Other than having to wear clothes to obey the law, most people wear clothes that reflect the type of music they listen to, where they were raised, or they are influenced by social media trends. Fast fashion helps us keep our closets updated.
What is Fast Fashion
Fast fashion describes a business model that produces and sells clothing quickly and cheaply in response to rapidly changing fashion trends. Fast fashion companies typically bring new styles to market quickly and frequently. We design, manufacture and market our products at scale. This approach often sources materials and labor from low-wage areas uses low-quality materials and manufacturing techniques and mass-produces clothing intended to be worn only a few times before being discarded. Fast fashion has been criticized for its negative impact on the environment, workers' rights, and consumers' wallets.
Economic Effects of Fast Fashion
The Fashion industry as a whole is worth around 3 trillion dollars as of 2022 and is only predicted to increase this year. As the Fashion industry expands, it makes more job opportunities for not only Americans but everyone around the world. The fashion manufacturing industry employs more than a hundred thousand workers in the United States. Out of the global workforce of 3.5 billion people, around 450 million workers are in fashion, clothing, and apparel production. Others like myself decide to create their own clothing brand business as a source of income. This creates profits from multiple businesses like website creators, graphic designers, manufacturing companies, and even multiple postal services around the world.
How Can Fast Fashion Help Your Mental State
Fashion reflects our mental state and can often enhance it. Everyone has that one pair of shoes or a favorite hoodie that makes them feel confident as soon as they put it on. Colors can affect and reflect your emotions. For example, studies show the color green seems to make positive emotions stronger and the color red seems to have the opposite effect and make negative emotions like a raging bull. Whenever you scroll through Shein and fill up your cart or when you wake up early to get a pair of shoes off SNKRS. Although it can be costly, these purchases are made for mental pleasure and when you received your package you feel a wave of excitement and you start planning your next outfit. Fashion also reflects a social environment and can prepare your mental state for an event. For example, wearing a suit for an interview can make you feel more prepared for it, or wearing your favorite team’s jersey to a game can feel you with spirit.
What are the Negatives of Fast Fashion?
The fashion industry accounts for about 8-10% of global carbon emissions, and nearly 20% of wastewater, and fast fashion is the reason. The world consumes around 80 billion new pieces of clothing every year, 400% more than the consumption twenty years ago. Also, cotton, which is used in a large number of apparel products, is extremely not environmentally friendly to manufacture because it takes a large amount of water to produce, requiring about 700 gallons to produce one cotton shirt. Although some of us might enjoy the expensive things in life, clothing has become cheaper overall (excluding luxury brands of course) which makes it easier for new trends to influence consumers to purchase more. The reason for this is the low cost of labor in places like China and Pakistan. Society plays a huge put in this problem because many people see wearing an outfit multiple times as a problem. You see this mainly in the music industry where your favorite musician most likely wears an outfit once or twice and ends up throwing pieces away.
Good On You. "What is Fast Fashion?" Good On You, 22 March 2021, https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/.