The repelling violations of human rights and environmental standards by the fast fashion industry are often balanced with one of the following arguments:
Yes but fast fashion democratised fashion.
Yes but slow/sustainable fashion is not affordable.
Yes but access to fast fashion is about my self expression.
The second argument is often made by people who then go on to spend £500 on Shein every few months or at the change of each season. The first and third points are somewhat connected and have a lot to do with our understanding of self expression and the ways that such is inevitably tied to consumerism.
The fast fashion industry is known to be working a bit well … fast. With the creation of more than 50 micro trends each year and the production of 100 billion pieces annually, the industry is defined by a short sightedness that extends the detrimental impacts of the industry further to consumer psychology.
The fast fashion industry has prospered through smart marketing. This has seen the creation of a necessity by often targeting young women - creating insecurities and a sense of identity borne from conformity. The target audience for fast fashion is consumers aged between 18 and 24, while women and young girls consume fast fashion more than any other demographic group. Fast fashion brands did not aim to democratise fashion, nor to make it affordable in comparison to its counterparts. The industry made its prices unrepresentative of the labour involved in producing billions of garments every year so that its target groups - young women - can consistently buy more for less at the change of every season.
We neither participate in the creation of our clothes, nor do we pay for the real value thereof. Instead, our current consumption patterns are based on an unsustainable and artificially infinite production of trends, clothing and hence, income for large corporations.
This Eurocentric approach to self-expression through fast fashion is ignorant to the real effects of our throw away culture - an inevitable result of the mass production of micro trends and clothes coming along with that. So, to what extent is your sense of fashion really a form of self expression? Where does this depart from the ways that our self identities are attached to our consumerist patterns? How often do we see phrases like retail therapy being thrown at us? How often are trends, targeted at women, such as the clean girl aesthetic, which last year was that girl and the year before that was something else, pushing for a uniform and large pattern of consumption? Even a capsule wardrobe has now been dominated by the fast fashion industry.
A sense of self-expression borne from access to cheap garments is a social construct founded on capitalist values and a carefully curated marketing strategy. In fact, some of the most sustainable garments are those representing cultures, religions and movements, but not those produced to satisfy an itch for a new identity every micro-season created by the fast fashion industry. In fact, the idea of self-expression through clothing has grown in the early 21st century alongside the use of social media - an outlet for showcasing said identity and clothing.
We have somehow been convinced that what we already have is not good enough. And do not get me wrong, I am not sitting on some moral high horse, I too am a victim of this and often seek a short term form of self validation from fashion trends.
"We've done everything to such excess that there is no consumer for all of it." Marc Jacobs said in a Vogue interview in April 2020.
Indeed, clothing has historically played a symbolic role, it is often a means of identity representation - whether that is our sexuality, gender or even personal interests and hobbies. We should not, however, confuse clothing with fast fashion as the two are not interchangeable nor synonymical. The fast fashion industry has instead used this misconception to morally misrepresent its objectives in the broader fashion industry - which is profit maximisation through the exploitation of people and the environment.
Besides, it has often been that the best ‘statement’ pieces that I found were from second-hand or vintage shops rather than borne from fast-fashion trends.