Fast fashion is inexperienced clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends.
The average person buys 68 new articles of clothing whereas 12 new articles were bought in 1980. For women, it is 64 items that are only worn 3 times before being discarded. Clothes made in the fast fashion process doesn’t last long
Fast fashion stores include Zara, Topshop, FashionNova and H&M. There are typically four stages to the fashion process; Design, Sourcing, Manufacturing and Distributing. This process takes about 21 months. However, the backbone of Zara’s structure is known as Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM). QRM is a companywide strategy to cut lead times in all phases of manufacturing and office operations. It can bring products to the market quickly. QRM shortens design as designs are taken from the runway. Instead of sourcing Zara keeps materials on hand. Then shortens manufacturing by getting cheap labour. Distributing is made shorter by having an effective travel system and they are distributing it to their own stores. This takes about 4 months.
There are calls for fast fashion to be illegal due to the copying of the fashion from the runway. The copying is legal because knockoffs are not counterfeits.
Studies have shown we only keep garments half as long as we used to. Fast fashion is proving detrimental to the environment. In 2015 textile production created more emissions than all of the international flights and maritime shipping combined. Synthetic fabrics; polyester, nylon and spandex use 342million barrels of oil a year. Viscos, another fabric, is 33% of it is made from the ancient or threatened forest. 70% of the wood harvested to make viscos is dumped or incinerated.
In America, the average person throws away 80lbs (36kg) of clothes per year. A salvation army collection throws away 18 tons of unwanted clothes every three days. In developing countries those clothes are mounting up in landfills, 87% of clothes donated are incinerated or in landfills. In Britain, more than 300,000 tons of waste end up in landfills every year.
In order to tackle this issue experts say that people should wear their clothes longer, only 20% of clothes are worn regularly. Companies have also been doing their bit for example rent the runway, which is online and in stores where customers can rent items of clothing which allow them to stay up to date with the latest trends and encourages recycling. Another company helping with the longevity of their clothes are Patagonia whose tagline and philosophy are to buy once buy well they offer mobile mending of clothes and in-store mending.