On social media, trends come and go faster than ever

Each week it seems that social media spouts a new fad that’s the “must-have” item of the moment. Much to the disdain of many, a lot of these trends are borrowed from past eras, plucked out of boxes marked “never again! (and put down those eyebrow tweezers!)”.

Revisiting past trends is nothing new in fashion, but the practice has been ramped up since the arrival of micro trends. Think: one particular sunny green dress that had TikTok in a chokehold, the “cottagecore” revival (a cousin of the “twee” trend that also saw a comeback), ugly dad sandals, checkerboard prints, and chunky plastic rings.

Not every micro trend is evil. In fact, many of these looks might inspire us to dig deeper into our closets and rediscover items we haven’t worn in years. Or maybe it drives us to rescue some garments from a local charity shop.

The problem is that fast fashion brands fuel the feedback loop of these trends—quickly turning out cheap polyester versions to meet the newfound demand. That’s where micro trends raise ethical questions—and even some questions about our consumer psychology.

Here’s what you need to know about our culture’s obsession with trends—and how they keep getting quicker.

What are micro trends? The fast fashion connection

Micro trends take what you know about trends and accelerate the process: these trends rise to popularity quicker and then leave the trend cycle faster. While traditional fashion trends typically last a few years, micro trends’ life spans are shorter, with some lasting less than one season.

Many tout social media and its hypervisibility as the main culprit. It goes hand-in-hand with ultra fast fashion; faster production, exploitative manufacturing processes, and plastic clothing are needed to keep up with the demand that micro trends create.

Faster production, exploitative manufacturing processes, and plastic clothing are needed to keep up with the demand that micro trends create.

In other words, to understand micro trends is to understand the driving force of ultra fast fashion’s marketing machine. Earlier in 2022, I investigated the model driving SHEIN’s remarkable rise to be the most profitable business in its category—a brand that puts thousands of styles on its website every week. In my research, I spoke with Rita Liao, TechCrunch reporter and editor of Attention Factory, to get a deeper understanding of how SHEIN profits off of an ever-quickening trend churn.

“SHEIN puts [new products] online instantly, and then blasts it over social media. And because it’s just online, they’re also able to collect feedback very quickly,” Liao told me.

Because SHEIN is so digitally versed in data, it can pre-empt what will sell before a product is even made.

Matthew Brennan, author of Attention Factory, coined a new term to describe how fast trends turn with businesses like SHEIN: “real-time fashion,” a retail model that acts as a mirror to breaking social media trends.

An unending, exhausting push towards what’s new

Digging deeper into what drives micro trends ultimately brings us to questions of psychology. For an expert perspective, I tapped behavioural psychologist Carolyn Mair, author of The Psychology of Fashion, who launched the University of Arts London’s Psychology Department at London College of Fashion.

Mair points to fashion brands’ eagerness to supply products for sale as fueling a deeper phenomenon. “The desire to buy trend after trend isn’t about attention span—it’s about habituation. When we experience something for the first time, it excites us and gives us pleasure, but with repetition over time, the pleasure dissipates because we habituate to the experience,” she tells Good On You.

The desire to buy trend after trend isn’t about attention span—it’s about habituation.

Carolyn Mair – author of The Psychology of Fashion

Growing accustomed to the feeling motivates people to make new purchases in hopes of reigniting that pleasure and excitement.

And so, this routine of chucking out barely-worn clothes has become a spectacle of sorts. On TikTok, there’s a trend of videos where users show-off clothes they regret buying. “POV: you were influenced to buy all the micro trends last summer and now you’re disgusted,” reads one video.

Pop culture, TikTok, and surging searches

Social media, entertainment, and celebrity moments now have the ability to be moulded into micro trends at lightning speeds. Take Euphoria; after season two aired, fashion e-commerce searches surged. When character Maddy Perez (played by actor Alexa Demie) wore a black cut-out dress, there was an 890% increase in demand for the trend search.

There’s another very human and very simple reason behind the rise of micro trends: “We follow trends because we want to belong,” Mair tells me. “When we follow a trend, we show our belonging to others who follow that trend and dissociate ourselves from those who do not.” That alignment gives wearers a sense of belonging and cohesion—traits that all of us understand to be aspirational.

