Fast fashion cheap fashion

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COLLOQUIUM PAPER AREA OF STUDY AND WRITE UP FAST FASHION CHEAP FASHION By Krishna gupta Page 1

Transcript of Fast fashion cheap fashion

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COLLOQUIUM PAPER AREA OF

STUDY AND WRITE UP

FAST FASHION CHEAP FASHION

By Krishna gupta

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CONTENT

Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………………3 Introduction & Objective………………………………………………………….4 Recent Scenario………………………………………………………………………..5 History………………………………………………………………………………………6-15 Facts of Fast Fashion……………………………………………………………….16-23 Advantage & Disadvantage of Fast Fashion…………………………….24-29 The effects of Fast fashion………………………………………………………30-36 Plans to reduce the Fast Fashion trend……………………………………37-38 American Situation………………………………………………………………….39-40 Case study on USA market……………………………………………………….41--46 Survey Questioners………………………………………………………………….47-48 Survey Analysis………………………………………………………………………..49-52 Inferences and Suggestion……………………………………………………….53 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….54 References……………………………………………………………………………….55

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I, Krishna Kumar Gupta, of Fashion and Lifestyle Accessories, semester VII, 9/1141 would

like to take this opportunity to thank my subject faculty Mr. Aravendan for his excellent

support and constant guidance throughout this module of colloquium paper. I would also

thanks to all those who have helped me directly or indirectly during the module. Finally I

thank NIFT, Chennai for providing us with the necessary infrastructure and facilities that

helped us in the successful completion of our final product.

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INTRODUCTION

In this module colloquium paper we have to discuss and pick one issue or problem prevailing in the fashion industry and as the word colloquium itself mean gathering information from various sources for discussion or an assembly for conference. At last we have to document the whole matters and discussion together.

OBJECTIVE

FAST FASHION

OBJECTIVE • To study the history of fast fashion • To know the advantage and disadvantage of fast fashion

• To know the effect of fast fashion on society and environment

• Finally to come up with suggestions that or inference whether fast fashion is acceptable by

society or not as fast fashion is like a fast food.

Research Methodology • Explorative method • Descriptive method

• Case study

• Survey method

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RECENT SECNARIO

My area of study is how fashion is changing so rapidly and how does it affect the retail market throughout the world. Due to the frequent change in the fashion trend in very quick time succession the garments and product are available in a very affordable price. Retailers like including Mango, H&M, Topshop, Primark and Uniqlo, who have wasted no time in tapping into younger consumers' ever- shorter attention spans, and lifestyle changes like mobile communications, the internet, and social networks.

One of the biggest retail success stories of the past decade has been the phenomenal rise of fast fashion, a shopping trend spurred by rapidly changing styles and the ready availability of cheap brands. In a session entitled 'Is fast fashion killing fashion?' at last week's IAF World Apparel Convention in Hong Kong, delegates were in left in no doubt the concept has forced the industry to change.

The undoubted pioneer of the fast fashion concept is Spanish clothing retailer Zara, with its 4,780 stores in 77 countries and a formula for success that relies on the regular creation and rapid replenishment of small batches of new goods.

With new lines being dropped into shops every 4-8 weeks (or twice a week in the case of Zara), it's a recipe that ensures customers can always find new products every time they visit the store, as well as encouraging more visits and more frequent purchases because items are in limited supply.

And it's a blueprint that has been emulated by numerous other retailers including Mango, H&M, Topshop, Primark and Uniqlo, who have wasted no time in tapping into younger consumers' ever- shorter attention spans, and lifestyle changes like mobile communications, the internet, and social networks.

The growth of fast retailing "seems to be phenomenal," Arvind Singhal, CEO of Indian consultancy Technopak told delegates at last week's IAF World Apparel Convention in Hong Kong. Even during the recession Zara owner Fast Retailing booked revenues up 29% from 2008-09, followed by Primark (up 24%) and H&M (up 19%) - figures that would be "spectacular, even at the best of times."

In contrast, traditional brand names like Liz Claiborne are struggling, while upmarket retailers like Nordstrom and Saks have been lowering their price points in order to compete.

It also seems unlikely there will be any let-up in fast fashion's advance across the globe. "Initial reports suggest it will have even more impact in new markets like China and India than could ever have been imagined," Singhal says.

As evidenced by the fact Zara has opened 44 stores in China since 2006. And in India, where it made its first foray earlier this year, the retailer achieved a turnover of $2.7m in its first two days of opening.

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HISTORTY OF FAST FASHION

FROM RAGS TO RICHES TO RAGS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE RISE OF FAST

FASHION

For a woman who loves fashion as much as I do, I absolutely loathe shopping. Sifting through the

retail dregs; overpriced, high-end department stores; designer sample sales strewn with trampled

clothes; trendy discount retailer racks with garments falling apart on the hangers; outlet stores

overflowing with misshapen rejects; and smelly second hand stores make me itch.

”Manolo Madness” from Flypaper

This is hardly what I would consider the path to glamor that I imagine as I turn the glossy pages

of Vogue. And while I wish I could just stitch and alter my wardrobe into one-of-a-kind originals,

as I am trained by profession to do, the irony of it all is that as a fashion designer I hardly have

the time to make repairs to my wardrobe, much less actually sew anything for myself. A girl’s

gotta pay the rent, after all. This plight of the modern woman – not enough time, too little money,

and seemingly too high standards – is a pathetically malfunctioning equation. But perhaps it’s

not that my standards that are too high. Maybe it’s just a sign that the times are indeed changing.

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The infamous Marie Antoinette, who was well known for her taste in ridiculous hats and

hairdo’s and expensive wardrobes. Image via Marie Antoinette, Sony Pictures.

There was a time in history when beautiful clothes could only be acquired by members of the

Royal Court. Only the extremely wealthy could afford fine clothes. The middle class might have

been able to painstakingly make their own out of less fine fabrics and trims. But homemade,

roughly-hewn rags were all that was available to the poor.

Girls learning sewing in home ec. Image via 3-b-s.eu

Thank goodness this all changed at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when the sewing

machine made fashion available to more people. As it became a common appliance in

households of average means, like my grandmother’s in the 1920′s and 30′s, women were

inspired to get creative and could make their own designs for themselves and their families, even

on modest budgets. This marked a time in history that began to blur class distinctions, and

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women in the lower and middle classes began to rise in the ranks of style within society,

especially if they had a taste and a talent for sewing.

Women hit the the workforce. Image via lexydeg

WWII marked a new kind of revolution for women, the right to join the workforce in place of

their husbands who were off at war, and fashion once again changed. Women liked this new

sense of equality in the workforce and especially the keys to financial freedom. Time for home

sewing projects became more sparse as climbing the ladder and acquiring spending power slowly

overtook women’s desire to manage home economics during the next several decades. In this

time, the fashion industry boomed to meet consumer demand and provide more options for this

new force of female consumers.

Fast forward to today.

Most female consumers are busy running businesses and households simultaneously and many

have little knowledge of sewing, which sadly takes away any skill to recognize quality in

craftsmanship. Combined with the fashion industry’s ability to attach aspirational dreams to

meaningless stuff through marketing, women are generally willing to accept any item with a label

they recognize as long as it proves affordable to buy. Design and original taste has been replaced

by owning the most recognizable bling. And fast fashion, like fast food, has signaled the death of

style and taste for the masses.

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Insane closet behavior. Image via Apartment Therapy

The fashion industry has become a multi-billion dollar business in which entrepreneurs and

investors look for ways to cut costs while increasing revenue for shareholders. The best way to do

that is to produce and sell huge quantities of product to a mass market. This equation of making

high volumes require an enormous investment which increases the risk immensely, a risk that

most shareholders would not be comfortable knowing about. Which means that the buck gets

passed to reduce the risk while keeping the profit margin steady. Who does it get passed to? Us.

The consumers who pay the same price for half the quality; the workers, who have to do twice as

much work for the same pay; and the environment, which is heavily fertilized to yield greater

crops or dumped upon to avoid expensive waste removal processes. Sound familiar? Oddly, the

fashion retail recession appears to be coinciding with the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008.

We come full circle to the era of Marie Antoinette, where only the richest of the rich can afford

and experience the quality and taste of haute design and couture, while the vast majority of the

population swims in low quality rags with fancy tags that will shortly only be worthy of garbage

dumps. This epidemic of “trashion” is now spreading throughout the world, to developing nations

that want the same standards that America and other westernized nations have set, leaving the

knowledge and traditions of weaving, spinning, and cultural costume to the wayside to be

forgotten.

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“I think we are all secretly artists. It’s just a matter of allowing yourself to see.” – Fay Leshner.

Image via Stylelikeu.com

But throughout this history of mass culture, there have always been rebels, men and women, who

defy the system with their originality and creativity, regardless of their economic status. Marked

by their burning desire to express themselves and their joie de vivre, this counter culture of

personal style mavens take the less-traveled path to acquiring their wardrobes. These people look

for the alternatives to shopping at H&M, the Gap, or, god forbid, Abercrombie & Fitch.

Whether they save their dimes to buy that one coveted item from their favorite local couturier, or

they have maintained the knowledge to sew and spend their precious free time doing so, or

perhaps insist upon searching through vintage and second hand stores for one of a kind, original

pieces, the way art and antique collectors might, they have found ways around limitations set by

economics or a limited industrial selection.

This does require somewhat of an effort, but then again, so does making enough money to pay off

last month’s credit card bills. The effort is well spent because these stylish individuals appear to

be having the kind of fun with their clothing that many of us cannot even imagine. They stand out

in a crowd without being celebrities harassed by paparazzi; confusing and criss-crossing all class,

social, and economic lines, and meanwhile looking rather jaw-droppingly fabulous.

Fast Fashion gathered pace from the end of the 1990’s when brands began to look for new

ways to increase profits. Globalisation had grown rapidly in the 80’s and 90’s and paved the

way for value and mid price brands to shift the bulk of their production to the developing

world where labour and overheads cost a fraction of those in Europe.

