Last year, I booked a trip to LA with a few of my closest friends. I knew that a lot of pictures would be taken (my friends love Instagram, and avoiding their snaps is next to impossible), so I knew that I’d need to buy a bunch of new clothes to last me the week we were spending there. That meant a new outfit, for every single day.
I went straight to PrettyLittleThing.com — my then-go-to for super cheap but cute outfits, and I knew I could find everything I needed for a trip to LA on there. I spent £200 on a clothing haul of around 15 items.
1 year later, and I haven’t worn a single one of these items since.
Why? They fell apart — some even did so while I was in LA, wearing them for the first or second time. They also fit very awkwardly, the material was thin and flimsy (leading to some pretty embarrassing wardrobe moments), and they were just all-around terrible quality. That, I can confidently say, was the last time I ever shopped at Pretty Little Thing.
I could have spent £200 on four or five pieces from a reputable fashion brand that uses 100% organic cotton and clearly states their social and ethical responsibility policy on their website. I would still have those four or five pieces and would be wearing them to this day. In fact, I’d probably be wearing them for another 5 years, at least.
Yet, we’re still led to believe that by spending all this money on loads of cheap, low-quality clothing, we are getting some sort of bargain. In fact, we are spending far more than we should be in our never-ending quest to look and feel good in what we are wearing. The worst part is that the majority of those who buy from fast fashion companies are my age — they’re Gen Z’ers — and they need to be saving and investing their money more than ever.
Gen Z — defined as those born between the mid 90’s and early 2000s — are the first generation to really feel the effects of fast fashion on our every day lives. It’s intertwined in everything we do — from scrolling on social media that is plagued with ads and influencers selling us the next best outfit (for only a tenner!), to the social pressure of always needing a new outfit to wear on our next night out, which in fact, is tomorrow so we need something “cheap and fast”.
After speaking to a friend of mine who is, by definition, a Gen X, he told me interestingly that it was never a “thing” to go out shopping every Saturday and come back with 15 items from Primark when he was in his early twenties. It was unheard of, and the fashion supply chain reflects this. In 1975, it took 22 months from designing a garment to distributing it. In 2020, Kim Kardashian could walk a red carpet in a $400,000 dress (that did happen, apparently), and there will be a $15 dupe available on the likes of Fashion Nova the following day in a matter of hours. This breakneck speed of production is quite frankly terrifying, and terrible for those making thousands of garments overnight.
Most recently, over Black Friday we saw the likes of Pretty Little Thing, Boohoo and Missguided drop their prices to as little as 8p for a garment. You can only imagine how little the garment makers — who are one of the last in the supply chain to be paid — were receiving if anything.
The reality is that these low prices and ‘bargains’, which tend to not be bargains after all (see Boohoo’s sale countdown clock scandal) are just an illusion as to the amount you’re actually spending on your clothes over time. In 2019, the UK reached a consumer spending all-time high at £61.2 billion on clothes, an increase of almost £20 billion from 2009–2019. We’re spending a whole lot more, but getting a lot less in return.
What makes fast fashion so cheap?
Now you may be thinking, “Why would I spend £25 on a top when I could get one for £5 from Primark?”. It is of course very tempting to go for the option of spending little on many items, as you feel like you’re getting great value for money. It’s also of course not easy for someone on a low income to splash £25 on one item, so it’s much more desirable to go for the low-cost and convenient option. However, there is a hidden cost, which most people don’t consider when shopping for their clothes. A huge hidden cost, that is detrimental to the lives of millions of women in developing countries.
93% of brands surveyed by the Fashion Checker aren’t paying garment workers a living wage.
Most garment factories that supply the big-name brands you see online and on the high-street are based in developing countries, such as India, Bangladesh, China and Indonesia. These factories employ thousands of workers, the majority of whom are women, for sometimes as little as $97/month (typical monthly wage in Bangladesh). The difference between earning a minimum wage and a living wage is the difference between eating a portion of rice every day and being able to feed your family nutritious meals every day. The Fashion Checker have a great tool that demonstrates the difference between earning a minimum wage and a living wage.
Most of these women are employed on short-term contracts and usually on a casual work-basis, with no employee rights. This makes them extremely vulnerable to exploitation along with sexual assault and harassment which is a commonality in these workplaces.
“The women in Bangladesh do not talk about violence and harassment, these are taboo subjects. That is why there are so many undocumented cases of violent attacks — even in the workplace. Insults and sexual assaults are so common in factories that often neither the workers nor the management see this as a problem.” — Labour Rights Activist Kalpona Akter | BCWS (Bangladesh)
Don’t be fooled — this kind of misconduct is not just limited to developing countries. Right here in the UK, factories in Leicester that are linked with Boohoo were put under fire in June 2020 as they were found to have been paying workers £3.50/hour — less than half the legal minimum wage. It comes as no surprise that Boohoo were apparently “unaware” of this issue, as most fashion supply chains are now completely disjointed. Many stages of the process are outsourced to hundreds of different factories, to the point where brands don’t even know where their own products have come from.
There has been an increase in demand for brands to be fully transparent about their supply chains, which means revealing meaningful information on all factories involved in their supply chain. Most of the well-known fashion brands in the UK have failed to do this.
“Fast fashion brands like Fashion Nova, Boohoo, Revolve, Pretty Little Thing and Forever 21 all score less than 10% on the Fashion Transparency Index” — Fashion Transparency Index, 2020
Female workers are paying the price of COVID’s impact on the fashion industry.
Cancelled orders and supply chain issues causing brands to lose money during COVID fell on the shoulders of garment workers, rather than those at the top. This pressure and financial burden were passed directly to these women, and most were either not paid for their work or were dismissed. As there is little to no social security, welfare system or proper support in developing countries, this left these women in an extremely vulnerable position.
What are your clothes really made of?
By cutting costs of labour, fast fashion brands are able to hike their profit margins in order to keep as much of that £5 you spent on that dress as possible. However, it’s not just the garment production that they cut costs on, it’s also the material itself.
Most clothes are now made from cheap synthetic fibres such as nylon or polyester, both of which are plastics. Like any other plastic, they will take hundreds of years to decompose. However, these fibres are cheap in comparison to natural fibres, and so are favoured by fast fashion companies looking to keep their costs as low as possible. They also result in garments with a short lifespan, which feeds into their mantra of “Buy more, and often!”, as you’ll always have something that needs to be replaced.
In fact, out of the 840 million garments produced every year by Zara for their 6,000 stores, most of these end up being thrown away in the same year, as they are considered “old” after one or two uses. Consumers then replace these garments with new ones, and the cycle repeats itself.
Shop slow, save money
Start thinking of clothes as long-term investments, not short-term throwaway pieces.
I, personally, would much rather spend £20 on a t-shirt made from 100% organic cotton by a brand with a fully transparent supply chain and proof of being a living wage employer, than £5 on a t-shirt from a brand that doesn’t even pay their staff a minimum wage and can’t tell me where their products really came from.
The reality is that shopping for slow fashion will always cost you more in the short-term. Ethically produced products are more expensive as they aren’t using cheap materials or cheap labour to produce them, and they’re also producing them in small quantities, which leads to inevitably higher production costs. However, if you compare your spending over a year between buying fast fashion items and shopping a little more purposefully, the difference is breathtaking. The math is simple:
Buy a £4 top that will last you 6 months (at the very most) or buy a £25 top that you’ll still be wearing in 5 years. You’ve already saved money.
