Fast fashion lures shoppers, difficult to avoid

By Emi­ly Sharkis | UConn Jour­nal­ism
April 7, 2024

Glance around a mall, con­cert hall, or col­lege cam­pus and chances are you will see at least one piece of fast fash­ion cloth­ing — often with­out even know­ing it.

Accord­ing to con­sult­ing firm McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny, fast fash­ion is defined as arti­cles of cloth­ing rapid­ly and cheap­ly pro­duced, often accom­pa­nied by strong man­u­fac­tur­er-to-con­sumer sup­ply chains and loy­al cus­tomer bases. The fast fash­ion mar­ket is grow­ing quick­ly, with Sta­tis­ti­ca pre­dict­ing the mar­ket val­ue of fast fash­ion will reach approx­i­mate­ly $185 bil­lion by 2027.

An exam­ple: One friend recent­ly men­tioned drop­ping $300 on clothes from Shien, a pop­u­lar online retail­er, for an upcom­ing vaca­tion.

Despite its pop­u­lar­i­ty, the neg­a­tive effects of fast fash­ion are a lot more wide­spread than many ini­tial­ly real­ize. Along­side Shien, stores like For­ev­er 21, Zara, H&M, Old Navy, and Urban Out­fit­ters all sell fast fash­ion.

While many deem pur­chas­ing fast fash­ion as moral­ly wrong, many col­lege stu­dents con­tin­ue to buy from these retail­ers. But why?

1. It’s Absolutely Everywhere — And It’s Cheap

Fast fash­ion cloth­ing options tend to be cheap­er than cloth­ing from sus­tain­able com­pa­nies, a fact men­tioned by 15 of the 18 peo­ple recent­ly polled for this sto­ry. Fast fash­ion is not only wide­spread, it’s often hid­ing in plain sight.

“Fast fash­ion is so preva­lent we don’t even real­ize it,” one Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut stu­dent remarked. “Almost every store at the mall is fast fash­ion no mat­ter the price. Zara for exam­ple, is so expen­sive, but one of the least eth­i­cal brands out there. Price does­n’t equal qual­i­ty, and qual­i­ty does­n’t equal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

This preva­lence is fur­thered by fast fashion’s pres­ence on social media. “I see a lot of peo­ple on Tik­Tok doing huge (and often spon­sored) fast fash­ion hauls and it real­ly con­tributes to a strong sense of over­con­sump­tion,” said UConn junior Mia Keaz­er.

2. It’s Size-Inclusive

“I remem­ber going to the mall with my friends in high school and being so excit­ed to go into For­ev­er 21 because that was the only store that I could actu­al­ly buy things in,” said UConn Junior Nala Davis.

It’s a frus­tra­tion this writer shares: many cloth­ing brands sim­ply do not have size inclu­sive options.

“I’m plus-sized and it’s hard to find any­thing in my size that’s afford­able and is a style that I like. Sad­ly only [fast fash­ion] com­pa­nies check all the box­es,” said Katiely Mer­cedes, a Junior at Hunter Col­lege.

“As a curvy girl, some­times the sus­tain­able fash­ion lines do not have my size or are not flat­ter­ing on me. I know my weight fluc­tu­ates and when buy­ing jeans I would rather buy the ones that are less expen­sive,” said UConn Sopho­more Cian­na Tangisha­ka.

3. Greenwashing

Green­wash­ing is the prac­tice of mak­ing a prod­uct or activ­i­ty appear to be less dam­ag­ing to the envi­ron­ment than it real­ly is. Green­wash­ing prac­tices can include a lack of pub­lic infor­ma­tion, reliance on dis­cred­it­ed mea­sure­ment tools, hav­ing unreg­u­lat­ed “eco-con­scious” col­lec­tions, and more.

Accord­ing to the non-prof­it Green­peace UK, stores such as H&M, Zara, Pri­mark, and more, are guilty of green­wash­ing. While green­wash­ing can be dam­ag­ing, many peo­ple are unaware it is even hap­pen­ing.