High street brands were coming under increasing pressure from supermarket chains

developing their own lines of low cost clothing. Initially they sold items like simple T shirts

and underwear, however the move of George Davies from Next to Asda signalled a new era

for supermarket clothing and a move into high fashion, low cost items.

Traditionally, most fashion labels have produced two main collections a year, spring/summer

and autumn/winter. However, in order to keep the customer focused on the high street, High

Street brands needed to create some interest within their stores mid season.

Certain companies re-examined their supply chains and developed a system which several

other brands then followed. They segmented their supply chain, keeping basic items

manufactured in the far east but brought the production of the more high fashion items closer

to home.

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This had several benefits. Firstly it decreased their financial outlay on forward orders and

also allowed them to make decisions about the fashion items much later in the season. This

added flexibility and ensured they were able to react to the market quickly and deliver ‘on-

trend’ items within their stores.

This model could then be developed through the use of new technological systems which

linked all parts of the supply chain together. This new system allowed for the development of

‘just in time’ manufacturing and has now developed to a stage where they are able to turn a

garment around from drawing to shop floor in just two weeks.

Consumers reacted positively to this trend which in turn has resulted in the widespread

speeding up of fashion.

Factory workers are feeling the effects of this. A Sri Lankan factory owner interviewed by

Oxfam demonstrates the pressure they are now under; “Last year the deadlines were about 90

days… [This year] the deadlines for delivery are about 60 days. Sometimes even 45… They

have drastically come down.”

‘Instead of 40,000 garments being manufactured across four styles for 20 weeks at a rate of

500 per styles per week… all that is firm is the first five weeks across four styles at 500 per

style per week. This is a commitment to 10,000 garments. The remaining 30,000 is unknown.

Nor is there any promise of how many styles and at what manufacturing rate per week.’ Just

Style (2006) Purchasing trends in the fashion industry www.just-style.com

The Clean Clothes Campaign describe similar instances with garment workers in China “We

have endless overtime in the peak season and we sit working non-stop for 13 to 14 hours a

day. It’s like this every day – we sew and sew without a break until our arms feel sore and

stiff”

The increase in the amount of clothes people consume also has consequences for the

environment. More clothing is shipped and flown from the Far East to Europe than ever

before and the life cycle of these garments is decreasing.

Statistics show that on average, UK consumers send 30kg of clothing and textiles per capita

to landfill each year and that 1.2 million tonnes of clothing went to landfill in 2005 in the UK

alone. Moreover, textiles present particular problems in landfill as synthetic (man-made

fibres) products will not decompose, while woollen garments do decompose and produce

methane, which contributes to global warming

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The History of a Cheap Dress

Everywhere American consumers shop — from outlet malls to department store sales racks

— deals flourish. But where can one find the cheapest dress? “Fast fashion” purveyors like

Forever 21 and H&M are known for their low prices, high volume, and rapid turnover of

styles. It’s amazing to think that a hundred years ago, at the birth of ready-made clothing as

we know it, women would drop six hundred dollars for a Parisian knock-off.Today a

fashionable dress is cheaper than a bag of dog food. How did we get here?

In the early 1900s, the sewing machine had only been around a half a century and the

production quality and fit coming off the assembly lines needed some polishing. Decent

menswear could be bought off the rack, and men were slowly warming up to ready-made

duds. But for women there was a deep divide between high-end European fashions acquired

by the wealthy and the flimsy, flashy, of-the-moment items available to everyone else.

According to Jan Whitaker’s book Service and Style, a history of department stores, a ready-

made knockoff of a French “lingerie style” dress started at $25 ($621.50 in today’s dollars) at

Marshall Field’s in 1902. It was more feasible for the average girl to buy a ready-made

women’s suit, which started at $7.95 ($190) or, better yet, the quintessential shirtwaist, which

sold for just 39 cents ($9.34) at the turn-of-the-century. The fashion-hound of modest means

was better off making her own dresses or ordering them from the local dressmaker.

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By the 1950s, quality ready-made fashion was within the reach of the middle-

class. America’s garment industry was the envy of the world and womenswear was its

number one product. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union had almost 450,000

members and the sweatshops of the industry’s early days had been largely abolished. The

1955 Sears Catalog was a veritable wonderland of nipped-waisted frocks with Dior-inspired

voluminous skirts. Style, quality, and affordability had found a meeting point. For a

reasonable $8.95 ($72), you could order Sears’ “best acetate and rayon crepe” slim-cut dress

in black or navy blue, with a set-on bodice and detachable nylon-organdy collar. The dress

came with a rhinestone pin. Women also continued to sew athome, using a myriad of

fashionable patterns available in women’s magazines.

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A typical 1950s catalog.

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Fast forward fifty years and the price of mass-market fashion has plummeted, as the garment

industry has moved to lower wage countries. We now only make 3% of our apparel in the

United States, down from 90% in 1955. The prices of these imports are so low that we have

long since abandoned our sewing machines and deserted our dressmakers. Our clothes have

also become increasingly casual and simplified, another reason for lower price tags.

As clothes have become cheaper, our clothing consumption has gone through the roof. In

1930, the average American woman owned an average of nine outfits. Today, we each buy

more than 60 pieces of new clothing on average per year. Our closets are larger and more

stuffed than ever, as we’ve traded quality and style for low prices and trend-chasing. In the

face of these irresistible deals, our total spending on clothing has actually increased, from

$7.82 billion spent on apparel in 1950 to $375 billion today. And the discounters are reaping

the rewards. According to the latest Standard & Poor’s Industry Survey, the average

American consumer is primarily looking for value with an impulse-buy standard of quality

when they purchase clothing. As a result, H&M, Zara, and Wal-Mart — all discounters who

sell low-quality clothing — are now the most powerful clothing brands in America.

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FACTS ABOUT FAST FASHION

Flashback! Nearly four decades back - lifestyle fashion stores were all the frenzy in the

sixties where clothing retailers like Biba and Habitat offered great collection for the young

consumers. They displayed model lifestyles lines and made buyers think "which one is better

for me?" Most clothing retailers joined the league for the up and coming era of seventies like

Marks & Spencer and Mothercare followed by the major player 'Next' in the eighties, which

were largely preferred.

Meanwhile, the major Italian player 'Benetton' marched on high street with, offering colorful

designer clothing for the whole family. Their strategy resulted affirmative with noticeably

contemporary window showcase in all stores with independent units. The company was

successful in Britain, however, having a long standing in the market, they witnessed failure to

keep up pace with the accelerated high fashion pressure by the other European competitors,

which are now the known as Mango, H&M and Zara.

The rise of these competitors on high street has been witness successful because of a higher

demand for fast fashion. Styles showed in magazines and other advertorials are what people

wish to wear. Top designers have created collection extensions, which cater people who can

afford to spend their hard earned cash on triple figure. This resulted success to the affordable

collection of European fashion brands

A Swedish player, H&M offered readymade clothing stores stocked with fashionable

collection at reasonable costs. Its successful strategy was its own slogan 'fashion & quality at

the best price' innovative design, reasonably priced and competent logistics. Based in

Stockholm, a team of 100 fashion designers assures that nothing has been imitated from the

runway platforms. They are mostly inspired from street-trends, movies, magazines and

exhibitions. Impressively, the designs reach retail shelves within 2-3 weeks. H&M's high

profile designer tie-ups with Karl Lagerfield and Stella McCartney have resulted entire

collections available to the mass people at lower prices. This strategy is supported by huge

advertising campaigns, which easily compete with the major brands.

In a world of advertisements and promotions, there is one store that has made strategy to not

to spend penny on advertising, "Zara", a wing of Europe's biggest, rapidly evolving and most

triumphant fashion clothing retailers, Grupo Inditex. Other well popular stores in similar

chain are Massimo Dutti, Bershka and Pull and Bear. Inditex operates business via more than

two thousand stores in 56 countries. The first Zara shop was launched in 1975 at La Coruna,

Galicia and at present it operates more than four hundred owned stores globally. In the

previous five years they have witnessed sales up by 25 percent year on year.

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Zara runs its own design and production unit in La Coruna, Spain, which leads cancellation

of the large out-sourcing operations, like H&M does in over nine hundred firms. It is modern,

offering up-to-date lifestyle yet standard clothing lines for men, women and children. Zara

offers reasonably priced, radical clothing, however, not of the top quality, which will last

only for some seasons. As same as Zara, H&M can also put designs on retail shelves within three weeks. Its product

assortment is cheap and small yet frequent, offering consumers huge selection that results

repeated visits to their stores to find "What's New". Hitherto, Zara has launched over ten

thousand new designs and most of these will just be attainable for few weeks.

Another Spanish player, Mango is a reputed multinational brand devoted to designing,

producing and selling fast fashion and accessories only for women. Its clothing line includes

Suit, Casual Sport, and Mng Jeans. It might not be as huge as H&M or Grupo Inditex, but has

played excellent particularly in the UK.

No shopping malls resemble absolute with exclusive of these three brands. The pace of these

companies in responding to changing consumer demands is an ideal proof to the retailing,

producing and logistics skills needed in latest fashion industry. These new strategies are set

up to develop aptitude to take advantage of the challenges of a competitive world market.

Besides the diversification in product assortments there is one thing common in all these

brands that is "intelligent logistics". Well-organized communication between sales staff

directly to the headquarters and producers lead them to match steps with high speed turnover.

The fact is that buyers are becoming preference savvy and smarter in order to what they shop.

Even though they always have their preferred designer, they are also acquainted that a

throwaway piece of fast fashion from a retail chain store will complete their outfit choices. At

so reasonably priced all of these retail perceptions play on Friday nights when people feels

they have nothing to wear.

Retailers are sent in a scuffle to make-out the major catwalk trends from the drawing sheets

to the sales shelves as fast as possible

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"Saturday, Queen Street Mall, you are sitting in Gloria Jeans and flipping through the newest

copy of RUSSH that you just bought from borders. Plastic bags surround your feet from a

day of shopping as you plan potential outfits with which to fill your wardrobe for the

upcoming summer. Chances are these garments will be worn once or twice and then

discarded once the trend is over or they fall apart due to inferior manufacturing.

6 million 330 thousand tons of clothing and footwear a year is contributed to landfill in the

United States alone.

