Mark the End of National Secondhand Wardrobe Week By Learning All about “Fast Fashion” (insert boos and hissing here)

Yesterday was the final day of National Secondhand Wardrobe Week, making today the ideal moment to encourage you to convert this annual holiday week into a year-round activity. Why turn one week into fifty-two weeks? There are loads of reasons to frequently purge your closets and bring good items to spots for resale and reuse. You’ll save money, find a truly unique wardrobe, and contribute to a more affordable way of life for many around you.

Then, there’s the biggest reason to celebrate a secondhand wardrobe. Avoiding fast fashion.

Fast fashion? You may have heard about it. If not, it is a term that has appeared in recent years but is a concept that has been around for decades. Only recently, though, has the cheap knockoff morphed into something intensely harmful and worsening every year.

You don’t have to be an avid “fashionista” to find yourself leaning into the latest catwalk looks and trends. After all, a trip to almost any mall puts you on track for encountering “fast fashion” variations on almost any of them, and at an affordable price. That’s the very point of fast fashion in the first place.

However, it is the definition of fast fashion as a business model which is a real problem. Today’s fast fashion lives up to its name; produced rapidly and wearing out quickly. This creates a one-two punch affecting everyone and everything involved. It’s crafted from low-cost (i.e. shoddy and cheap) materials carelessly and dangerously banged out by the tons and shipped around the globe. It also means that the garments are not made well or made to last and end up in the trash or landfill. That formula leads to a consumer and an environmental disaster of a scale we are witnessing in real-time.

As CNN reported last year, “While cheap chic may seem like the way to go, the fast fashion industry sees clothing pushed out on a scale that is even too large for most consumers to keep up with. Plus, the materials used can last for as few as just seven to 10 wears.”

Read that again – it says “wears” not years.

You know a lot of the names associated directly with this business model – Shein, Zara, Forever21, ASOS, UNIQLO, and H&M are only a few. They can have items designed and produced in as little as…wait for it…three days! Most don’t take that dramatic of a shortcut to market, but it illustrates the nightmarish potential the fast fashion model represents.

Some manufacturers argue that they can do smaller batches than in the past and just adjust further production based on initial response to cut down on waste. Yet, global consumer agencies note that we buy 60% MORE clothing now than in 2000 and the number of items made has more than doubled since that time.

How do these producers create such affordable items in bulk? Firstly, they use cheap polyester like there’s no tomorrow…literally.

Poly and its various blends are made from petroleum and take more than 200 years to begin breaking down. Garments made with nylon and acrylic are the same. Here’s the real kicker, though: 85% of all textiles end up in landfills and dumps every year. On top of that, the use of polyester and other petroleum or plastics-based materials leads to 500k tons of microplastics and microfibers entering the waters around the globe annually when laundered. That translates to 50 BILLION plastic bottles kicked into our waterways and oceans because of fast fashion. (Business Insider)

It is, therefore, not altogether too shocking to learn that fashion (according to the UN Environment Programme) accounts for 10% of the world’s carbon emissions and is the second biggest water consumer.

So, if you rant that Taylor Swift’s air travel is a problem, consider that the garments we buy are pumping out more carbon emissions than “all international flights and maritime shipping combined.”

All the dyeing and finishing, yarn prep, and fiber production are destroying the air and the water. Growing plants like cotton on such a vast scale takes up a huge amount of water and energy and continues polluting all the way to finished garments. And the “UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (says) emissions from textile manufacturing alone are projected to skyrocket by 60% by 2030.”

There is also the horrific human toll. Fast fashion relies on more than 70 million factory workers spread around the planet. Of that vast number of humans, only 2% (that’s roughly 140k) earn a living wage. The rest work in poor to dangerous conditions and cannot afford a decent way of life for their efforts.

According to George Washington University’s investigation of fast fashion and workers in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, “garment manufacturing industries in these countries see workers paid lower wages, sometimes in dangerous conditions and, occasionally, allows for the exploitation of children.”

While all of this means that the “lead time,” or length of time it takes for a manufacturer to design and get a garment into a buyer’s hands can be as short as possible and no more than eight weeks total, there is an overwhelming and obscene amount of waste and destruction along the way. And even afterward, all the garments that wear out, are not sold or go out of style or are typically tossed into the trash.

