Over the next few months, I will be writing a series of blog posts under the title 'Fast fashion, a debate that cannot be won'. This was inspired by a Video Essay by content creator Broey Deschanel (2021). Fast fashion and sustainability are contentious and current issues and thus, this discussion will be split into a few different posts as it requires much thought. As I do with most of my posts, the discussion will be centred around class in relation to the ‘fast fashion’ debate. Firstly, I think it is important to define fast fashion.
Image from: The Business of Fashion
What really is ‘fast fashion’?
“An approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers” – Merriam Webster.
It could easily seem like a great solution to the historic elitism of the fashion industry at first – suddenly everyone can be on trend without spending a fortune. You no longer need to be a member of the upper classes to enjoy the creativity of fashion.
What this definition by Merriam Webster fails to disclose is how this approach is able to come to fruition. The ‘fast fashion’ industry relies on the Global South to produce its garments, which makes sense given that most Western countries now live in post-industrial economies. The Global South are now those who produce the garments we see in popular high-street stores like Primark, Zara and H&M (to name a few). This is of course, incredibly exploitative, as companies listed above rely on poor working conditions, minimal workers rights, limited child labour laws to make their profit. They keep their costs low by paying their garment workers as little as 3 cents an hour (The World Counts) so that they can sell clothes at extremely low prices (see Missguided £1 bikini).
Image from: The Global Citizen - Women Garment Workers in Vietnam.
Micro-trends
The answer to the question, how many seasons are there in a year, is '4' for most of us. However, fast fashion has changed the seasons from 4 to 50 a year through what is called ‘micro-trend cycles’. It is no longer enough to have trends; we must now update our wardrobes every few weeks to stay ‘on-trend’.
Female Empowerment? Well…Who are these workers?
Around 80% of garment workers are women (Labour Behind the Label). This is of course an overwhelming majority and is linked to gender discrimination. I think this is important to remember, as the taglines for many ‘fast fashion’ companies, such as Missguided, are said to be about ‘female empowerment or “babe power” as Missguided puts it (Wood, 2019). How can these companies promote a message of female empowerment, when they are consistently underpaying women to work under dangerous working conditions? However, the marketing strategy works, it gives an illusion that the way to female empowerment is by offering fashionable clothing at a low price. This trend suggests a shift to Liberal Feminist thinking or ‘choice Feminism’, and an individualistic way of looking at female empowerment against the patriarchy. But it is a very narrow one, that does not consider the collective effects on other women.
Image taken from: Maverick Youth (Medium)
This is especially harrowing when learning of the numerous reports of sexual harassment and abuse that women garment-workers suffer from, at risk of being fired if they do not engage in sexual acts with their male managers (Labour Behind the Label). This is in keeping with Radical feminism’s approach to male violence against women as a systemic issue rather than ‘a few bad apples’ (Walby, 1990) and it is being perpetrated in the ‘fast fashion’ industry. Knowing the dark side makes the ‘female empowerment’ marketing tropes of the industry seem insulting, mocking of genuine struggles of women in a patriarchal and capitalist society.
How does race play a part in this?
I hope that this has introduced the ‘fast fashion’ industry with a nuanced approach. Not only is there intersectionality of class and gender in this debate, but also with race and neo-colonial undertones to this approach to fashion. This will be discussed in the next part of this series.
Bibliography
Deschanel, B. 2021. 'Why No One Wins the Fast Fashion Debate' [Youtube]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT6Hwx20m5M [Accessed: 17/02/2022]
Ferguson, M. L. 2010. 'Choice feminism and the fear of politics’, Perspectives on Politics, 8(1), pp. 247–253. doi: 10.1017/S1537592709992830.
Labour Behind the Label. No date. 'Gender'. Labourbehindthelabel.org. Available at: https://labourbehindthelabel.org/our-work/gender/ [Accessed: 17/02/2022]
The World Counts. No date. 'Sweatshop Worker Conditions'. Theworldcounts.com. Available at: https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/slavery-and-sweatshops/sweatshop-workers-conditions/story [Accessed: 17/02/2022]
Walby, S. 1990. Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wood, Z. 2019. How a £1 bikini revealed the changing shape of fashion The Guardian 22 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/jun/22/one-pound-bikini-missguided-fast-fashion-leaves-high-street-behind [Accessed: 17/02/2022]
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