fades, and gets ruined quicker then clothes that cost a bit more to buy. You’ll end up buying more fast fashion over a shorter amount of time, which can really add up and hurt your bank account more than it would if you bought a few nicely made (but on the pricier side) items of clothing.
Fast fashion is also not very good for the environment. Because cheap clothing can only be worn for so long, the consumer will eventually throw it out when it becomes unwearable. For example if they throw out an old fast fashion shirt they can’t wear anymore into the trash it’ll go straight to the landfill, which then causes more pollution. There’s around 26 billion pounds of clothing and textiles added to the landfill every year according to Eleanor Goldberg from the Huffington Post. That means a whole lot of pollution. Almost all fabric fibers are created by using fossil fuels, so all the clothes that are thrown out to the landfill will not decay for an extremely long time, which again leads to more pollution.
In summary fast fashion can be good, but it’s a short term gain for long term pain. Cheap and trendy clothes seem almost too good to be true and that might be right. The world’s becoming more and more polluted everyday because of fast fashion and in these past couple of years the mass production of it has only slowed down a little. Ultimately it’s your choice where you choose to buy your clothing from but if you decide to slow down with buying from big fast fashion companies there’s plenty of sustainable clothing brands that you can support out there, but the cost may be a breaking point. The pros and cons of buying fast fashion are definitely neck and neck ass of right now, we’ll just have to wait and see how long fast fashion can truly hold up.
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