Listen, I don’t judge people for shopping fast fashion. I get it. Sometimes we need to order something on a time crunch, or frankly, we just don’t have the money to invest in sustainable clothing. But I do judge the glorification of fast fashion, e.g., massive fast fashion hauls that have gained popularity on TikTok.
If you’ve never heard of or seen a haul before, it’s basically a video where people show off the clothes they’ve recently purchased. I admit, they are fun to watch. I mean, who doesn’t love to see what other people buy? But at their core, hauls are usually synonymous with a large number of purchases, mostly from fast fashion brands like SHEIN and Zara. This flaunting of frequent fast fashion purchases is essentially an entertaining way to push consumerist culture onto an audience.
Let’s talk about who makes these hauls for a second. Fashion hauls go viral all the time, racking up tens of thousands of views. When TikTok creators get this kind of engagement on a video and realize this is what their audience wants to see, they are inclined to post more. This results in a continuous cycle of shopping and posting, all to please followers. Constantly being bombarded with clothing hauls on the For You Page has created a problematic culture in which buying new clothes every week has become the norm.
This heightened consumer culture has impacted trends as well. It’s impossible for brands to keep up with trends because the TikTok trend cycle updates constantly. And that’s where fast fashion brands come in. Brands like Zara turn out new clothes about twice a week, feeding perfectly into the continuous TikTok trend cycle.
The bottom line is: haul culture on TikTok fuels the fast fashion industry and needs to change. Social media influencers have pushed the notion that quantity trumps quality. It’s normal to shop every once in a while and pick up a few items, but no one needs to redo their entire wardrobe every week. At the end of the day, consumer culture only harms our wallets and the environment.