Globalization has made it possible to produce this clothing at increasingly lower prices,

prices so low they make the purchase tempting and the disposal painless. Some call it “fast

fashion,” the clothing equivalent of fast food. This idea of "fast fashion" leaves a pollution

footprint, with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and

occupational hazards. Recently, there has been an increased interest on the environmental

impacts of our consumer behaviour.

So are you thinking about what you are doing to the environment? And more importantly,

thinking about what can you do to help?

Fast Fashion is term used to describe the cheap trend clothing, usually sold by stores such as

Sportsgirl or Witchery in Australia, or Topshop in the UK. Retailers now will have something

new every month or even week in some cases, instead of just two collections

(Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer) each year. This change in consumer buying behaviour

is driven by both the reduction in the price of clothing and increased marketing of new trends

and fashions.

Fast fashion clothes are generally only worn a few times before being replaced by the latest

trend.

But even if no bunnies were harmed in the making of your outfit, ask yourself if any children,

rivers, or patches of ozone were destroyed in the quest for your $10 cotton on (or H&M)

singlet.

Immense amounts of petro and polluting chemicals are used in Synthetic fibres like polyester

which are regularly used in the production of 'fast fashion' clothing. These present health

risks for workers, organisms and the environment in the vicinity. Green house gas emissions,

chemical pollution and landfill waste are well reported as being key issues in environmental

impacts of fast fashion.

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The growth of cotton, the most widely used natural fibre uses huge amounts of chemicals that

are damaging to the health of the workers and the surrounding environment. Manufacture of

these textiles when combined with the transport of the garments around the world produces

vast amounts of green house gas.

If that wasn't enough to make you think, there is then the problem of disposing of unwanted

clothing. The amount of clothing ending up in landfill is astounding, and on average a person

in the UK will contribute 30kgs (roughly 75 pounds) a year. These textiles present particular

problems in landfill as synthetic (man-made fibres) products will not decompose. Even

natural textiles pollute water systems with chemicals and dyes that are washed out by rain

water, woollen garments decompose but produce methane, which again harms the

environment.

Are you ready to do something yet? Donnatella Versace “there should be more quality." And

it is undeniable when the current situation that the "Fast fashion" is causing is taken into

consideration, with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and

occupational hazards. Buying an investment piece of clothing, something you really love and

will last years and in some cases a lifetime – reduces its real cost per wear and is far more

ethical than purchasing bags and bags of cheap clothing the second a new watered down

catwalk trend hits stores.

Cheap clothing that you will probably wear just once.

if we want to be eco friendly and smart about our fashion purchases, we should put our

money toward well-made items that are, unlike clothing from Sportsgirl or Bardot, seasonless

and trendproof—a classic black blazer, jeans made from organic cotton, or a little black dress

that never goes out of style.

Sure, they're not the most exciting purchases, but if they last, they'll survive any fashion

whims.

Recycling of clothing is a great idea but the quality of many fast fashion items makes them

less desirable second hand. The quality of the clothing that is coming through recycling

plants is on the decline, which makes it harder to reuse.

And whilst there are a numerous manufacturers of eco textiles and brands with excellent

environmental credentials available, it is consumer behaviour – Your behaviour, Our

behaviour - that will need to change in order to reduce the impact of fashion and clothing on

the environment.

Fashion retailers driven by consumer demand and will change their products and marketing

to respond to a change in customer behavior.

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So make the change from fast fashion to sustainable style. Choose clothes in classic styles

that will last more than one season. Store clothes carefully to make them last, keeping shoes

and clothes out of the sun will prevent any sun damage or dust and where possible, mend and

repair instead of replacing.

Obstacles to fast fashion

Against such stellar growth it might seem strange to question whether a concept that's so

obviously popular and makes fashion accessible to a large number of people could also be

killing the industry.

But Robin Anson, managing director of Textiles Intelligence, believes there are quite a few

things getting in the way of fast fashion.

"Everything's getting faster, including fashion," he says. "But fast fashion can't happen

without facilitators. While low prices might encourage more purchases, to get low prices you

need low labour costs, low raw material costs, and high productivity - but the quality must

still be good."

Other facilitators are logistics (but the conundrum here is getting from a low-cost source to

the consumer quickly); nearby manufacturing (for in-season replenishment); technology tools

(to allow the supply chain to communicate, speed sample making etc); and online retailing,

which enables consumers to buy online or pre-select so they can make purchases quickly in-

store.

"If cheap fashion is finished, then fast fashion is too," Anson adds. "One thing that

everybody's buying is cotton. The cotton price has doubled this year from $0.50 to $1.0 per

pound, and while we don't see any further massive increase in prices, we don't seem them

coming down either.

"So for the foreseeable future, high cotton prices are here to stay. And as labour costs get

lower and supply chains get more efficient, raw material aspect assumes a higher proportion

of the final price.

"But raw materials are just one component. Other threats to export prices include rising

labour costs - not just in China, but also in countries like Bangladesh, and the appreciation of

the renminbi."

He also suggests climate change could impact on fast fashion, since rising sea levels in cotton

and garment producing countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh will affect prices and

capacity.

And what about a consumer backlash against a throwaway society? "There's pressure to

reduce food miles and the same could be said about clothes miles. This could favour nearby

sourcing."

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Market demand

However, for Dr Marc Schumacher, director of retail, franchise and international marketing

for German casual wear company Tom Tailor, "fast fashion is not to do with cheap products

but with market demand."

He told International Apparel Federation (IAF) delegates: "I believe the core competence of a

company is marketing, and fast fashion is a demand from the market. Fast fashion means

taking a decision later and responding more quickly.

Tom Tailor makes casual wear for men, women and children, which it sells in its own 87

stores, as well as various franchise stores and shop-in-shops. The company has 12 collections

a year, and by blocking fabric in Asia can get its lead times down to just five weeks,

Schumacher said.

"The rate of technology advancement means ideas can be exchanged even faster," he added.

"Take this to the next level, and as technology gets cheaper and faster then fashion will get

faster too."

Threat to quality and creativity

Shorter lead times and more deliveries "are doing a lot of damage to the design profession,"

believes Michael Tien, chairman of workwear retailer G2000. "Designers don't have the time

any more to be really creative. Fast fashion needs them to be very quick at 'adapt, copy and

paste,' not design as an art form. So it's not good for originality."

He fears quality is also under threat since "no-one cares about the quality of disposable

clothes, and this is not good for the clothing industry as a whole."

That said, "making trendy stuff more affordable" does enable consumers to buy more units -

and it lets them be more creative in the way they put outfits together. "In Hong Kong, selling

more units creates more jobs. Units translate to jobs and employment opportunities in places

like China," says Tien.

He also agrees that fast fashion is forcing the whole industry to change the way it operates,

and that even luxury brands have been forced to follow suit with new ideas and more

deliveries.

But at the end of the day, Tien contends "different customers have different needs" and not

all will be lured by the likes of Zara. In China, for example, there is huge demand for more

quality-conscious upmarket brands. "If you can identify these specific needs then you can

compete."

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H&M and Zara are the pioneers of fast fashion, a retail model built on rapid cycles of mass-

produced fashions sold at rock bottom prices. Most clothiers today are scrambling to sell

goods cheaper and faster than ever before and to retrain consumers to shop continuously,

compulsively, and on-the-spot. Our consumption of clothing has gone through the roof as a

result. Americans are now buying 68 garments and 8 pairs of shoes per year on average.

Disposable purchases have largely replaced long-term investments. Clothing used to be as

personal as it gets—handcrafted, locally made, customized, kept for years. Clothes are now

bought on a whim, barely worn, and tossed aside. As supply chains have spread out around

the world, our understanding of clothes has been packed off along with our garment trades,

and we feel adrift as shoppers—unsure of what to look for and unclear on when we’re getting

a good deal for our money. This is partly why we just opt to shop cheap instead.

Sewing clothing is very labor intensive, which is why a $10 or $20 price tag on a dress

should be raising eyebrows instead of just opening our wallets. Companies like H&M place

their orders in a network of factories in countries such as Bangladesh and China, where

poverty wages are legal (Bangladeshi garment workers are paid $43 a month) and workers

have little choice but to put in the exhausting hours needed to feed the 24/7 fast-fashion

machine. Not only does this debase the skill and craftsmanship of sewing, but factories in the

United States cannot compete. Between 1990 and 2012, the United States lost half of our

garment and textile industries. We now make 2 percent of our clothing here.

Trends are now changing constantly, and producing clothes with quality and workmanship

have become passé. Large corporate fashion chains have yearly growth demands that are

largely at odds with producing well-made products made in an ethical way. It's become

increasingly difficult to find quality and timeless pieces at any price point. Consumers are

largely left with a landscape of corporate, mass-produced fashion (overpriced designer goods

are our other "option").

As anyone who’s bought a $10 dress and put it through the wash knows, many of our

purchases are essentially disposable—and we’re now tossing 68 pounds of textiles per capita

a year. Our landfills are being filled with toxic, non-biodegradable duds and our charity thrift

stores are awash with disintegrating and discolored garments that won't have much of a

second life.

To feed our clothing addiction, approximately 82 million tons of fiber is now being produced

worldwide, largely in countries with very minimal environmental standards. In China, I've

traveled through an unimaginable landscape of factories along highways enshrouded in smog

and saw dyes dumped in ditches in Bangladesh. The environmental toll of the fashion

industry is being taken out on countries most U.S. consumers will never visit and is not

reflected in the price tag of a $10 dress.

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Amazingly, Americans now have closets brimming with clothes and yet we often find

ourselves thinking, "I have nothing to wear." This common refrain is the clothing equivalent

of eating a high-calorie fast food meal and feeling hungry a half hour later. Just like fast food,

fast fashion feeds on our basest urges—thriving on impulsiveness and our sense of scarcity in

bad economic times. We need an alternative to fast fashion not only because it undermines

the environment, the economy, and human rights, but because it clutters our homes and our

minds with stuff we don’t really desire or value.

