Over the past decade, fashion and textile communities have voiced concerns about fast fashion. Growing more abundant, fashion follows a business model of quickly producing trendy clothes within a few months, or even days, using cheap products and abusing labor. Then, after specific clothing trends phase out, many of the clothes are thrown out or donated by consumers, just to be replaced with the next fast fashion items. The cycle continues, and the world constantly fills up with more and more discarded clothing.Â
Fast fashion and overconsumption are everywhere. On social media, all you can see these days is people and companies trying to sell you something. They’re marketed as clothes that you need, want, or would be incomplete without. The reality is that you don’t need most of the things marketed to you. At the end of the day, it’s all just stuff. There are only 365 days a year; there’s no need to buy a new wardrobe every season, or have new outfits for every event. Clothes can be reused, rewashed, or even made into something else.
Gen Z has shown an interest in avoiding fast fashion and shopping at thrift stores as a way to fight the hustling fashion industry. “Thrift hauls” have overtaken TikTok and other social media, showcasing influencers with huge bundles of great finds that they were able to snag at the thrift. However, is it really considered sustainable if you’re constantly buying clothes from thrift or consignment stores, just to donate them in a few months? When done in excess, splurging on large amounts of secondhand clothing every week undermines the true purpose and effectiveness of sustainability.
While it’s true that thrifting has a greater impact on lowering carbon footprints as a substitute for buying retail, many of the items donated to the thrift do not even make it to the shelves due to the surplus of goods already available. For example, Goodwill keeps “good” items that will sell for higher prices and rejects items that won’t. Thrift stores have historically served those from lower economic classes who need accessible clothing resources. Now, many thrift stores have inflated their prices due to the increase in consumers shopping there, pushing out the demographic that genuinely needs thrifted clothing.
Furthermore, the rapid overproduction of the textile industry is polluting our environment. One shirt uses hundreds of gallons of water. According to Earth.org, 85% of all textiles end up in a dump within one year. Therefore, most of the clothing you’ve bought and gotten rid of in your lifetime has ended up in a landfill. Not to mention, the impact of forced labor and child labor that all these fast fashion brands depend on to make cheap goods quickly. They pay them next to nothing, make laborers work overtime, and even endanger them by cutting corners in factories. Overall, the impact of creating these clothing items is devastating.Â
The conflicting reality of fast fashion consumption is this: no one wants to give up shopping.
It’s more difficult than you think. Most retail stores are considered fast fashion brands, regardless of how much you spend per item. A lot of people like to throw around the phrase, “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism,” and while that statement may be true, it can’t be used to justify excessive shopping. To truly protect ourselves from overconsumption and protect the environment, we must learn to be uncomfortable with the inconvenience it will cause. In the world we live in today, this seems impossible, given how dependent we are on the convenience of goods being readily available. Real ethical consumption would mean limiting your shopping as much as possible.
No, you don’t need a new going-out outfit; the one you wore last week looks just as good. No, you don’t need to try that new lip gloss from Sephora when you already own seven others collecting dust in your makeup bag. No, you don’t need to throw out old clothes; try cutting them up into cleaning rags to get some use out of them, or give them to your friends. There are many ways to protect yourself and the environment from overconsumption of fast fashion.