When Euphoria character Maddy Perez wore a black cut-out dress, there was an 890% increase in demand for the trend search.

Almost ironically as micro trends fixate on newness, many of these impermanent trends leech off existing throwback styles. What we’re seeing is a sort of trend “archaeology,” an urgency to catalogue moments in time, both past and present.

Take “indie sleaze” for example, a name that was coined retrospectively to classify the hipster years in the early 2000s and 2010s.

Nostalgia has always been pervasive in fashion, and it’s something that Mair is pragmatic about. “Fashion has always been cyclical because there are limited possibilities with clothing styles, silhouettes, and so on,” she says.

Why are we seeing more of this now? Yes, increased social media usage is one element, but Mair asks us to consider the upheaval of the past few years, too. “Nostalgia is appealing particularly in times of turmoil and uncertainty when we tend to look back with ‘rose-coloured glasses’ imagining that the past was much better than the present.”

An antidote to the trend churn: personal style

It’s one thing to understand this, but another thing to try to wade through the sea of ultra fast fashion and micro trends. A way to help maintain a discerning eye when faced with endless streams of trends is to look inward and try to define your own personal style. It’s easier said than done; humans are constantly evolving, our tastes change, and our identities are in flux. Instead of focusing on aesthetics, you can home in on your belief system and overall function of your wardrobe.

“If you have a clear organising logic in your wardrobe, it’s easy to sit out irrelevant trends and focus instead on investing in staple pieces and caring for what you already have,” says journalist and theatre nerd JD Shadel, who has reported on TikTok #hauls’ connection to ultra fast fashion trends.

In the theatre world, a production concept is the key messaging and vision that ties a show together—it’s an idea that Shadel suggests people can implement into their own wardrobes. “The production concept isn’t merely an aesthetic concern—it defines how all the elements come together in harmony,” they tell me. “Every creative decision is guided by that overarching concept.”

When we define a production concept for ourselves, it helps us look past micro trends and only purchase garments we truly love. “I buy things because I fall in love with them,” fashion icon Iris Apfel once said. And that might be the best tip of all.

Ask yourself: Do you ‘love’ this or do you want to buy it because you think it’s trendy?

Ask yourself like Apfel might: Do you “love” this or do you want to buy it because you think it’s trendy? Trends themselves aren’t inherently evil. But when an exploitative business model drives us to over consume in the name of self-expression, that’s when we know we have a problem.

Ideally, each person’s “production concept” becomes their personal style—it’s specifically tailored to their own needs. If we make our choices selectively and slowly, guiding them by what we know works for us rather than what we think is trending, we might be less prone to fall prey to the dizzying churn of styles we see on our social media feeds.

Certainly, our morals shouldn’t follow the fast-dying pace of a micro trend. If we have a clear and strong purpose that underpins our fashion decisions—such as a dedication to workers’ rights, a commitment to caring for the Earth, and a desire to support local, small businesses—it can help us stand up to the forces of fast fashion.

The post What Are Micro Trends? How Styles Change Faster Than Ever Before appeared first on Good On You.

SHEIN’s icky reputation precedes it

There’s a corner of the internet where second hand shopping is cool, anti-waste is a buzzword, and ultra fast fashion brands inspire almost instant rage. Yes, that’s the “sustainable fashion community”, and you find it most actively on Instagram and TikTok.

At the best of times, it’s one of the few encouraging places on social media, where the majority of people seem to genuinely care about where their garments come from and how the workers are treated. It’s the type of online community where you feel like your choices might make a difference.

But here’s a thing that activists and “sustainable fashion influencers” know: If you really want to drive up your engagement numbers, you only need to mention one word. And that word is SHEIN. Here’s why.

The biggest, baddest ultra fast fashion brand

The world’s most profitable ultra fast fashion brand, SHEIN has become a catchcry for all things alarming about the current state of the fashion industry. In Hollywood terms, SHEIN is the stalk villain in a B movie. It’s widely known as the antithesis of conscious, sustainable, and ethical fashion.