But how do we begin to address the problem? If we shopped a little less (even if we cut our

consumption in half, we’d still be buying almost three new garments a month) and instead

diverted more of our dollars to locally-made designers and companies who have strong

environmental and human rights records, the rest of the industry would be forced to take

notice. Fashioningchange.com is a fantastic resource that directs consumers of popular brands

like H&M and Forever 21 to ethical alternatives.

Consumers could also make a difference by supporting brands that are not simply stylish but

also have some semblance of a shelf life. Part of being a responsible fashion consumer is

thinking about the entire life cycle of clothing, and owning well-crafted clothes that are more

of an investment motivates us to repair, refashion, and maintain them. Good clothing is not

unlike a home-cooked meal. It takes a little more thought and planning and costs a little more,

but leaves us feeling more satisfied.

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ADVANTAGES OF FAST FASHION

To the Customer

Change is GOOD! Fast Fashion helps you try different styles and trends within a short range of time. It helps

you change, experiment and revamp your look without having to change your budget much!

Fast fashion allows you to be a new you every time you step out to go someplace with your

gal pals! They say change is the only constant in life; but I say - change is good.

It’s FAST! Being as fast as it is, fast fashion helps you keep up with the here and now. Sometimes we

lose interest in something if we get it too late. It happens with everything in life... you wait so

long for something to happen, that when it does, it just doesn't mean the same to you. That

will never happen if you keep up with fast fashion. Fast fashion gives you instant

gratification! well - not instant really; but two weeks is definitely better than having to wait

six months!

Something New - EVERY TIME! Fast fashion can never become boring, repetitive, plain, old, out-dated... it will continue to

make a style statement with every new line, with every new trend, with every product it

comes up with. Fast fashion always manages to dazzle the customers and leave them in a

daze. It leaves you begging for more! Besides, fast fashion is easy, comfortable and really

cool. When was looking all that a problem?

To the Retailer

Conducive to Growth Being able to successfully establish yourself as a fast fashion retailer requires an

exceptionally talented staff, and creative minds beyond which can be imagined. The constant

challenge is conducive to growth and can take a retailer to heights that may be envied by

other retailers and brands. Being in the fast fashion line acts like something I call a

'constructive pressure'. You are always made to push the limits of your creativity, your talent,

and your capacities... and the results can be remarkably profitable.

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Rapid Profits Fast fashion is all about who gets it first. Early bird gets the worm; so the profits gained

through a fast fashion trend are huge and quick! Within the first couple of years too, a fast

fashion retailer can show tremendous growth and can take over the market as nobody else has

been able to. This acts as one of the major factors of luring people into the fast fashion

market or industry.

Easy Recovery Recovering from possible losses because of the failure of a particular clothes line or a fashion

style launched by a fast fashion retailer is quite easy and early than that of other fashion

brands. If fast fashion retailer suffers losses, it can easily and quickly launch a new product

that may become twice as much a hit than the previous one was expected to be.

The old-school fashion experts prefer to stick to their fashion concepts, being rather swift at

pointing out the disadvantages of fast fashion. However, many a fast fashion product will

have 'veni'-ed, 'vidi'-ed and 'vici'-ed till the two school of thoughts debate and come to one

final answer (or even simply agreed to disagree!) It's all a matter of perspective... as with a lot

of concepts, some love it, some don't! But if you are someone who loves trying new things,

and experimenting with your look - in short, if you are someone like me, you are gonna

quickly develop a liking for fast fashion. Happy Shopping!

DISADVANTAGE OF FAST FASHION

It is unsustainable. It has short product life cycle.

The focus largely lies on imitation of original products which misleads the customer.

Those who are aware of this replication or who have lack of fashion consciousness wouldn't suffer, but those interested in purchasing original brands are deceived by

these fast fashion trends.

The retailers make closest copies of the original which involves reputation risk and

using lowest cost labor amounts to labor exploitation making it an ethical issue.

There is also scarcity experienced of qualified personnel in manufacturing garments.

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There is a tough competition due to low-cost producers. These retailers use more

style, take less time in producing the garment and have rapid delivery.

Another negative aspect of fast fashion is, it stands against costume designing. Both

are closely related to each other but costume designing has got hardly any recognition as compared to (fast) fashion designing.

It is unsustainable. It has abbreviated artefact activity cycle.

The focus abundantly lies on apery of aboriginal articles which misleads the customer. Those

who are acquainted of this archetype or who accept abridgement of appearance alertness

wouldn't suffer, but those absorbed in purchasing aboriginal brands are bamboozled by these

fast appearance trends.

The retailers accomplish abutting copies of the aboriginal which involves acceptability

accident and application everyman bulk activity amounts to activity corruption authoritative

it an ethical issue.

There is as well absence accomplished of able cadre in accomplishment garments.

There is a boxy antagonism due to bargain producers. These retailers use added style, yield

beneath time in bearing the apparel and accept accelerated delivery.

Another abrogating aspect of fast appearance is, it stands adjoin apparel designing. Both are

carefully accompanying to anniversary added but apparel designing has got hardly any

acceptance as compared to (fast) appearance designing.

Apart from fast appearance there are added concise appearance trends like appearance fads

which endure for appreciably beneath aeon than fast fashion. It al of a sudden becomes

accepted and as well disappears quickly. The abstinent appearance trends endure for a ample

bulk of time area humans get time to access it. It has greater achievability of getting alternate

i.e., it can abandon but can as well return. Accepting such abrogating appearance and a

amount of disadvantages, how can fast appearance accept a ablaze future? It appears, retailers

accomplish money and the trend disappears. The abstraction of banking advance appears as

their capital aim and the action is assertively about this basal principle. It consistently

charcoals an acting appearance trend.

These are some fast appearance disadvantages that one has to be acquainted of. You can

adjudge for yourself, whether to accede it as benign or non-beneficial. I achievement the

commodity helped you in accepting a fair abstraction about the facts of fast fashion.

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To make the situation very clear and to know the advantage and disadvantage of fast fashion

to a retailer let’s just take an example of the Spanish brand ZARA.

Advantages and disadvantages of zara

Fast Fashion, as the name suggests, is contemporary fashion trend that appears in the market

at a point and vanishes off within a short period of time and also takes a little time to be

produced. But how far is it beneficial? What are advantages and disadvantages that Zara has

in comparison to its competitors? The following article deals with these queries and the

disadvantages of fast fashion.

Advantages of Zara

1. Short Production Time – ZARA can react quickly to recent trends and thus offers more

fashionable clothes. Consequently, creates an incentive for the customers to visit the shops

more often.

2. More styles – More choice, and more chances for ZARA of hitting it right.

3. Lower quantities – Scarce supply. A customer feels that he/she is going to wear something

unique.

because it has unique company features in comparison to its competitors – it can react,

produce and allocate in their shops a new fashion line for a periodless than 30 days. Zara

produces every 2-3 weeks a new fashion line and creates more than 40000 designs per year.

In Zara stores, customers can always find new products —but unfortunately for the customers

they are in limited supply. For that reason, a customer buys a garment because she knows that

if she comes tomorrow that garment won’t be there. Fashion specialists assert that this is the

key marketing strategy that distinguishes Zara from its competitors. I as a customer I’ve got

the sense of feeling myself exclusive, since only a few items are on display, even though the

fact that stores are pretty spacious.

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People think in the following way when they are shopping in Zara – “This pullover fits me,

and there is one on the rack. If I don’t buy it now, I’ll lose my chance.” Zara’s production

speed allows it to have such a marketing strategy. An interest fact that I have found recently

is that this amazing firm expands extremely fast-almost every day one Zara shop is opened.

The above-mentioned business strategy force Zara’s competitors to struggle for the market

and to consider their business strategies. In my opinion, Zara is the best place for people who

want to wear a for example a jacket for 100 euro that looks like a jacket for 3000 euro.

Disadvantages of Zara

1. Zara’s focus largely lies on imitation of original products which misleads the customer.

Those who are aware of this replication or who have lack of fashion consciousness do not

suffer, but those interested in purchasing original brands are deceived by these fast fashion

trends.

2. Another negative aspect of fast fashion is, it stands for inexpensiveness and actually it is

not true.

According to the first disadvantage I have read many articles in which is stated that Zara is

copying but I wasn’t sure till one day I went out shopping and I saw similarities between

Zara and Balmain fashion.

Obviously Zara’s men collection was inspired by Balmain. It would be rude to say that Zara

has stolen the Balmain collection but it definitely deserves punishment. Zara is a firm with

enormous budget but probably its 200 designers are not creative enough that’s why they

just copy and paste. But they cannot copy normally because when you closely examine a

garment from Balmain for 3000 euro jacket all the details are extremely elaborated even the

buttons. Also notice that Balman clothes has no folds on the upper part of the sleeves in

comparison to the copy of Zara.

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Second disadvantage that I have found in the web is that in many case studies is stated that

Zara fashion is very cheap. For instance, the group members participating in this research

argue that is not true, because it is relatively expensive in comparison to competitors like

H&M. Two members of the second semester IBMAN group in the Berlin School of

Economics and Law-Mr.Kronsbein and Mr.Cregelin have conducted another research in

Berlin to gather data about the effectiveness of sales of the above-mentioned firms. The

outcome was surprising there were at least twice as much people with H&M bags, as with

Zara ones in the same day and hour. Although, there are small group of posh people with

higher incomes which prefer to buy Louis Vuitton , Versace and for them Zara is relatively

cheap. In my view, Zara isoverpriced because the real price of garment do not exceeds more

than 2-10 euro and it is normal to be sold for price between 20 – 30 euro. For that reason, I

and the majority of people that were questioned by me prefer to go to H&M because this firm

has clothes with relatively high quality and they are sold for lower prices. Although Zara has

many disadvantages but it is still one of the biggest retailer of clothes in world and I respect it

for that achievement.

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THE EFFECTS OF FAST FASHION

The Environmental Impact of Fast Fashion

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says the clothing and

textiles sector in the UK produces around 3.1m tonnes of carbon dioxide, 2m tonnes of waste

and 70m tonnes of waste water per year. Whilst this is less than 1% of the total UK CO2

emissions and 2% of waste it is still a huge amount.

