Fashion Note.21

Fast fashion is a shady business that operates underneath the veil of cheap clothes.

Fast fashion has a business structure designed to minimize time and costs. It is a copy-and-paste formula designed to maximize profits. Such practices make it impossible to create original garments. Representatives, known as scouts, go undercover to various design houses to buy popular items to take to their company and "adapt" for their customers. Adaptation is another word for copying into a low-cost option with minimal differentiation.

Fast Fashion brands often claim it's difficult to follow fashion trends without copying them. However, Zara has been sued for plagiarism multiple times. After years of litigation, Rains won an infringement case against Zara in a Danish court over two signature designs. Despite this, the fast fashion industry remains unshaken.

Hardly surprising given that more than half of all posts on social media platforms such as Instagram are related to fashion and beauty. Clothes have become a significant part of people's identity. Manufacturers study our minds to learn how to target us through pricing. We tend to consume more when prices are low, and collections are "limited." As a result, companies are abandoning traditional marketing campaigns and focusing more on influencers to sell their products.

The textile industry is the second-largest polluter in the world after oil. The more commerce there is, the more pollution there is, especially without efficient water waste filtration and cleanup technology. Under pressure, the textile industry is trying to change by embracing green fashion. However, this is often a mass-market trend to convince consumers they are buying organic and sustainable by purchasing garments made from viscose, cheap artificial silk.

In truth, viscose is wood. The process of transforming wood into fabric requires large amounts of chemicals, including CS2, which is known to cause eye diseases, infertility, and other vascular problems.

Fibers used to make fast fashion garments are produced to break down quickly, resulting in clothes that become worn and unusable- in a short time. Some fast fashion items are so cheap that they cannot be sold secondhand and are either burned or end up in a landfill.

And so it goes.