As the prototypical purveyor of and poster child of ultra fast fashion, SHEIN lives mostly online. It has no permanent brick and mortar stores. It has few employees in contrast to the vast network of stores that Zara and H&M maintain. Instead, SHEIN lures its prey on fast-paced social media sites like TikTok and Instagram—on the former, #SHEIN boasts 22 billion views and counting. Viral videos flood the page, from unboxing hauls to complaints about its ill-fitting garments—quality comes second when prices are dirt cheap.

SHEIN lives mostly online. (...) It lures its prey on fast-paced social media sites like TikTok and Instagram.

There’s no middle ground when it comes to SHEIN, which for the record is pronounced “she-in”. You either love SHEIN for its chic looks and dirt cheap prices, or you hate SHEIN for, well, everything else.

Like its ultra fast fashion peers, SHEIN receives Good On You’s lowest rating, “We Avoid”, for its track records on labour rights and the environment. (You can dive deeper into SHEIN’s rating here.) But the story embedded in the rating is a total lack of transparency. SHEIN seems to disclose absolutely nothing about its impacts.

This lack of transparency and controversial reputation raises a big question: How much do we really know about this polyester powerhouse? I spoke to several experts on the brand and its supply chain to dive deep into the truth about SHEIN’s dark side. Is it as dark as you think? It might be worse.

SHEIN’s alarming ‘real time fashion’ model

SHEIN was founded in 2008 and is, to this day, a notoriously private company. “SHEIN represents the worst of the worst for large fashion brands on almost every front,” says Kristian Hardiman, Good On You’s head of ratings. Largely because of its total lack of transparency.

“Ultra fast fashion” is the label given to brands who operate at even faster rates than fast fashion labels—that’s to say that their manufacturing processes and the number of styles they produce is exponentially quicker and higher. Apart from SHEIN, Fashion Nova, Boohoo, PrettyLittleThing, and Cider are other brands in this category.

“In the simplest sense, ultra fast fashion retailers take everything bad about fast fashion and speed it up. That means faster production cycles, faster trend churn, and faster to the landfills,” journalist JD Shadel recently wrote in a deep dive into what actually qualifies as ultra fast fashion. And their reporting found SHEIN to be the most talked about on TikTok, the most profitable, and the most alarming.

SHEIN puts (new products) online instantly, and then blasts it over social media. And because it's just online, they're also able to collect feedback very quickly.

Rita Liao – Tech Crunch reporter and editor of Attention Factory

In fact, SHEIN’s business model is so much faster and more nimble than many of its closest peers that it could even be classified on a level of its own. Coined by Matthew Brennan, author of “Attention Factory”, “real-time fashion” refers to a retail model that almost acts as a mirror to current social media trends. Rather than the once-groundbreaking two weeks that it took Zara to take clothes from design to delivery, SHEIN has reduced this process to as little as three days.

“SHEIN puts [new products] online instantly, and then blasts it over social media. And because it’s just online, they’re also able to collect feedback very quickly,” says Rita Liao, Tech Crunch reporter and editor of “Attention Factory”. Because SHEIN is so digitally versed in data, it can pre-empt what will sell before a product is even made.

Voir cette publication sur Instagram

Une publication partagée par The Business of Fashion (@bof)

Does SHEIN use child labour?

There are many unanswered question marks floating around SHEIN. For instance, while its site says that it “believe[s] that people deserve a living wage”, it importantly doesn’t say it pays a living wage. The story is similar with one of the most asked questions about SHEIN: Does it use child or forced labour? Again, its website says it “never ever engage[s] in child or forced labour”. But again, SHEIN has not provided a single shred of evidence to support that claim.

There are many allegations of SHEIN's labour practices suggesting the brand is likely to be contracting with manufacturers that may be grossly exploiting, overworking, and underpaying their garment workers.

Kristian Hardiman – Good On You’s head of ratings

“There are many allegations of SHEIN’s labour practices suggesting the brand is likely to be contracting with manufacturers that may be grossly exploiting, overworking, and underpaying their garment workers,” Hardiman says. In 2021, a report from the NGO Public Eye revealed SHEIN’s workers putting in as many as 75 hours a week, receiving only one day off per month, and being paid per item of clothing. That’s all in gross violation of labour laws.

