How to spot Fast Fashion

Hi, welcome to our most anticipated blog post:

How to spot a fast fashion brand.

We’re going to give you some top tips in what to look out for and what to avoid.

We must admit, you might not love to hear the names of the brands we’re about to expose, but you asked for it, so here we go.

1. THE QUANTITY. When you walk into a store, spot the quantity of each item on a rail. The hard truth is that if they have a high volume of each garment/product in multiple stores across the UK, then they are producing their clothes on a mass scale. This means they are encouraging consumerism which is anti-sustainable. We buy wayyyy too much as consumers; 150 billion new garments are made each year. This puts immense pressure on the earth’s resources, in the water, pesticides and fabrics used and the worst part is that 90 billion of those garments end up in landfill!

2. THE TURNOVER. Spot the constant turnover. Every time you walk into a store or scroll online, ask yourself; are there new garments being put out onto the shop floor that you haven’t seen before. Constant new trends also result in encouraging consumerism. Realistically talking, if there is a constant turnaround, there is also practically constant work (work that the garment workers are being paid next to nothing for). In the documentary, Breaking Fashion, there was a segment that highlighted that they had a turnaround from trend to garment within 2 weeks, which is SO unrealistic. It should take 8-12 weeks for the production and shipping of a garment also alluding to overworking workers and quick cheap methods of production.

3. THE WEBSITE. Check their website. First thing, do they even have a section on sustainability. If it’s in tiny writing in their footer, they probably don’t care about it that much. If they do, find it. What does it say? Is it brief and vague? Do they go into detail on where their garments are produced, the fabrics they use, how they treat their employees, essentially are they being transparent. Do their goals seem unreachable, is everything set for 2050? What are they doing now?

4. THE PRICE. Behind every price is a long list of costs that need to be paid, i.e garment workers’ wages, materials, transport, factory overheads, agent and retailer’s margin. An average T-shirt is £11.37, so let’s break it down!

· The retailer will make £6.77 (making a 60% margin) costing them £4.60 to make the t-shirt. (ITS IMPORTANT TO NOTE: they will always make their 60% margin)

· Of the £4.60 - £3 is spent on materials

· 84p on freight and insurance

· 53p on factory margins

· 15p to agent (the middleman between buyer and factory)

· LEAVING 10p for the garment worker’s labour

5. THE GREEN COLLECTION. Have they got a ‘green’ collection? Ask yourself whether they have done that to tick a box, or because they care about sustainability? Why is not everything they make ‘green’? Greenwashing is a powerful marketing tool used to tempt their consumer into buying their products, making us feel we’re doing our bit for the planet but we’re actually just making them more money.

6. THE FABRICS. Look at the garment label to see what fabrics the clothes are made of. The actual making of fabrics can be detrimental to the environment. For example, the growing of cotton accounts for 10% of all pesticides and 22.5% of insecticides. The production of ONE pair of jeans requires 3,625 litres of water, 3kg of chemicals, 400mJ of energy and 13m2 of harvested land.

Look out for natural plant fibres as they are biodegradable. Here’s a list of fabrics that are more eco conscious:

Linen – is Biodegradable and recyclable. It’s made from flax plant and uses a lot less water than cotton with little to no pesticides. Linen keeps you cool in summer and warm in cold weather.

Hemp- 3x more durable than cotton and fun fact is that it’s naturally UV resistant. Uses little water and no pesticides. Another fun fact, it absorbs more Co2 than trees (helping with the increase of greenhouse gas emissions, see our first blog for more info on that) Even more important, nothing is wasted and the seeds are used to make oil and the stalks are used for clothing fibres.

Cotton – whilst cotton is a natural fibre, it is the most pesticide dependent crop in the world and uses a LOT of water. So, look out for organic cotton. Organic cotton uses less water and helps increase biodiversity by using less pesticides.

Rayon and Viscose are also plant-based fibres but are harvested and farmed badly, causing depletion in many of our endangered forests. It can be manufactured cheaply in fast fashion and is another way they can be greenwashing us.

GOTS-certified textiles means that the manufacturers use organically grown plants, lower greenhouse gas emissions and treat their workers better.

To round off, thought we’d give you a little list of brands that you may have thought wrong about. Sadly, just because some of these brands are seen as more expensive doesn’t mean that they are any better than the typical Boohoo or Primark.

Nike

Carhartt

Stussy

Ralph Lauren

Zara

Uniqlo

Urban Outfitters

H and M

ASOS

Mango

Misguided

GAP

SHEIN

New Look

NEXT

&otherstories

Check out good on you for their ratings >>>

Happy avoiding these brands

M & G x

Check out the following books: Dress with Sense by Redress and Live Green by Jen Chillingsworth for the cool facts we’ve used x