Whilst everyone has a need and right to dress well, 2.4 billion items of unworn clothing in

Britain’s wardrobes and a wear once culture suggest that significant reductions in the

environmental impact of the UK Fashion industry could be made is consumers turned away

from fast fashion.

Over a series of articles, I want to explore the environmental impact of fast fashion and

propose some solutions. Today I want to highlight some of the issues to be considered.

If Britain keeps throwing away rubbish at its current rates, it will run out of space by 2018.

We send 1.5 million tonnes of clothing to Landfill each year, this has increased. This is about

1.5% of the total. Clothing sent to landfill is problematic in a number of ways, many

synthetic fabrics do not decompose, the natural fabrics that do produce methane which

contributes to global warming. Unless action is taken soon this problem will get worse each

year, people bought a third more clothing in 2006 than they did in 2002, whilst consumption

may have slowed due to the economic crisis this is

The growth in Fashion consumption had led to a huge growth in water consumption by the

Fashion industry. The production of clothing uses water in huge quantities, to put this in

perspective the UN recommends that people need a minimum of 50 litres of water per day for

the most basic needs such as drinking, cooking and sanitation. Compare this to how much

water is used in clothing production;

One pair of jeans takes around 2000 litres One T-shirt takes around 400 litres

With 3 pairs of jeans sold in the UK every second and 2 billion t-shirts sold worldwide each

year, it’s clear that a huge amount of water is diverted for clothing production that could be

used by the 10% of the world’s population facing chronic water shortages each day. We will

ask what are designers doing to reduce the amount of water used in the production of clothing

and what can you do as consumers.

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The huge use of water isn’t the only environmental problem caused by the Fashion industry.

Polyester, the most widely used manufactured fibre, is made from petroleum. With the rise in

production in the fashion industry, demand for man-made fibres, especially polyester, has

nearly doubled in the last 15 years. Its production requires huge amounts of crude oil and

releases acidic gasses such as hydrogen chloride into the air and solvents into the waste

water.

Cotton is the most pesticide intensive crop in the world: these pesticides injure and kill many

people every year. It also takes up a large proportion of agricultural land, much of which is

needed by local people to grow their own food. These chemicals typically remain in the

fabric after finishing, and are released during the lifetime of the garments. These aren’t the

only offenders; Nylon manufacture creates nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 310 times more

potent than carbon dioxide, PVC is highly toxic and even wool can cause workers to be

exposed to harmful chemical in the sheep-dip used. Again we will ask what designers can do

to reduce the environmental impact of clothing production and what the risk is to your health

of chemicals in clothing.

The final cost to consider with regards to Fast Fashion is the human costs. China has

emerged as the largest exporter of fast fashion, accounting for 30% of world apparel exports.

According to figures from the U.S. National Labour Committee, some Chinese workers make

as little as 12–18 cents per hour working in poor conditions. And with the fierce global

competition that demands ever lower production costs, many emerging economies are aiming

to get their share of the world’s apparel markets, even if it means lower wages and poor

conditions for workers.

What does that mean for the sweatshop worker? The Guardian described the life of a

sweatshop worker in an expose of a GAP supplier, 16 hour working days, working for no

pay, housed in dirty overcrowded conditions with the risk of beatings if they aren’t seen to

work hard of good enough. Did I mention that this worker was 10 years old? It’s no wonder

that sweatshop workers have higher suicide rates than the local populations or that factory

owners have been installing netting to stop workers at the Foxconn factory jumping to their

deaths.

Whilst these examples may be extreme, the average wage for sweatshop workers in around

50pence per day ($0.65) and the average working day is 12 hours long, with minimal breaks

and 6 days’ work per week. This is the human cost of Fast Fashion.

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FAST FASHION IS LIKE FAST FOOD

it’s cheap, addictive and unsustainable

‘We now buy 40% of all our clothes at value retailers, with just 17% of our clothing budget.’

TNS Worldpanel (2006) Fashion Focus issue 29

A Cambridge University study reports that in 2006, people were buying a third more clothes

than they were in 2002 . Brands began competing against each other for market share by

introducing more lines per year at lower costs, culminating in a situation where ‘fashion

houses now offer up to 18 collections a year’ and the low cost, so called ‘value end’ is

‘booming; doubling in size in just 5 years.‘ This naturally has led to pressure on the supply

chain.

“Buyers pressure factories to deliver quality products with ever-shorter lead times. Most

factories just don’t have the tools and expertise to manage this effectively, so they put the

squeeze on the workers. It’s the only margin they have to play with.” (Oxfam report, 2004)

The increase in the amount of clothes people consume also has consequences for the

environment. Statistics suggest that on average, UK consumers send 30kg of clothing and

textiles per capita to landfill each year and that 1.2 million tonnes of clothing went to landfill

in 2005 in the UK alone.

Some companies have started to address problems associated with fast fashion through

training their buyers in responsible buying practices.

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OPNION OF THE FEW PEOPLE ASSOCIATED WITH THE INDUSTRY

Elizabeth Cline Our consumption of clothing is growing at an alarming rate. Most Americans have closets

brimming, if not overflowing with clothes. Few of those purchases are made here -- 3% of

apparel is produced in the United States, down from about half in 1990. While American

factories sit empty, our thirst for cheap imported clothing has kept the cash registers at many

stores humming throughout the recession.

Fashion's environmental footprint has also mushroomed. There are more than 80 billion

garments produced around the world today, and according to a study by the UK's Cambridge

University, the industry is creating 70 million tons of waste water as of 2006 in the UK alone.

In China, the largest clothing manufacturer in the world, the textile industry is also a major

polluter. Last year, I traveled undercover to southern China and saw smog enshrouding a

landscape of factories and, more shockingly, hundreds of factory workers wearing cheap,

trendy clothes. As China's consumer class grows, already-scarce resources like water and

petroleum may soon buckle under all of this shopping.

In July, when it came out that the Olympic uniforms were made in China, Americans were

outraged, making it clear that we're growing weary of soulless consumption. I believe we're

ready for more meaningful wardrobes, and to support our amazing clothing heritage. My

mother recently gave me a dress that she wore in high school in the 1960s. It was made by

Jonathan Logan, a juniors brand that was considered cheap for its day -- the dress is 100%

wool, fully lined, finished with French seams and made in the USA.

What's so wonderful about locally made fashion is that it offers designers tight control over

their product, has a lower environmental footprint and makes it easier to keep an eye on any

labor problems. And according to a Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle Monitor survey,

approximately 55% of consumers agree it is "very/somewhat important" that their clothing is

made in the U.S.

I was recently in Portland, Oregon, and met with the owners of Spooltown and the Portland

Garment Factory, two small shops that have opened recently in a city that had very little

existing garment industry infrastructure. They were able to build profitable manufacturing

businesses from scratch. Just imagine what other Americans cities could do with the right

government and consumer support.

Major fashion brands also have an obligation to dramatically reduce the amount of water and

energy used and waste emitted in making and selling their clothes, as well as to offer

consumers more stylish products that are made out of recycled and eco-friendly materials.

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Nike is creating athletic team uniforms out of recycled PET bottles and has recycled more

than 28 million pairs of athletic shoes through their Reuse-a-Shoe program; Eileen Fisher has

just released a beautiful line of bluesign-certified silk shirts dyed without hazardous

chemicals; and H&M has agreed to stop using toxic and nonbiodegradable perfluorinated

compounds, called PFCs, in their outerwear by 2013. These efforts need to be expanded.

Clothing designers also need to rethink the materials they're using and how they're sourced.

Fortunately, eco-friendly textiles have improved so much in recent years that luxurious eco-

friendly fibers like Tencel, Modal and Cupro have far more in common with silk than a hemp

sack. Some emerging designers are eschewing new textiles altogether for upcycling, which

means taking waste and reclaimed textile material and turning it into a product with higher

value. I recently bought a lovely red tunic upcycled from a men's dress shirt produced by a

small Brooklyn designer called State.

Designer on the rise: Mohapatra's moment

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, we are throwing away 68 pounds of

textiles per person per year and donating such a staggering volume of clothes that a majority

of our donations to charity have to be sold to textile recyclers who then sell more than half of

our used clothes overseas, largely to Africa. Retailers like Eileen Fisher and Patagonia are

accepting returns of their worn products -- Fisher resells them in her Green Eileen retail store,

while Patagonia recycles theirs into new products. Fast-fashion stores need to start these

types of recycling programs. Consumers can also take more responsibility by repairing and

caring for the clothes they own, trading their duds at clothing swaps and, for the particularly

creative, refashioning last year's styles into fresh looks.

Now for the million-dollar question: How can you afford this? It all starts by taking an honest

look at how you're spending money on clothes. The average American consumer spends

$1,700 a year on apparel. Most of us own more clothing than we know what to do with, so I

encourage people to first of all buy less clothing and to try to limit trendy, throwaway

purchases to only one or two a season. Divert the rest of your clothing budget to clothes that

you truly love and are going to wear for several seasons. If just a quarter of our purchases

were put toward locally made or eco-friendly fashion and fashion companies with a

commitment to sustainability, we could change the face of the industry. I also believe we'd be

happier with our clothes.

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The Wasteful Culture of 'Fast Fashion' Thanks to globalization and cheap labor abroad, companies are now able to inexpensively

and quickly churn out trendy garments at low prices. In an age of rampant consumerism, as

evidenced by tens of millions of views of YouTube "haul videos" and other media devoted

solely to materialism, retail chains such as Forever 21, H&M, and Charlotte Russe have

proliferated at an alarming rate over the last decade.

"Fast Fashion," as the movement is known, has paved the way for outright disposable

fashion. It's not uncommon for shoppers to don items once or twice before discarding them.

Sometimes, it's not even a choice because the garments are so poorly made that they fall apart

after a single wearing.

"The specificity of the fashion business is that it is subject to trends," says Andrew A. King,

professor of business administration at the Tuck School of Business, who has researched the

fashion industry. "As such it brings suppliers to seasonally offer consumers new alternatives

to stimulate their purchases. Fast fashion poses a threat since its logic is based on copying the

designs of high-end producers and quickly diffusing them—sometimes even before the high-

end goods, which are based on a complicated and high quality supply chain, are distributed.