“A lack of visibility of supply chains can allow exploitative, unsafe working conditions and environmental damage to thrive while obscuring who has the responsibility and power to redress these issues,” agrees Ruth MacGilp, Fashion Revolution’s Communications Manager, who also points at how SHEIN scored a zero for its supply chain traceability and governance in last year’s Fashion Transparency Index (FTI). SHEIN’s extraordinarily low FTI score is one of the many public data sources that feed into its “We Avoid” rating on Good On You.

A look into SHEIN’s factories and suppliers

Instead of traditional large factories, SHEIN operates through contracting thousands of small, family-owned workshops in China’s urban villages in Guangzhou. “They are very, very responsive and a lot more flexible when it comes to their schedule,” Liao says, who has walked by these shops herself. “A lot of [SHEIN’s] suppliers are maybe the size of a big bedroom, with a few sewing machines and one or two workers.”

The narrative about SHEIN is not all bad. Liao acknowledges that SHEIN has a reputation for paying suppliers on time—a critical plus in the regional manufacturing sector. The large volume of stock that SHEIN orders from these small businesses creates stability and trust, a dependable yet arguably toxic two-way relationship.

Responding to the research from Public Eye around the 12 hour days many workers put in, Liao says that these might not be explicitly forced hours. “If there’s any exploitation going on, it’s not coming from SHEIN—it’s SHEIN’s demand. It’s very strict, the schedule is very strict.”

You might argue that what SHEIN engages in is an implicit form of forced labour, where these strict deadlines and ever-changing production plans create mayhem for garment workers.

The take-home pay for a garment worker relies upon her speed of production—the more pieces she sews, the more money she makes. The opposite is also true, which means in many cases, workers are earning less than the legal minimum wage.

Ruth MacGilp – Fashion Revolution’s Communications Manager

Another finding is that SHEIN uses a piece rate system of payment, meaning workers are paid per piece they are involved in the making of. Liao notes that this is a very common practice in the clothing manufacturing industry. But commonplace doesn’t mean appropriate. In fact, pay-per-item rates are in violation of local labour laws. This mode of payment is one of the reasons that workers must put in such long hours.

Fashion Revolution’s MacGilp points to the dangers of this exploitative model that encourages extended, overtime hours. “The take-home pay for a garment worker relies upon her speed of production—the more pieces she sews, the more money she makes. The opposite is also true, which means in many cases, workers are earning less than the legal minimum wage.”

As we speak, SHEIN has planned to invest 15 billion yuan ($2.37 billion USD) into a Guangzhou supply chain centre. Money is flowing, but into whose hands? Based on its record profits and the abysmal wages paid to garment workers, it seems clear that the money is going only to the wealthy executives at the top.

With all the bad headlines, why is SHEIN still so popular?

SHEIN has proven that it’s unlike any other fashion shopping platform out there—and its growth speaks for itself. For the past eight years, it has grown over 100% year on year. In 2020, it was reported to be the most talked about brand on social media. In the same year, it was estimated that SHEIN made $10 billion USD in revenue.

These eye-watering figures reflect the overwhelming stock that floods its online store. “While others go big, we go small. That means we only produce 50-100 pieces per new product,” SHEIN proclaims. In a flashy pop-up, it proudly says that 1,000 new styles are added daily (though that number may actually be between 2,000 and 10,000). At its best? SHEIN is producing 5,000 new items per day. At its worst? A million.

SHEIN ramps up our already-rapid trend cycle to the point of breaking. SHEIN is there to fulfil every minuscule desire we have, and then some.

SHEIN feeds the worst side of ourselves. The sides that are obsessed with appearances and newness, no matter the impact. The sides that are okay with heavy data surveillance, and don’t mind big businesses stealing off young designers. SHEIN ramps up our already-rapid trend cycle to the point of breaking. SHEIN is there to fulfil every minuscule desire we have, and then some.

