15. A look

THE BEHIND THE CLOTHES COST

GRACE HU in-depth editor An overview of the history, impacts and alternatives to fast fashion

clothing items are thrown away every year 80 BILLION

10 PERCENT

of the world’s carbon emissions are from fast fashion

plastic bottles worth of microplastics pollute oceans from fast fashion 50 BILLION

art by CASSIE BEISHEIM & GRACE HU

LADUEPUBLICATIONS.COM IN-DEPTH P op music pumps through the building, adding to the sensory overload of the Saint Louis Galleria. Rows upon rows of almost identical shops fill multiple floors, each storefront boasting their latest styles and massive sales. Inside, each shop contains dozens of racks with the same style of tops and bottoms. As soon as next week, storefronts will be dismantled and reassembled, with no recollection of the old “trends” that seemingly emerge and disappear within a couple hours. Welcome to the world of fast fashion, where clothing is produced as quickly as possible, all for the enjoyment and constant demand of consumers. Although fast fashion maintains the façade of affordable, fashionable clothing, the true nature of the industry is far more sinister. The definitions of fast fashion varies, but they all share a common theme — fast fashion is characterized by quick, cheap and mass-produced clothing. Many “slow fashion” brands will produce collections three to four times per year to match the season. However, fast fashion corporations like Zara, H&M, Hollister and Forever 21 churn out new collections every few weeks, producing thousands of new styles annually. “It’s definitely a very profit-based business,” junior Reese Schuler, a former Hollister employee, said. “It’s them trying to churn out as many clothes as they can before a style goes out of fashion and trying to overprice these teenagers for [low-quality] clothes.” Although the clothes that fast fashion produces are cheap, especially compared to the designer styles they mimic, the enviornment pays a steep price. Due to the inexpensive material used to manufacture such clothing, companies are incentivized to produce quickly at high levels and throw out many garments, creating huge amounts of waste. According to the University of Queensland, the majority of fabrics are comprised of synthetic materials, meaning that when the 80 billion items of non degradable clothing purchased annually end up in landfills, they produce chemicals that seep into the ground for thousands of years. Additionally, the United Nations Environment Programme states that the fashion industry is the second-largest consumer of the world’s water supply and pollutes our oceans with 500,000 tons of microplastics each year — the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles. “[Hollister] would get a lot of big boxes,” Schuler said. “They would just have individually packaged clothes and all these clear plastic bags. We would get multiple shipments every week … There was so much waste. Every time I did it, we had to get new bins just to put them in because there were so many plastic bags piling up.” Abroad, workers pay the price of fast fashion. According to The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Institution for Human Rights, garment workers in Asia and Latin America labor in sweatshops rife with toxic chemicals for hours on end, only to make an average of $67 a month. “It’s like a factory style,” family and consumer sciences teacher April Dalton said. “They have an expectation and a quota.The machines that they work at aren’t protective, and [the workers are] so mentally stressed to fill a quota. Either way, it’s mentally and physically damaging. It’s your cookie-cutter-label factory worker sitting down, doing work and getting hurt.” Fast fashion has permeated the fashion industry with flashy ads, cheap prices and on-trend clothing. Despite the allure of fast fashion, its negative impacts provide an imperative for consumers to look for sustainable alternative options. Movements like “slow fashion” focus on promoting sustainable production and brands, but the clothing they produce can be pricey. However, there are other affordable options, such as shopping at independent boutiques that source their clothing. “Although my lines are relatively inexpensive for boutique price ranges, all of my clothing is made here in the USA,” owner of women’s boutique Never Enough Lisa Lorenz said. “I really looked at that when I bought the store, and I can’t say that all the materials are necessarily sourced here, but they are made here in the U.S.” A less expensive alternative is second-hand shopping, better known as thrifting. There are a multitude of online and in-store options that sell high quality clothing for lower prices while also encouraging sustainability. “I love second-hand shopping and thrifting,” Lorenz said. “I just happened to buy a business that sells new items, but I really hope that anyone that shops at my store would donate or swap their old clothes. And I know that my customers shop at my store, other boutiques, Marshall’s, The Vault and … shop in all different ways based off of what [they’re] looking for.” At the end of the day, fast fashion has become an industry built on an incessant desire to make a profit, harming both consumers and producers. In order to mitigate these harms, Dalton believes companies and consumers must become increasingly mindful of the impacts of this business model. “Companies need to take into consideration their impact on everything when they’re designing,” Dalton said. “[For example], creating jeans uses so much water that could be used for feeding people. Those companies aren’t taking that into consideration, and they have the power to change.”

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history the art by GRACE HU sources: semanticscholar.org, tremer, fashionista, edology

1800s

FAST fashion fashion

1900s

process the

The first sweatshops emerge in the United States in the early 19th century, along with substandard pay in unsafe conditions. The Industrial Revolution results in clothing made in bulk rather than being made to order.

Clothing items are made in sweatshops in Asian and Latin American countries where harsh conditions cause injuries and skeletal issues.

New styles rapidly emerge, incentivizing fast fashion corporations to order about one billion clothing items annually. The clothes are shipped to garment factories in locations like Los Angeles and Chicago where detail sewing is done.

the alternatives Massive textile mills open across the developing world in order to compensate for the growing need to keep up with trends.

t h e c h r i s t i n e d r e s s : $ 2 1 8

sources: the new york times, madewell.com

Customers rapidly buy clothing items in stores and online, generating about $3 trillion in profit annually.

New clothing items are shipped out to warehouses and distributed to stores across the nation two to three times a week.

r e g u l a r f i t t a p e r j e a n : $ 3 5

c o l o r b l o c k b a g : $ 1 4

FACTS fashion fashion

2000s

6 4 Zara is founded in Spain in 1974 and comes to New York in 1990. Zara is credited with popularizing the fast fashion model of production. The first H&M locations open in the U.S. in March 2000 in New York City.

the profit

Fast fashion becomes more mainstream as prominent women such as Michelle Obama and Kate Middleton wear clothing from H&M and Zara.

LADUEPUBLICATIONS.COM IN-DEPTH

15 reformation $$$ patagonia $$$ pact $

$thrift stores levi’s $$ Reformation tracks the enviornmental footprint of every piece it produces by measuring pounds of waste, gallons of water used and carbon emissions. Patagonia uses sustainable materials like recycled wool, down and cotton. Additionally, they provide guides on how to fix clothing to make it last longer. Traditional jeans take over 2,000 gallons of water per pair to make. Levi’s Water>Less collection aims to produce high quality jeans with 96 percent less water. Pact is Fair Trade Certified and is certified organic by the Global Organic Textile Standard. They also use sustainable materials like organic cotton. Online options like thredUP or local thrift stores like Goodwill and Avalon provide affordable clothing options while minimizing waste. sources: reformation, patagonia, levi’s, pact, good housekeeping language the

Trade between companies in developed countries and producers in developing countries, in which fair prices are paid to the producers. When products are repaired, remade, reused and eventually recycled or biodegraded at the end of their use. A deliberate choice from consumers to slow down their consumption and buy less clothing while investing in high quality pieces that last longer. fair trade $ The McKinsey Global Fashion Index forecasts the fashion industry to grow at 4.5 percent next year. $ In 2018, the fast fashion industry was worth $35 billion. $

$Amancio Ortega, founder of Zara has a net worth of $58.3 billion.

Fast fashion accounted for 66 percent of online fashion traffic in the first half of 2018. circularity slow fashion sources: remake.world & smartaset.com