As such, it mines the overall investment in style by design departments of high end

producers."

Research by the American Apparel and Footwear associations tends to back this up. They

report that Americans annually purchase an average of eight pairs of shoes and 68 pieces of

clothing. Meanwhile, secondhand clothes molder. According to Elizabeth Cline's book

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, a New York based Salvation

Army only sells approximately 11,000 items of the five tons of clothing which is processed

daily.

Unfortunately, I expect this trend to get worse before it gets better. As upscale brands such

Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, and Prada report flagging sales growth in the luxury market,

shoppers will flee to lower end stores to indulge their buying addictions.

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This culture is a problem because it often exploits low-wage workers in other countries, feeds

an industry of counterfeits, and is environmentally unsustainable. Moreover, the movement is

not limited to the apparel industry. Our landfills are packed with disposable products such as

razors, drinking cups, and even furniture.

Single-use goods are nothing new. Nor is planned obsolescence, which has existed for

decades. But this movement is becoming more disturbing as the trend accelerates. New

electronic gadgets are constantly launched, but we haven't figured out how to recycle all of

the old components nor handle the hazardous chemicals in their cores.

We need to shift back to a time when longevity and craftsmanship are valued. Harding-Lane's

CEO Stephen Gifford agrees and commits his company to promoting eco-friendly materials

and sustainable manufacturing of baseball caps with needlepoint stitching. His inspiration

springs from watching more and more garbage wash up on the New England beaches he

loved as a child. He says his company, Harding-Lane, "prides itself on producing high-

quality products whose proceeds allow for us to explore the ways in which we can live a

more environmentally responsible life." His company Web site offers visitors the story

behind the product and links to some of his favorite companies and organizations that are also

doing their part to educate consumers and protect the environment.

It's a good start, though it's doubtful such a counter movement will have the same momentum

as the culture which necessitated its birth.

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PLANS TO REDUCE THE FAST FASHION TREND

The plan aims to make fashion more environmentally sound and ethical The government has launched a campaign to tackle the environmental impact of a "fast

fashion" culture.

About two million tonnes of clothing end up in landfill every year. More than 300 retailers, producers and designers are part of the "sustainable clothing action

plan", launched at the start of London Fashion Week.

Ministers say customers should be sure clothing is made, sold and disposed of "without

damaging the environment or using poor labour practices".

The initiative outlines commitments to make fashion more sustainable throughout its

lifecycle: from design and manufacture to retail and disposal.

It hopes to draw attention to the environmental impact of cheap, throwaway clothes, which

have become hugely popular on the High Street but are adding to the UK's landfill.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says the clothing and

textiles sector in the UK produces around 3.1m tonnes of carbon dioxide, 2m tonnes of waste

and 70m tonnes of waste water per year.

Gases such as CO2, emitted by fossil fuel burning, and methane, released from landfill sites,

are widely believed to be contributing to global warming.

As part of the action plan: Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury's have pledged to increase their ranges of Fairtrade

and organic clothing, and support fabrics which can be recycled more easily

Tesco is banning cotton from countries known to use child labour Charities such as Oxfam and the Salvation Army will open more sustainable clothing

boutiques featuring high quality second-hand clothing and new designs made from recycled

garments

The Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion will be resourced to

provide practical support to the clothing sector

The Fairtrade Foundation will aim for at least 10% of cotton clothing in the UK to be

Fairtrade material by 2012.The Minister for Sustainability, Lord Hunt, announced the plan at

the launch of the sixth season of estethica, the world's leading showcase of ethical designer

fashion, at London Fashion Week.

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He said climate change was a bigger problem than the economy, and the clothing industry

was "responsible for lots and lots of greenhouse gas emissions".

Launching the action plan, he said: "It's going to be great for the fashion industry, great for

the climate and for anyone who's in the supply industry in developing countries to those

working in retail.

"We believe customers want sustainable clothing and we want to give them as much as

possible."

Complex challenges Jane Milne, business environment director of the British Retail Consortium, said retailers

should be "applauded, not criticised, for providing customers with affordable clothing,

particularly during these tough economic times".

"They're raising standards for overseas workers, offering clothes made from organic and

Fairtrade cotton and encouraging the re-use and recycling of unwanted clothes," she added.

The challenge is to reduce the amount of damage we are doing now, while a revised,

sustainable model of consumption is created

Malcolm Ball, ASBCI chairman Fast fashion from UK to Uganda

The ASBCI, the forum for clothing and textiles, said the industry was "very cognisant" of the

environmental issues it faced and "highly motivated" to find solutions.

Chairman Malcolm Ball said the challenges facing the industry and the consumer were

"complex". Taking cotton as an example, he said organic cotton was highly desirable but represented

only a fraction of world production, adding that growing it "requires vast amounts of the most

precious resource on earth - water".

"There are many voices who argue the current Western model of fast and cheap fashion is

totally unsustainable in the medium to long term," he said.

"The challenge is to reduce the amount of damage we are doing now, while a revised,

sustainable model of consumption is created."

Cheap, throwaway clothes are adding to the UK's landfill Allana McAspurn, of ethical fashion campaign body Made-By, said change would be

gradual: "It's about continuous improvement - a step-by-step approach.

"We've created a situation where we've got really cheap clothes and that's not going too re-

addressed overnight."

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IF WE LOOK IN THE CASE OF AMERICA

Amazingly, Americans now have closets brimming with clothes and yet we often find

ourselves thinking, "I have nothing to wear." This common refrain is the clothing equivalent

of eating a high-calorie fast food meal and feeling hungry a half hour later. Just like fast food,

fast fashion feeds on our basest urges—thriving on impulsiveness and our sense of scarcity in

bad economic times. We need an alternative to fast fashion not only because it undermines

the environment, the economy, and human rights, but because it clutters our homes and our

minds with stuff we don’t really desire or value.

But how do we begin to address the problem? If we shopped a little less (even if we cut our

consumption in half, we’d still be buying almost three new garments a month) and instead

diverted more of our dollars to locally-made designers and companies who have strong

environmental and human rights records, the rest of the industry would be forced to take

notice. Fashioningchange.com is a fantastic resource that directs consumers of popular brands

like H&M and Forever 21 to ethical alternatives.

Consumers could also make a difference by supporting brands that are not simply stylish but

also have some semblance of a shelf life. Part of being a responsible fashion consumer is

thinking about the entire life cycle of clothing, and owning well-crafted clothes that are more

of an investment motivates us to repair, refashion, and maintain them. Good clothing is not

unlike a home-cooked meal. It takes a little more thought and planning and costs a little more,

but leaves us feeling more satisfied.

Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. We buy a new

garment a week on average and make regular pilgrimages to outlet malls, cheap chains like

Forever 21, and the sales racks of department stores and off-priced retailers like TJ Maxx.

Retailers are producing clothes at enormous volumes in order to drive prices down and profits

up, and they've turned clothing into a disposable good. But what are we doing with all these

cheap clothes? And more importantly, what are they doing to us, our society, our

environment, and our economic well-being?

In Overdressed, Cline (a former fast-fashion junkie herself) sets out to uncover the true nature

of the cheap fashion juggernaut, tracing the rise of budget clothing chains, the death of

middle-market and independent retailers, and the roots of our obsession with deals and steals.

She travels to cheap-chic factories in China and Bangladesh and looks at the impact (both

here and abroad) of America's drastic increase in imports. She even explores how the

pressures of cheap have forced retailers to drastically reduce detail and craftsmanship;

making the clothes we wear more and more uniform, basic, and low quality.

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Cline shows how consumers can break the buy-and-toss cycle by supporting innovative and

stylish sustainable designers and retailers, returning to custom clothing, refashioning clothes

throughout their lifetime, and mending and even making clothes themselves. Overdressed

will inspire you to vote with your dollars and find a path back to being well dressed and

feeling good about what you wear.

Fashion can do a lot for the public personas of politicians’ wives. Jackie Kennedy’s iconic

pillbox hats, boxy crew cardigans and bouffant hairstyle inspired women around the world to

imitate her glamorous look. Today’s political spouses still sport Jackie O.–level bling; take,

say, the $2,000 Sophie The allet sundress Michelle Obama wore on her Hawaiian vacation or

Ann Romney’s $990 Reed Krakoff bird-print blouse worn in a recent television interview.

But in the wake of the Great Recession, style hawkers have been quick to point out the more

affordable items those women are donning too.

Thriftier threads can make high-rolling politicos and their wives seem more relatable. Kate

Middleton’s first postnuptial outing with Prince William, in a $90 cornflower blue shift from

Spanish retailer Zara, endeared her to Middle England. In the U.S., Michelle Obama’s Today

show appearance in an H&M polka-dot ditty had a similar effect.

But the rise of bercheap apparel chains like Zara, H&M and Uniqlo, which are popularly

called fast-fashion retailers for their ability to churn out modish styles at record speed, also

carries big costs for U.S. apparel makers and the environment. In recent years, cut-rate

European and Japanese clothiers have raked in more customers and bigger profits than

traditional U.S. apparel companies like Gap and American Eagle Outfitters by mass-

producing lower-quality digs that keep pace with runway styles. That’s led more shoppers to

cast aside hefty chunks of their wardrobes as fresh looks come up, which leads to more waste.

The fashion frenzy has picked up speed since the financial crisis, as traditional U.S. clothiers

try to win back trend seekers on a budget from more-agile competitors. Slow goers like Gap

and Macy’s are swapping out big orders of staples like T-shirts for smaller, more frequent

batches of hot knickknacks like handbags and hair bobbles. But with wages rising in China,

the fast-fashion model–which relies on higher sales volumes and slimmer profit margins–

could hurt American clothing companies and jobs, since they rely more on Chinese

manufacturers. Unlike with European brands that can source quickly from nearby locations

like Turkey and Romania, suppliers closer to U.S. apparel makers tend to be more expensive.

There’s a trend in fashion that could clash with a First Lady’s persona.

