Fast Fashion

Fizzah Mansoor

Eight years ago, Rana Plaza—an eight-story building in Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka that housed several factories producing clothing for several clothing brands—came crashing down, killing approximately 1,130 people and injuring thousands more. Criticism was aimed primarily at the building’s local managers, who failed to keep it up to date with international security standards, and, more harshly, at the fast fashion industry.

Fast fashion brands produce pieces to get the newest style on the market as soon as possible, thereby shortening the length of a fashion “season”. They emphasize optimizing certain aspects of the supply chain for the trends to be designed and manufactured quickly and inexpensively while allowing customers to buy current clothing styles at a lower price. Profit driven and enormously popular, fast fashion has seen one of the most unique social and technological advancements of the past fifty years. However, these advances come at a serious humanitarian cost- since multi-billion dollar companies are willing to outsource labor to countries like Bangladesh (where daily wages are as low as 1 USD per day and workers lack the power to unionize). In addition, due to an exponential increase in demand for new and cheap clothing, the fast fashion industry generates an enormous amount of waste, contributing nearly 10 percent of global carbon emissions and nearly 20 percent of global wastewater.

At the same time, fast fashion is hailed as a great equalizer; runway trends and the latest innovations are now available in budget prices at online stores like FashionNova, which create cheap knockoffs of the latest designer trends within days of their appearance on runways. Since its advent and popularization, fast fashion has allowed the lower classes access to luxury that they were deprived of for much of history: the aesthetic and appearance of wealth. Much like other heavily priced-

down, low quality goods (like the similarly named However, it is important that we look past the shiny fast-food), a lot of the people buying fast fashion do so veneer of the industry. The tragedy of Rana Plaza proved because it’s cheap, and it looks good, even if it doesn’t last that the humanitarian and environmental cost of fast long. People own more, buy more, and throw away more fashion is much greater than the very relative cultural articles of clothing than ever before- influencer ‘shopping change it has brought about, both with respect to its role hauls’ are an internet staple, and Amazon Prime has made in uplifting the self-image of the working class and in its it easier than ever before to buy clothes conveniently socially progressive marketing strategies. Muslims have a and inexpensively. Since cheaper clothing has become a social and religious responsibility to their communities norm, there is also a reflexive rejection of ‘organic’, ‘eco- and to the natural world; it is crucial that we engage with conscious’, ‘slow’ fashion- it is viewed as a vestige of class the idea of dismantling the systems of oppression that and wealth, that systemically denies most people the continue to degrade the environment, exploit the labor pleasures of fashion based on its unattainability. of our people, and refuse to accept responsibility for loss designers a relatively inexpensive platform on which to showcase their vision, to the increasing visibility of different body types and ethnicities in their catalogues. In 2015, H&M featured its first hijabi model in their “Close the Loop” campaign, which aimed to encourage donation of used clothing to, hypothetically, decrease clothing waste, and encourage sustainability. While it was certainly a marker of increased Muslim representation in mainstream media, it is difficult to ignore that the advances made for positive Muslim visibility are by the same companies that exploit Muslim laborers in the third world; H&M was one of Rana Plaza’s biggest clients, and did not pay any reparations to family members of the deceased laborers. of lives in our homes. This is difficult work; it involves consciously breaking out of these cycles of exploitation “People own more, buy more, by actively purchasing more mindfully and cutting back and throw away more...” on markers of material wealth for the sake of the cause. It requires an overhaul of consumerist mindsets, and a rejection of excessive wealth at the cost of the natural

The youth-conscious marketing of fast fashion brands through short-sighted revolution- bringing an end to mean they are usually the first big businesses to advocate fast fashion is slow work, but ultimately necessary for the for socially progressive causes; from giving working class future of our communities and our species. world. Radical change cannot be sustainably achieved