Why to ditch Fast Fashion

Hello you lovely lot,

We’re back with our second blog and this week we want to talk about fast fashion!

Grace - I used to be a huge fast fashion addict. When I got my first job, I spent most my money on Boohoo and Missguided. I was completely ignorant about the damages caused by fast fashion until I watched the documentary The True Cost whilst at uni, this gave me a whole new perspective and so I started to change my spending habits. It’s taken me years and a whole mindset change, but I’m almost there.

Meg- My journey started in 2018, when my sister and I decided to do a year of only buying secondhand, after being at Soul Survivor and being nudged by God that my addiction to shopping should take a backseat. The initial reasons were more money and obsession really, it wasn’t until I started my fashion course that I started to care about the environment and how the fashion industry affects it. After learning that and finding buying second hand is much easier than I thought, I never looked back.

First, we need to dig deep and address the not so fun facts and realities of the fashion industry. After-all, education is how we make changes.

There are 3 pillars to sustainability:

1. Social

2. Environmental

3. Economic

Let’s break these down into the different elements of the fashion industry, but just know that after all of this there is hope, if you’re willing to join us in taking action.

-SOCIAL-

ABILITY FOR A SOCIAL SYSTEM TO REACH SOCIAL WELL-BEING:

The fashion industry is worth £2 trillion, it employs around 60 million workers and has an overwhelming attachment to modern slavery and child labour. Many of the factory workers in third world countries are working extreme hours for less than a liveable wage and are subject to physical and emotional abuse. Some examples of this are workers being stabbed by pencils, thrown off the roof of a factory and being forced to stand for 16 hours at a time. This is very real and this is happening as we speak.

-ENVIRONMENTAL -

LIVING WITHIN THE MEANS OF OUR NATURAL RESOURCES:

A statistic from the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee says that ‘textile production contributes more to climate change than international aviation and shipping combined’. Fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world. It can take up to 2,700 litres of water just to make a simple t-shirt, not to mention all the dyes and pesticides that then pollute our waters from that. This also leaks into the ethical pillar as the release of these pesticides has caused spread of disease and deaths in villages surrounding these factories.

-ECONOMIC-

RESPONSIBILITY OF A BUSINESS TO ACT WISELY WITH THEIR RESOURCES IN A SUSTAINABLE MANNER AND PRODUCE PROFIT:

Although most fast fashion brands have a profitable business plan they aren't necessarily using their resources in a responsible manner. Let’s use Pretty Little thing as an example. PLT has a catalogue of 20,000 items and will drop 250 new items EACH WEEK. Each of these garments are made of cheap, short lasting and harmful fabrics (to the environment) - 35% of all micro-plastics found in the ocean come from synthetic clothing.

In 2018-19 PLT grew their sales by 107% reaching £374.4 million whilst not being able to prove they pay their workers a living wage. To put this into perspective Molly Mae, their creative director, gets paid £400,000 a month, £48 million a year!!!!! PLT chooses to spend their money on large stock volumes and big influencers rather than investing in good quality clothes and the basic fair wage for those making them.

These are really tough truths to swallow and we’re not here to make you feel guilty, we both fall short and many times have given in to the temptations of fast fashion since starting this journey, so please don’t let this information overwhelm you to the point of inaction. There are so many elements to these issues that we are not responsible for, a lot of it is down to big corporations and governmental legislations needing to change.

However, brands have to listen to their consumers and small changes genuinely have a domino effect. So we have revised some useful tips for you to help with how to be more sustainable when making decisions regarding your wardrobes. These will be coming in our next blog.

M & G

Let’s make a 180 x