Fast Fashion: An Overview of the topic

Fashion is a form of expression. What you wear represents who you are.
Americans are projected to spend $1.1 trillion$ during the holiday shopping season.
Shopping can trigger a physical high due to the pleasure centers in the brain lighting up.
In the 1980s, the average American bought about 12 new articles of clothing per year.
Today, the average American buys 68 new pieces a year due to fast fashion.

Fast fashion retailers quickly replicate runway designs and offer them at affordable prices.
It's a “see now-buy now” retail environment.
Fast fashion is characterized by trendy, cheap, and disposable clothing.
Popular fast fashion retailers include Fashion Nova, Topshop, H&M, and Zara.
Fast fashion democratizes high fashion by offering knockoffs of designer brands at scale.

Fast fashion has become the dominant force in the clothing industry.
Consumers want the feeling of luxury without paying full price.
The average American woman buys 64 new articles of clothing per year, half of which are worn three times or less.
H&M and Zara dominate the mass-market retail, catering to the demand for variety at affordable prices.
Fast fashion is the only segment of the fashion industry that has grown over the last fifteen years.
Legacy brands like Gap, Levi's, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein struggle to compete.

Zara's parent company, Inditex, is the world's largest retail clothing company.
Zara's founder, Amancio Ortega, is one of the wealthiest people in the world, worth almost $70 billion$ .
Ortega prefers a normal life and avoids public attention.
Zara was originally named Zorba but was changed due to a naming conflict with a local bar.
Zara pioneered and perfected the fast fashion business model.
Legacy brands release clothes in seasonal releases, taking months to design, manufacture, and distribute.
Zara utilizes quick response manufacturing, which involves knocking off designs quickly, keeping raw materials on hand, and streamlining distribution.
Zara monitors trends and social media feedback to regulate supply and demand.
Zara employs dynamic assortment, introducing new products frequently to gauge what sells.
H&M introduces new clothes every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.
Fast fashion has created around 52 seasons a year which translates into something new coming in every week.

Inditex alone makes $1.6 billion$ pieces of clothing annually.
Since 2005, Inditex has been opening more than one store a day.
Social media drives the need for new outfits constantly.
Compared to twenty years ago, clothes are kept half as long.
Fast fashion's churn has a significant environmental cost.
Textile production in 2015 created more greenhouse gases than international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Growing cotton for a jacket requires 10,330 liters of water, equivalent to 24 years of drinking water for one person.
*Synthetic fabrics like polyester, nylon, and spandex use approximately 342 million barrels of oil a year.
Viscose production sources about 33% of its materials from ancient or threatened forests.
Up to 70% of the harvested wood for viscose is wasted, with only 30% ending up in garments.
Manufacturing fabrics involves using toxic chemicals that are often dumped in rivers near villages, such as the Citarum River in Indonesia.

The average American throws away 80 lbs of clothes a year.
A Salvation Army Center in New York disposes of 18 tons of unwanted clothes every three days.
Donated clothes that aren't sold often end up in landfills in the developing world.
Of all fabric used for clothing, 87% is incinerated or ends up in a landfill.

Companies use greenwashing to market themselves as more environmentally friendly than they are.
Inditex's 2018 annual report claims that 88% of their waste is reused or recycled, but this excludes waste from their factories and stores.
H&M's Garment Collecting Program encourages customers to bring in old shirts, but almost 90% of clothes end up trashed or burnt. H&M gets you to shop more by giving you a discount to buy even more shit you'll soon be “recycling.”
H&M and Zara have eco-friendly clothing lines like Conscious and Join Life, but their green claims often lack substance.
Terms like “green,” “eco-friendly,” “ethical,” and “sustainably-made” have no legal definition.
Zara claims its chinos reduce water consumption in the dyeing process, but dyeing only uses 1% of the total water.
Zara claims its faux-leather coat is made with the “most sustainably produced polyurethane,” which contradicts the nature of oil-based products.

Clothes labeled as ecologically grown cotton, not even a real term, and the amount of recycled Material is only the tag.
Corduroy jacket, the coating is the most sustainably produced polyurethane. 7/8 is made with oil.
Conscious line orange (autumnal sexy carrot) dress is 4% wool and 96% (Polyester, polyamide, plastic)

Wearing clothes for nine months longer can reduce the carbon footprint by 30%.
Buying one used item this year instead of new can save nearly six pounds of CO2 emissions, equivalent to removing half a million cars off the road for a year.
Wearing clothes longer or buying one item secondhand can make a big difference.