“I remem­ber see­ing a pro­mo­tion­al adver­tise­ment about H&M cre­at­ing an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly cloth­ing line, and then research­ing for a class that this was actu­al­ly total­ly false (at least back then). Almost any com­pa­ny can claim “clean & sus­tain­able fash­ion” through plain imagery of green leaves/recycling logos on the tag to imply clean fash­ion with­out actu­al­ly claim­ing it,” said UConn senior Eliz­a­beth Agaruno­va.

“I used to work for Uniq­lo, and I would notice how many ship­ments would come in…from third world coun­tries, and the amount of waste with­in the ship­ments despite the company’s claims of car­ing for the envi­ron­ment. Out of curios­i­ty, I searched it up and they’re a green­wash­ing fast fash­ion com­pa­ny, and their prices seem to tell peo­ple oth­er­wise. I real­ized price real­ly doesn’t dic­tate,” Mer­cedes added.

4. Trends Move So Fast

One of the biggest advan­tages of fast fash­ion com­pa­nies is their wide vari­ety of styles and large num­ber of new designs per day. How­ev­er, with these seem­ing­ly non­stop new

items, trends move so fast, mak­ing it almost impos­si­ble to keep up. This has only encour­aged a cul­ture of con­sumerism and over­con­sump­tion.

“Our soci­ety val­ues keep­ing up with the fash­ion of today so much that step­ping out­side of that mind­set can feel like social death to an extent,” said UConn Graph­ic Design stu­dent Car­o­line Strapp.

This issue is espe­cial­ly preva­lent in col­lege, where hav­ing both a pro­fes­sion­al and par­ty wardrobe and stay­ing on-trend are the norm.

“I had got­ten a whole bunch of going out tops and by the time I tried to wear them peo­ple had stopped wear­ing that style of top,” remem­bers Buf­fa­lo State fresh­man Allie Cigna.

Some peo­ple also men­tioned need­ing quick and qual­i­ty out­fits for con­certs, Hal­loween, and oth­er spe­cial occa­sions.

“I think the way we will see the most change in regards to this top­ic will be when the cul­ture shifts to val­ue our envi­ron­ment and health more than mon­ey and mate­r­i­al items. The Unit­ed States lives and breathes cap­i­tal­ism and the pil­lars of that belief sys­tem direct­ly oppose those who val­ue sus­tain­abil­i­ty and social­ly con­scious ini­tia­tives. Until there is a cul­ture shift in val­ues we will con­tin­ue to see this bat­tle between ethics and greed,” said Strapp.

With these com­pelling rea­sons sup­port­ing fast fash­ion, it seems buy­ing fast fash­ion is inevitable. Still, there are ways to cut down on con­sump­tion.

Go Thrifting

Shop­ping at thrift stores is a fun and easy alter­na­tive to pur­chas­ing from fast fash­ion com­pa­nies.

Accord­ing to Cap­i­tal One Shopping’s 2024 Thrift­ing Report, “83% of Gen Z con­sumers have either pur­chased or are inter­est­ed in sec­ond­hand appar­el, 10.7% more than the aver­age for all age groups.”

Re-Wear Old Clothes

Try to end the cycle of end­less con­sump­tion, what eBay calls “sin­gle-sea­son wear,” by mix­ing and match­ing to cre­ate new out­fits or sim­ply keep­ing and actu­al­ly wear­ing the cloth­ing you already own. Amy Ban­ner­man, eBay’s Pre-Loved Style Direc­tor, sug­gests dye­ing old cloth­ing and lay­er­ing dif­fer­ent pieces to keep your clos­et fresh.

While it might be nice to tell peo­ple to shop more sus­tain­ably, mar­keters and onlook­ers must remem­ber the rea­sons why young peo­ple turn to fast fash­ion. Sus­tain­able fashion’s high price point and non-inclu­sive siz­ing just isn’t for every­one — at least not yet.

Top image via Artem Beli­aikin on Unsplash