SHEIN, while its methods are cunning, is not alone in driving the fashion industry to ultra lows. It’s one of many companies that shamelessly sell the false promises of fast fashion, inevitably leaving people wanting more and more. SHEIN is today’s big bad wolf of the fashion industry—but wolves run in packs.

The post SHEIN Is Infamously Exploitative—and It Might Be Worse Than You Think appeared first on Good On You.

Investigating fashion’s ‘eco gender gap’

The fashion sustainability space no longer caters for a hippy-dippy, hemp-fuelled minority. These days, even the worst-offending fast fashion brands advertise their sustainability slogans. As a result, we’ve become all too familiar with greenwashing. But even as sustainability has become a mainstream buzzword, the audience still seems overwhelmingly geared toward one group: cisgender women.

The sheer number of womenswear-focused brands makes this imbalance clear. A recent survey of the most sustainable fashion brands rated by Good On You has found there are more than twice as many sustainable womenswear brands when compared to brands selling menswear.

There’s a term for this disconnect: it’s the “eco gender gap”, as coined by Mintel in 2018, when their survey found that 71% of British women are trying to live more ethically and environmentally responsibly, as opposed to 59% of British men.

There are more than twice as many sustainable womenswear brands when compared to brands selling menswear.

It might make you wonder, is this a chicken-and-egg situation? Are men less inclined to be interested in sustainable fashion because there are fewer brands catering to their ethical desires? Or are there fewer sustainable menswear brands because of a limited demand among this demographic?

Of course, you can’t get too far along in answering these questions without addressing the binary itself: The “menswear”/”womenswear” concept dominating modern fashion makes little sense when we take clothes for the inanimate shards of fabric they are.

But the social construct of binary fashion has real-world consequences. Fashion marketing is particularly targeted toward cis women, while toxic masculinity limits the attention cis men generally pay to fashion, beauty, and so on. That’s saying nothing about the harm the policing of gendered fashion norms causes trans, queer, and gender-nonconforming people.

That’s why the eco gender gap is far from a trivial concern. Case in point: a truly sustainable fashion industry won’t be possible if “sustainability” remains a niche marketing tactic targeting only one segment of the population.

Womenswear dominates sustainable brands

Data on sustainable fashion indicates that womenswear dominates the sector. Good On You has rated more brands on sustainability issues than anyone else in the industry. In a recent survey of all brands Good On You has rated “Good” and “Great”, there are around 108% more brands focused on womenswear than there are menswear-focused brands.

The laziest interpretation—that women are inherently more interested in sustainability—is uncomfortably shallow. It’s also rooted in sexist stereotypes of femininity, which miss the more nuanced ways gender constructs influence sustainable fashion trends.

To investigate what’s really going on beneath the surface, I spoke to several experts in their field: Diane Martin, professor of Marketing at RMIT University; Courtney Holm, founder of sustainable brand A.BCH; and Sandy McIntyre, founder of Queerful.

A truly sustainable fashion industry won’t be possible if ‘sustainability’ remains a niche marketing tactic targeting only one segment of the population.

“The fashion industry in general is more focused on womenswear,” says Martin. “To the extent that fashion is gendered, then sustainable fashion is as well.”

Echoing Martin’s sentiment, the fashion sustainability space may be predominantly made up of womenswear-concentrated brands because this is the most financially successful choice. After all, women make 70-80% of all consumer purchasing decisions.

Holm—whose job means she overlaps with people from the textile industry, education, government, and the charity sector—says she sees an equal mix of men and women working professionally in the field. That changes when she looks at who the messengers are: “I find that the global conversations I follow tend to be led by women,” she says, adding that activists, social media personalities, and podcast hosts skew female.

“As to why this is, I think it’s probably that a lot of [cisgender heterosexual men] don’t think as much about the clothes they buy and wear; they might not even buy their own clothes,” Holm says. “I don’t think they don’t have the same societal pressures on their looks that women have.”

But this doesn’t mean that men don’t want—or aren’t trying—to source more sustainable clothing. Men represent only about 30% of Good On You’s users, but menswear searches account for around 70% of gender-focused searches. Given the overwhelming number of brands catering to women, that suggests that men are searching and filtering more to try and find a smaller number of brands offering sustainable menswear.

