With Fridays for Future and an increasing number of youngsters turning vegetarian or vegan, preaching a credo of zero waste and sustainability and reminding us to reduce our impact on the environment, there was a genuine expectation that attitudes to fashion were rapidly changing, too. Young people were telling the rest of us about buying less and caring how it was produced, and how long it would last. The emphasis was on caring more – for humanity, nature and the planet. Fast fashion, some of us thought, had vanished from the scene.

Second-hand and vintage clothing seemed all the rage, and with Covid giving us all a bit more time for reflection and for de-cluttering (and perhaps for doing repairs and alterations), there seemed to be a genuine opportunity for positive change.

In August 2020 I had written in this space:

… an international study carried out by McKinsey & Co. suggests that consumers have radically changed their habits, at least temporarily. Pessimistic forecasts for the worldwide economy, rising unemployment and a general uncertainty about the future are taking their toll…

… the casual attitude to spending has gone… Locked away in our homes we have more time to reflect, and more time to compare prices, more time for hesitation and second thoughts. Being confined to 1 that we have limited space – and that our wardrobe is already full… The slow appreciation perhaps that quality is more important than quantity?

But I was terribly, terribly wrong. For what do I read now, 2 years on? Not only is fast-fashion still, or again, in high demand, but it is actually more successful than ever. It emerges that after the temporary setback it took in 2020, many of the fast and cheap chains now show hugely immodest increases in turnover and profits. The Inditex group (Zara, Bershka and others) is certainly back on track, as is Mango; in fact, we are given to understand, the latter had their best-ever year in 2021. Clearly, fast fashion has not gone away at all, and if it did temporarily keep a low profile, it is now back with a vengeance. For here comes ultra-fast fashion.

“Ultra-fast fashion is taking over – and using every trick in the book to get us addicted” was the headline of a Guardian article that I missed when it was published in April 2022. They reported that the Chinese fashion retailer Shein, valued at US$100bn, had added almost 315,000 styles in 2022 already, with over 4000 items in the under GBP 5 category, and some minimalist tops and skirts at 1.99. And Style Magazine says Shein and other Chinese companies use sophisticated AI to predict what the fashion victims will be most keen to be seen in – and then produce it at incredible speed, in eye-watering quantities.

Fashion is certainly addictive, and cheap fashion even more so. And social media and ‘haul videos’ fuel this addiction. Some of these videos are sponsored by brands, but as they are presented in a casual, chatty style by ‘normal’ shoppers, viewers don’t realize they are being bombarded by a huge, clandestine sales campaign (‘attack’ might be the better term). The Guardian article tells of people being tempted into shopping bags of clothes every week during the pandemic, simply because the ads kept turning up on Instagram. And we all know about cookies that embed themselves into our computers. The result is a crazy cycle of buying, wearing (once), throwing away, and starting again.

And what are we to make of royals, such as Catherine, Princess of Wales, or Letizia, the Spanish queen, who could surely afford to buy sustainable garments, but on occasions choose to show their /proximity to their more budget-constrained subjects by slipping into a Zara dress or a pair of high-waisted jeans from H&M? When they do, they get much applause for proving that looking good and glamorous does not depend on the price tag or the label, and that high-street fashion and high fashion go perfectly well together. Nothing is as effective for marketing purposes as a headline such as “Queen Letizia stuns in striking Zara mini dress” (accompanied by an Armani bag, most likely) or “Queen Letizia  dazzles in floral Mango midi dress for rare family outing”, or indeed “Kate Middleton (now Princess of Wales) wore an affordable H&M sweater on her latest royal visit”…

Needless to say, these mini, midi and gathered dresses, sweaters and tee-shirts then sell out within hours, further accelerating the fast-and-cheap-and-not-so-cheerful fashion wheel. And, if my source in these matters can be trusted (Schweizer Illustrierte, Style Magazin), it is particularly the boomers and generation X that love to rush out (or online) to buy what these stylish royals wear. (The sheer number of images of royals that turn up in women’s magazines that you buy at kiosks in Switzerland has always amazed me.) Perhaps we oldies should re-think our consumer habits seriously now. Remind ourselves that unless each and everyone of us changes their shopping behaviour, fast fashion will spin out of control once again. And these days no-one can pretend not to know that this means wasting valuable natural resources and relying on ultra-cheap seamstresses, working under scandalous conditions in factories in the East. Moreover, if ultra-fast fashion continues at this pace, it will be using up almost a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. And this summer, quite frankly, was already too hot.

Sources:

https://www.schweizer-illustrierte.ch/style/fashion/fast-fashion-wachst-und-wachst-warum

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/18/ultra-fast-fashion-retail-sites-shein