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A CASE STUDY SHOWING THE SITUTION IN THE USA TAKEN

FROM THE BOOKSEVEN PAIRS OF $7 SHOES

In the summer of 2009, I found myself standing in front of a rack of shoes at Kmart in Astor

Place in Manhattan. This particular location is inside of the former annex to Wanamaker’s,

one of those regal mid-century department stores that sold fine goods of all varieties,

including high-end fashions direct from Paris. Today, Wanamaker’s is gone. Today,

Wanamaker’s is a Kmart.

The rack itself stretched up above my head, and the shoes—canvas slip-ons made of nothing

more than a rubber sole glued to a sheath of cotton—hung down like fruit from a tree. In my

mind, these shoes might as well have grown there on that metal tree. They had no origins, no

story. They just magically appeared. And to my unbelievable fortune, they had been marked

down from $15 to $7 a pair. My synapses starting fringe, my pulse quickened, and before my

thinking brain could kick in, I was standing at the cash register with my bright red plastic

shopping basket brimming with seven pairs of plucked slip-ons. I cleared the store out of my

size.

My arms ached as I carried my haul in two parachute-sized bags back to the subway. Those

shoes looked like a cross-section of the earth’s crust within a few weeks—the thin rubber

soles cleaving and separating from the flimsy canvas tops. Before I could wear them all out, I

got tired of them and the style changed, so I’ve got two pairs left taking up space in my

closet.

The average price of clothing has plummeted in recent decades. And cheap clothes have

undergone a total image overhaul, where they no longer imply some inherent compromise in

style and quality. Bud- get fashion is seen as chic, practical, and democratic, and our

conversations are dotted with wow-inducing stories of clothing “steals.” At a birthday party

last year, a college friend thrust a ruffed, canary yellow pleather bag in my face. “Five

dollars!” she boasted. Another friend messaged me online recently to exclaim: “I just paid

$10 for a $50 dress! $30 for a $60 one!” Fashion magazines, tabloids, and morn- ing talk

shows now routinely run stories on how to land fashion deals. For a decade, I only bought

cheap fashion, and the vast majority of it was from just four budget-fashion retailers that

seemed to appear out of nowhere about ten years ago: H&M, Old Navy, Forever 21, and

Target. I owned a few items from off-price stores Ross and T.J. Maxx, as well as a buzzy

basics chain called UNIQLO and the Spanish retailer Zara. H&M, Zara, and Forever 21,

known as fast-fashion retailers, are experts in constantly stocking new trends and know

exactly how to hook consumers into shopping more regularly. But these aren’t the only

retailers moving away from the seasonal cycle of selling and moving toward luring shoppers

into their stores on a continual basis.

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There are some regional differences in the cheap fashion available to people. Maybe your

preference is for discounted name brands at the outlet mall or T.J. Maxx or for regional fast

fashion stores like Cato, Charlotte Russe, Rainbow, and Rue 21. Maybe you shop at

department store chains like Kohl’s or at pure discounters like Wal-Mart or even Dollar

Store. But these retailers are all running on the same high volume, low-priced fashion

formula that has squeezed the life out of the rest of the industry, forcing independent

department stores to con-

Solid ate, middle-market manufacturers to shutter, and independent retailers to either go high-

end or go home. Budget fashion has now remade the entire apparel industry in its image. And

it has profoundly changed the way we think of clothing.

We tell ourselves we can’t afford higher prices. We’re in the midst of a recession. Health care

costs are out of control. And have you seen gas prices? But many consumers are just hooked

on a cheap fashion treadmill—we’ve quickly grown accustomed to paying less and get- ting

more. My sister will pay $400 a month to drive a nice car, but don’t try to charge her or me

more than that $40 for a dress. I’ve seen guys in my local coffee shop working on $1,800

Apple laptops and wearing $10 Wal-Mart shoes. Americans spend more money on eating out

in restaurants every year than they do on clothes. It’s not that we can’t pay more money for

fashion; we just don’t see any reason to.

As any economist will tell you, cheaper prices stimulate consumption, and the current low

rate of fashion has spurred a shopping free- for-all, where we are buying and hoarding

roughly twenty billion garments per year as a nation.1 we’re running out of oil and water.

Icebergs are melting. We’ve permanently altered our climate. China, where most of our

clothes are now produced and where the population is gaining a taste for fashion, is in

environmental crisis and on track to gobble up more fibre and fashion-related resources than

we do. The problems created by the fashion industry in the West are quickly being matched

and multiplied in other parts of the world. Buying so much clothing, and treating it as if it is

disposable, is putting a huge added weight on the environment and is simply unsustainable.

Here’s an incredible fact—I paid less than $30 per item on average for each piece of clothing

in my closet. Most of my shoes cost less than $15 a pop. That clothes can be had for so little

money is historically unclothes can be had for so little money is historically unprecedented.

Clothes have almost always been expensive, hard to come by, and highly valued; they have

been used as alternate currency in many societies. Well into the twentieth century, clothes

were pricey and precious enough that they were mended and cared for and reimagined

countless times, and most people had a few outfits that they wore until they wore them out.

How things have changed. We’ve gone from making good use of the clothes we own to

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buying things we’ll never or barely wear. We are caught in a cycle of consumption and waste

that is unsettling at best and I think unsatisfying at its core. When I started writing this book, I got all my clothes out of storage and piled them up in my

living room. I cleaned out the closets in my bedroom and hall, pulled out the bins from

underneath my bed, and dragged up three trash bags and two oversized plastic containers

from my basement. I made a mountain of it, and then sorted it all, making lists of the brand

name or designer, the country of origin, the fabric, and, if I could remember, the year I

bought it and how much I paid. It took me almost a week to go through it all. My roommate

helped me bring the clothes up from the basement and commented, dryly, “I find owning so

much clothing overwhelming.” It was such a simple statement, but she said it as if I’d done it

on purpose. Each of those purchases seemed almost inconsequential in the moment, a deal

here, a deal there. But just like a few extra calories here and there result in an expanding

waistline, my closet and my life were consumed with cheap fashion.

Here’s the damage: I owned sixty-one tops, sixty T-shirts, thirty- four tank tops, twenty-one

skirts, twenty sweaters, fifteen cardigans and hooded sweatshirts, thirteen pairs of jeans,

twenty-four dresses, twenty pairs of shoes, eighteen belts, fourteen pairs of shorts, fourteen

jackets, twelve bras, eleven pairs of tights, five blazers, four long- sleeved shirts, three pairs

of workout pants, two pairs of dress pants, two pairs of pyjama pants, and one vest. Socks

and underwear not-

Withstanding, I owned 354 pieces of clothing. Americans buy an average of sixty-four items

of clothing a year, a little more than one piece of clothing per week.2 It might not seem all

that extreme, until you see it all piled up in your living room. My wardrobe is what the

average American produces in a little over five years, precisely the amount of time I lived in

my apartment. My 300-plus-piece clothing collection made me almost exactly an average

American consumer.

Another humbling fact about my wardrobe: I owned more clothing than I did anything else,

and probably knew the least about it of any- thing I buy. I checked the labels on my eggs, but

not on my T-shirts. I didn’t know the significance of fbers like polyester, nylon, or elastin,

which so much of our clothing is now made of. I knew nothing about garment construction,

nor could I recognize quality. And I was certainly no fashionista with an encyclopaedic

knowledge of the designers where all these trends were coming from, although I some- times

wish I looked as put together as those girls. I have friends who were surprised I was writing a

book about clothes. You? They’d say, scanning my outfit for some missing sign of great

style. But one need not have the sharpest fashion acumen or know a single thing about

clothes to accumulate massive amounts of them.

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I always hear in the news that we’re going to shop our way out of the current recession. It’s

hard to believe when you consider what’s happened to the domestic garment industry, once

an important segment of America’s manufacturing base. The United States now makes 3 per

cent of the clothing its consumers purchase, down from about 50 per cent in 1990. We have

chosen low-priced clothes made in other countries, and the loss of our garment trades has

contributed to a de- cline in domestic wages, the loss of the middle class, and the problem of

unemployment, especially for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. It would now take

tremendous investment and training to get our garment industry back in shape to compete

with other countries, particularly China, where a staggering 41 per cent of our clothes are

now made. I travelled to the factories there and was astonished at not only the sophistication

of their factories but by how the American consumer lifestyle is spreading there as well.

Many books about fashion begin with an argument for why we should take fashion seriously.

I’m going to take a different approach and say that fashion largely deserves its bad reputation.

It’s now a powerful, trillion-dollar global industry that has too much influence over our

pocketbooks, self-image, and storage spaces. It behaves with embarrassingly little regard for

the environment or human rights. It changes the rules of what we’re supposed to wear

constantly, and we seem to have lost our sense of self along with changing trends. We

oscillate through countless colors, prints, and silhouettes each year. Most of the time we are

buying the same basic item of clothing—tank tops and sweaters in the latest color, simple

blouses with some added embellishment, jeans in a new fit—over and over again, just

tweaked slightly with the season’s latest must-have feature.

Designer or brand name clothing has become a proxy for quality and style. We travel sixty

miles round trip on average and pay the at- tending gas and tolls to get deep discounts on

brand names at outlet malls.3 Some of us stand in line at Target or H&M or Macy’s,

overnight in some cases, to be the first to grab shoddy facsimiles of clothing by luxury

fashion designers like Versace and Missoni. We’ve completely lost our gauge of whether or

not the material garment we’re buying is worth our money. The fashion industry has largely

been split into ultra-high-end and low-end clothing and consumers have been divided into

warring camps of deal-hunters and prestige shoppers, with little in between. And with “good”

clothes now outrageously priced, shopping cheap is more of a non-choice than we recognize.

Fashion should be flexible and responsive. Instead, global chains are trying to take the risk

out of fashion by selling the same carefully orchestrated trends, which are repeated on the

racks of virtually every retailer, making our store-bought looks feel homogenous and generic.

A half-century of competition based on low price has also forced the fashion industry to cut

corners on quality, construction, and detail, leaving most of us wearing very basic and

crudely slapped together clothes. Just two decades ago, the garment industry wasn’t nearly so

consolidated. Our choices weren’t nearly so narrow and controlled and focused on the bottom

line.