Is toxic masculinity the culprit here?

Across the board, research suggests women are more likely to partake in environmentally friendly actions—reflected in purchasing decisions, smaller carbon footprints, higher recycling rates, more climate-friendly diets (men’s meat-heavy diets cause 40% more climate emissions than women’s) and lower littering numbers.

“I feel that toxic masculinity has played a role in this,” McIntyre says. “Typically, men don’t find it appealing to shop [and] too often have had their clothing bought for them by their spouses or mothers. Why? Because men ‘hate’ shopping. But I want to ask, ‘is this because you’ve been told you hate it, or do you actually dislike the experience?’”

Anyone who wears clothing is a part of this system, whether they like it or not.

Courtney Holm – founder of A.BCH

Generally, fashion is viewed as an exclusive industry, where people don’t consider themselves part of the fashion system. It’s commonly filed next to “beauty” in the list of stereotypical feminine hobbies. But many are pushing back against this contrived narrative.

“We all want to look our best and should be given the opportunity to figure out what that means to [us]”, McIntyre says.

Holm—whose label A.BCH makes womenswear and menswear—goes a step further. She questions whether it is a gendered mindset, or whether people in general need to rethink the way they contribute to fashion.

“Anyone who wears clothing is a part of this system, whether they like it or not. A lot of people think that because they don’t engage in what they perceive to be ‘fashion’—ie shopping for new pieces regularly, keeping up with trends, following influencers for style ideas—they might be exempt from worrying about this stuff.”

In saying that, she tells me that across her customer and audience base, her clientele is consistently 85% women and 15% men.

“While [our male customers] don’t amount to the same numbers as our women customers, they tend to be quite particular, ask a lot of questions, and shop with us loyally over long periods of time. I do think more men need to care about a sustainable and equitable fashion industry,” Holm says.

It’s not far-fetched, then, to suggest that women make up the majority of people who shop ethical and sustainable fashion. But gender isn’t the only factor that influences this.

“Education, social class, context, and local ecology are also important factors in consumer choice”, she says. “[Outside of fashion] the idea that men are less interested in sustainability than women is not fully supported in the academic literature. In other consumer categories you may find the uptake in sustainable options is driven more by men,” she adds, pointing to the sale of electric vehicles like Teslas as an example.

It’s a distinction that speaks to the gendering of sustainable issues. Cishetero men can like electric vehicles without feeling like their masculinity is being questioned. Meanwhile, hardly anyone would call Elon Musk a sustainable fashion icon.

A more sustainable solution: degendering fashion

While sustainable fashion may predominantly target one side of the cisgender binary, the reality is that many people don’t fit into these rigid moulds of sex and gender—something Queerful’s McIntyre attests to.

“From the moment we’re born, our life is gendered. Right down to our clothing,” they say. “It’s a daily reminder that society doesn’t recognise those who live outside of the binary. The number of times I pick up ‘women’s’ clothing to then go into the ‘men’s’ change-room is astounding and, at first, embarrassing.”

The most sustainable solution of all might be ditching fashion’s preoccupation with rigid cisgender binary demographics. That’s something that many activists have been advocating for decades. Today it’s often known as the growing “degender fashion” movement, spearheaded by trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming voices like the writer, performer, and speaker Alok Vaid-Menon.

From the moment we’re born, our life is gendered. Right down to our clothing.

Sandy McIntyre – founder of Queerful

Thankfully, there are finally many major brands releasing collections marketed to and for any gender—even if many of these collections are primarily designed by cishetero people.

“Fashion is slowly entering a more gender neutral space which I adore, with a great percentage of those being sustainable brands,” says McIntyre. It’s promising to see that this uptake mirrors queer folk’s interest in social justice issues. Research shows that those in queer communities will engage in an overall greater level of activism, including environmental activism.

But the solution to fashion’s eco gender gap can’t simply be adding “gender neutral” collections. There’s deeper work to do than just slapping unisex labels on an oversized sweater.

A.BCH’s Holm notes that inclusivity doesn’t begin and end with product offerings: “I think terminology could become more inclusive. Perhaps we need more great role models in the space to reach the people who don’t consider themselves part of the fashion system.”

The question I originally posed was: Where are the sustainable fashion brands focused on menswear? The question I am now left with is: Why do people feel disengaged in fashion sustainability, and how can we change that?

McIntyre ends our interview with a mantra I hope everyone can get on board with: “Fashion is fun, and for everyone. I repeat. Fashion is fun, and for everyone.”

Author bio:

Maggie Zhou is a Melbourne-based writer, podcaster, content creator, and slow fashion advocate. She currently holds the title Writer & Producer at Refinery29 Australia, and she’s written for publications such as ELLE, Marie Claire, MTV, and Fashion Journal. If she’s not writing about internet and culture trends, she’s tackling the perils of the fashion industry with intersectionality at the forefront of her advocacy. In 2021, she was nominated for Melbourne Press Club’s Student Journalist of the Year, and she sits on Melbourne Fashion Festival’s mentor panel for its Fashion Writing Program. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.

The post Where Are All the Sustainable Menswear Brands? We Investigate appeared first on Good On You.

Excuses for fast fashion

I’m gripping the padded, rubber handrail of the escalator at my local shopping centre. I’m shopping with a friend, whose hands are wound tightly over several shopping bag handles as we make our way up another floor level.

“It’s just so classist, you know?” she says. We’re talking about the accessibility of sustainable fashion—which undoubtedly comes at a higher price tag than its fast fashion counterparts. Without skipping a beat, I agree with her. But then she gestures to her bags of garments worth a couple hundred dollars and says, “That’s why I have to shop here.”

An icky feeling washes over me. I know that fast fashion is often perceived as the only accessible option for many, whether that be because of financial constraints, size exclusion, or lack of time. The argument many people make centres on the single parent working multiple jobs who’s trying to clothe their multiple kids.

Similarly, many say that purchasing ethical and sustainable fashion is predominately catered to middle- and upper-classes, that it’s for those with a disposable income, and that it predominantly excludes lower socioeconomic classes. There’s a lot of truth to that.

But lately, there’s something far more troubling happening in conversations around sustainable fashion: Many people are abusing the valid arguments around classism to justify their own fast fashion consumption. When upper- and middle-class people hide behind this logic that doesn’t personally affect them, it invalidates and undermines the actual hardships of those in the working classes.

Fashion, class, and devaluing labour

People do not like to own their privilege. They like to think they acquired their wealth through merit, superior intelligence, and hard work.

There’s a common thread of people who try to downplay their wealth, and I pose this predicament to Dr Karen Bell, author of “Working-Class Environmentalism.” Her answer: “Guilt and defensiveness,” she says, is at the crux of this. “People do not like to own their privilege. They like to think they acquired their wealth through merit, superior intelligence, and hard work.”

By minimising their class and financial privilege, people may feel less pressure to shop from ethical and sustainable brands. When bargain bins and mega sales are continuously shoved in front of our eyeballs, we become convinced clothes should be that cheap. This entitlement comes with a price: We undersell the value of clothes, and label them as disposable and temporary.

This mindset of what our clothes are supposed to cost—something that admittedly feels solidly cemented in our collective consciousness—is actually relatively new. Fast fashion only entered our mainstream about 20 years ago, completely changing the way we view and consume clothes. Hassle your parents and grandparents on their past clothing purchasing habits, and you’ll most likely find that they spent far more on far fewer garments (when adjusted for inflation over the years) than younger generations have become conditioned to expect. Or, like my grandparents, they might’ve even sewed almost all their clothing. The human production of clothes is almost an afterthought, rather than at the crux of our fashion consumption conversations now.

While sustainable fashion brands often target privileged consumers, it’s worth noting that these brands’ prices are likely in line with the garments of our grandparents’ generation – which, as they’d remind you, was not all that long ago. And for brands sourcing quality materials and paying living wages, the price of each garment reflects its longevity (high quality garments often cost less when you consider the cost over time) and the respect given to the workers who make our clothes.