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Fashion is obsolescence. Fashion is change. The fact that thousands of affordable variations

on the hot, new look can go from design concept to a store rack in a matter of weeks or a

couple of months is, if nothing else, a modern marvel—as designs have to be drawn and

transmitted, fabric has to be ordered, and the garment has to be sewn by human beings before

being typically shipped around the world to a retail outlet. It could be argued that the fashion

industry has mastered what it is designed to do—sell affordable versions of new styles.

Because of low prices, chasing trends is now a mass activity, accessible to anyone with a few

bucks to spare. Trends are exhausted faster, giving the fashion industry yet another

opportunity to come up with something else for us to buy and wear. This cycle is speeding

up, and more trends than ever now exist at any given moment. In Brooklyn,

I watch them spread before my eyes. One week, I spotted a handful of people wearing sailor-

inspired blue-and-white striped shirts. Two months later, virtually one in every five people

seemed to be wearing the fad. In recent months, I’ve seen the same thing happen with high-

waisted shorts, jumpsuits, midriffs, combat boots, and floral print dresses.

Fashion is publicly expressed. Everyone can see who’s out of step. And keeping up with the

latest styles now demands that we shop constantly. T.J. Maxx recently ran a commercial

featuring a fashion stu- dent named Lindsay, who chirps, “I never wear the same thing

twice.” T.J. Maxx would have us believe cash-strapped college students should buy a new

piece of clothing for every single day of the year. Similarly, many celebrities are never

photographed wearing the same thing twice. Today’s trendsetters seem to be the people who

change their outfits the most often.

Here we are, having arrived in a so-called fashion democracy, where everyone can afford to

be stylish and follow trends. How does it feel? I started writing this book because chasing

trends with one eye on the price tag didn’t get me any closer to liking my clothes. My

wardrobe ultimately left me feeling slavish and passive. I definitely wasn’t any closer to

being well dressed. I was devoting too much time and way too much space in my house to a

habit I knew shamefully little about. Why would someone who knows nothing about clothes

own so much clothing?

People crave connections to their stuff, and I was missing that connection. Our fashion

choices do have social outcomes and meanings, and I had to dig deep to find them. Supply

chains are spread out all over the world, few of them in the United States. We’re completely

in the dark about what fashion has cost the environment and American jobs. These costs

certainly aren’t on price tags, dropping lower and lower every year. I went in search of the

rest of the story of our clothes. Most of our lives are spent in clothing. It’s a basic need, but

more than that, clothing and style are a huge and integral part of our every- day lives. Clothes

are an essential part of the economy and easily the second largest consumer sector, behind

food.4 Dressing sharp, dressing up, and caring about what we wear existed long before the

fashion industry, and these values can exist outside of it as well. Surely our closets can be

defined by something other than price-gouging designers, discounted brand names, or the

cheap trends that follow them both.

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Clothes could have more meaning and longevity if we think less about owning the latest or

cheapest thing and develop more of a relationship with the things we wear. Building a

wardrobe over time, saving up and investing in fewer well-made pieces, obsessing over the

perfect hem, luxuriating in fabrics, and patching up and altering our clothes have become old-

fashioned habits. But they’re also deeply satisfying antidotes to the empty uniformity of

cheap. If more of us picked up the lost art of sewing or reconnected with the seamstresses and

tailors in our communities, we could all be our own fashion designers and constantly

reinvent, personalize, and perfect the things we own.

I haven’t just looked to the past for clues on how to dress going forward. Thanks to

advancing technology, more progressive garment production models, and the development of

environmentally friendly textiles, it’s now entirely possible to design clothing responsibly

with- out sacrificing style. In fact, I found that ethical designers, without the pressures of

having to satisfy corporate shareholders or consistently dazzle with high- profle runway

shows, are not only working with some of the most interesting and amazing-feeling fabrics

on the market, they are some of the most innovative designers in the industry right now.

In the days after I lugged that parachute-sized bag of slip-ons down Second Avenue,

shamefaced, I started thinking about how I shopped growing up. It was the mid-nineties, not

so long ago, and the global clothing giants had taken their hold. But clothes were still

expensive enough that buying them was a semiannual treat. In middle school, my friends and

I would share new clothes to make our wardrobes seem bigger. But I more often shopped in

thrift stores because they were affordable and full of unexpected treasures. I loved scrounging

through Salvation Army looking for T-shirts that I could cut up or pants that I could shred

and restyle. My mom also had a sewing ma- chine when I was little, and a few times I

remember going to a seam- stress to have our clothes taken in or out.

I didn’t have much to go on, other than these little hints that cloth- ing used to foster

relationships and stay with us through life. We were once stewards of the clothes we owned.

The promise of a different way of doing things, of actually liking and understanding clothes,

and the embarrassment of lugging a supersized bag of shoes on the subway were enough to

set me on a journey. In the process, I found out how exactly cheap fashion took over, met the

people who have escaped the tyranny of trends, and ultimately curbed my own dead- end

cravings for low-cost clothes.

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SURVEY QUESTIONEAR

NAME:

SEX:

AGE:

OCCUPATION:

1. Do you like fashionable products?

YES/NO

(If NO directly move to question 7)

2. Are you always updated about the latest trend?

YES/NO

3. How often do you change your wardrobe?

Every month

Every 2 month

Every 3 month

Every 6 month

4. How much do you spend while you go for shopping?

Rs. 3000

Rs. 5000

Rs. 10,000

Rs. 20,000

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5. What brands do you mostly prefer?

Mango

Zara

Hugo boss

Chanel

H & M

Ralph Lauren

Jimmy choo

6. Are you aware of the new collection launched every season?

YES/NO

7. Given a choice what would you pick?

1 Pair of Chanel denim or

1 pair of denim and tee from Zara

8. What’s your top priority when you go buy clothes?

Style

Comfort

Fashion

Looks

9. How many times do you go for shopping or buying new clothes?

Every 2nd week

Every month

Every 3 months

Mention if any other………………..

10. Do you prefer high-end fashion or FAD?

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SURVEY ANALYSIS

1.DO you like fashionable products

YES no

4%

96%

2.Are you always updated about the latest trend?

yes no

21%

79%

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3.how often do you change your wardrobe?

every month erery 2 month every 3 month every 6 month

23% 18%

21%

38%

4. What brand do you prefer?

Mango Zara H & M Chanel Hugo boss Jimmy Choo Ralph Lauren

6% 9%

12%

20%

9%

13%

31%

5. How much do you spend while shopping?

amount Rs. 3000 amount Rs. 5000 amount Rs.10000 amount Rs.20000

4%

23% 34%

39%

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6.Are you aware of the new collection launched every season?

yes no

30%

70%

7. Given a choice what would you pick?

1 pair of Chanel denim 1 denim & 1 tee from ZARA

32%

68%

8. what's your top priority when you buy new clothes?

style comfort fashion looks

27%

18%

19%

36%

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9. how often do you go for buying new clothes?

every 2nd week every month every 3 month others

13% 14%

27%

46%

10. Do you prefer high end fashion , FAD or both?

high end fashion FAD both

29%

39%

32%

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INFERENCE AND SUGGESTION

Fast fashion is now a rising trend in the global fashion market, the youth today are so aware

of the changing trend and fashion that they don’t care whether it’s a FAD or high end fashion

in order to maintain their style and looks. Nothing can be better if people get fashion in much

less price than before.

The survey conducted by me in the campus and online tells that people have lot of money to

spend on shopping and buying fashion. They change their wardrobe very frequently which

show which shows that the fashion today have become fast and people are always looking for

best deal in term of money. People are not bothered about the brand name and quality at all;

they are just looking for more and more trendy clothes which they are getting in every 2

weeks’ time and in a much cheaper price.

The phrase very correctly describes the situation “fast fashion is like fast food.” If we see

the current scenario due to this fast fashion which is available very cheaply there are lot of

wastage and it also has an adverse effect on the environment. Thought a lot steps are being

taken to slow down this trend all over the world but looking at the top retailer in the world

like ZARA and H & M the way they are expanding their business it is really a very hard task

to even slow down the process which is FAST FASHION CHEAP FASHION.

Interestingly the survey shows a very nice result that people still prefer high end branded

fashionable product but their buying habit tells a completely different story. In my survey I

mostly targeted youth and tried to know how and what they think when it comes to fashion,

FAD and high end fashion. Though this trend of fast fashion is tickling up from the youth to

the older generation gradually but the result shows the older generation still prefer high

fashion branded clothes over the on-going fast fashion cheap fashion.

Fast fashion cheap fashion with all its merits and demerits is fast moving on-going trend

which is very difficult to slow it down with the big retailer involved in the business and

expanding it very fast all over the world it is there to stay.

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CONCLUSION

According to the study done by me on the topic Fast Fashion Cheap fashion and how it has

effect the lifestyle of the people throughout the world through various website, journals and

survey. I finally understand and conclude that though the Fast Fashion started in the United

States and other European countries but it has effect the people throughout the world. We can

see the impact of it even in the main stream fashion by big brand and in almost every country.

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REFERENCES

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/06/06/the-high-cost-of-cheap-fashion

http://www.good.is/posts/how-cheap-fashion-is-changing-the-way-we-shop/

http://www.just-style.com/analysis/is-fast-fashion-killing-fashion_id109182.aspx

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/09/21/the-wasteful-

culture-of-forever-21-hm-and-fast-fashion

http://business.time.com/2012/07/26/need-for-speed/#ixzz29ZeBzf2x

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7899327.stm

http://www.ethicalinstyle.com/what-is-ethical-fashion/ethical-issues-explained/the-

environmental-impact-of-fast-fashion/

http://www.ethicalfashionforum.com/the-issues/fast-fashion-cheap-fashion

http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/fast-fashion-facts-69844.html

http://www.wekilledcouture.com/2010/09/real-cost-of-fast-fashion.html

http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/the-history-of-a-cheap-dress/

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/11/living/high-cost-of-fashion/index.html

http://business.time.com/2012/07/26/need-for-speed/#ixzz29ZeBzf2x

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/06/06/the-high-cost-of-cheap-fashion

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