Corporations have a lot to answer for

We follow fashion to belong and to show we are good enough. Capitalism uses these basic human needs for love, connection, value, respect—manipulating them to sell goods.

“The consumer voice does have power. Change can come from consumer outrage,” Aja Barber told Atmos—something she elaborates on in her debut book “Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism”.

This dismantles the argument that many middle- and upper-class people make when they use “sustainability is classist” rhetoric as a scapegoat for their own overconsumption.

The desire for new clothes, new outfits, and newness is not merely a byproduct of fast fashion’s overproduction. It’s a pillar that’s intrinsically tied to their business model. These corporations have tapped into the most human needs like comfort, pleasure, and the fear of not fitting in—converting these emotions into profit.

“We follow fashion to belong and to show we are good enough,” Bell explains. “Capitalism uses these basic human needs for love, connection, value, respect—manipulating them to sell goods.”

Simply put, the driving force behind overconsumption is not the physical garments on show, but the psychological urge to be considered trendy and attractive, and therefore, accepted within a community.

“We need to be looking at the companies [and] their large profits and tax evasions, rather than the actions of individuals who have less power and options in society,” says Bell.

There is no comparison between the power and wealth hoarded by fast fashion CEOs and the wealthy folk I know. Nitin Passi, founder of Missguided, is worth approximately $443 million. Boohoo is valued at over $6.2 billion, and its co-founder Mahmud Kamani is valued at a cool $1.7 billion.

Don’t forget about garment workers

We need to look at those who set up the systems of exploitation that drive this issue—the companies and the governments.

And in the spirit of classism, our concerns about equality must extend to those beyond our borders. The majority of garment workers are low-income BIPOC women who commonly face exploitative labour practices, and whose social and environmental needs aren’t being met.

“We need to think of working-class people everywhere,” says Bell. “Their interests are the same. Pay people decently so that they can afford to buy what they need and ensure working conditions are decent everywhere. We need to…look at those who set up the systems of exploitation that drive this issue—the companies and the governments.”

While many act performatively concerned by the problems of the working class, that angle on fast fashion entirely misses the structural equalities facing the working class who produce those clothes.

“It is more important that working-class people are paid adequately so that they can afford quality clothes which last. Unfortunately, most are not, because they are exploited [by fast fashion brands]”, Bell says.

What can you do?

Really ask yourself if you are unable to afford anything apart from fast fashion, or if that’s a convenient excuse to hide behind.

At the end of the day, as writer Fedora Abu says, “Nobody who cares about the environmental/social impact of fast fashion is telling people who are hard up to buy expensive clothes and let’s be real, the people making the argument know that.”

We don’t hold discourse around the detrimental effects of fast fashion to make people feel guilty about their purchasing decisions or to individually blame people—especially those who are in financially difficult situations. Some of the most sustainable choices we can make for our wardrobe are the most affordable anyway: Wearing clothes you already own, caring for them so they last, and purchasing clothing second hand all contribute to fashion’s circular economy.

But what I’m asking is for people above the working class to hold up an uncomfortable mirror to themselves. Really ask yourself if you are unable to afford anything apart from fast fashion, or if that’s a convenient excuse to hide behind.

The truth is, if you’re trying to find a reason to justify a fast fashion purchase, you’ll easily find one. Fast fashion companies have convinced us that we don’t just need their clothes, we’re entitled to them.

And to that we must ask ourselves, “but at what cost?”

Author bio:

Maggie Zhou is a Melbourne-based writer, podcaster, content creator, and slow fashion advocate. She currently holds the title Writer & Producer at Refinery29 Australia, and she’s written for publications such as ELLE, Marie Claire, MTV, and Fashion Journal. If she’s not writing about internet and culture trends, she’s tackling the perils of the fashion industry with intersectionality at the forefront of her advocacy. In 2021, she was nominated for Melbourne Press Club’s Student Journalist of the Year, and she sits on Melbourne Fashion Festival’s mentor panel for its Fashion Writing Program. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.

The post Is Calling Out Fast Fashion Classist? Why That Argument Doesn’t Add Up appeared first on Good On You.