Returns are trashed, too, as most manufacturers find it costs more to get returned items back into circulation than to just trash them. This leads to around 2.6 million tons in landfills every year.

Earth.org has determined that the “average US consumer throws away 81.5 lbs of clothes every year. In America alone, an estimated 11.3 million tons of textile waste – equivalent to 85% of all textiles – end up in landfills on a yearly basis…around 2,150 pieces per second countrywide.”

So-called “throwaway culture” has worsened even as we collectively look at all the ways we can go greener.

Electric cars, solar panels, heat pump technologies, plant-based diets, flying only when necessary…these are all great things to consider if you want a smaller carbon footprint. But why not look directly at that physical footprint? I mean, the actual shoes you’ve chosen and the pants or skirt above them. What about the top or sweater or shirt? Those clothes are a tremendous factor in your carbon footprint.

Again, Earth.org indicates that the number of times we wear garments has decreased steadily with our current rates being 35% percent less than just 15 years ago. Once we decide to purge an item from the closet, it may go to a trash bin, a resale spot, or a charitable donation location. It may go to the trash no matter how you try to recycle it. The sad truth is that most clothing discarded every year is not recycled. Around 12% is tracked as being recycled, and the rest clogs landfills or is processed in shockingly harmful ways. (To understand what this means, check out this article from the BBC.)

It isn’t entirely our fault. One factor we cannot yet control is that the materials used to make them are made in ways that prevent recycling them.

They are a blend of man-made materials, plastics, metals, and some natural yarns or organics. These combinations are easy to whip out and use in fast fashion production but disassembling them into recyclable parts is not yet an option. We don’t have the technologies to un-make those blends of plastic and yarn.

This too is why millions of tons of clothing (discarded or returned to makers) head straight to landfills where they generate millions of tons of CO2 annually. Estimates say that returned items alone are responsible for the equivalent of the emissions of 3.5 million cars on the road for a year.

You might be thinking, “Yes, we know that fast fashion is a problem, but how can I spend $40 for a t-shirt when Shein or Uniqulo has it for $5…I do live on a budget, you know!”

Good question but let me flip it around a bit.

Perhaps that $40 t-shirt from a more conscientious maker, like Reformation or Patagonia is NOT so expensive. Do you think it possible that, as journalist Elizabeth Segran suggests: “it’s not that ethical brands are so much more expensive but rather that fast fashion has warped our sense of how much we should be paying for clothing?”

One industry expert explains that fast fashion makers have “built incredibly damaging supply chains to get prices to be as low as they are,” and do so through worker exploitation and banging out items at numbers that are, simply, unsustainable. Flooding the market at a non-stop pace allows them to keep their prices low and maintain consumer “loyalty,” but also trains us to think items SHOULD be so cheap. They shouldn’t. They can’t remain so.

And it’s not only how much we pay, but also how often we spend. These brands are also warping our sense of reasonable consumption by driving us to constantly acquire new, trendy looks every season.

Just think about the past. In the year 1960, Americans were spending around $4,000 of today’s dollars on their annual clothing budgets (roughly 10% of their household income), acquiring around 25 garments. Today, we spend less than 4% of our household income (roughly $1,800) and add around 70 garments to our wardrobe. Twenty-five items for $4k or 70 items for less than $2k…clearly there’s something amiss.

When you learn that the top brands in fast fashion are each earning more than $85 billion annually, you start to see the source of the problem. Today, even brands less closely affiliated with fast fashion are following the model to cut costs and keep consumers coming. You’ll see that an item from once-reputable names like Target or Abercrombie & Fitch has likely declined in quality over the past decade because these companies have also started implementing a fast fashion supply chain and model.

Collectively, larger-scale clothing brands are training us to think pricing should be very low. The reality is that you’ll end up wasting huge sums on their cheaply made items because you’ll get stuck in a perpetual loop of new trends and garments that don’t hold up to regular wear and tear.

Buy one season’s trending coat and you’ll probably find it looks worn out the next year. Back you go to the mall or online to find “this year’s coat.” Do the math – spend more than you might want to spend on one great, well-made coat. You’ll be able to skip shopping for five or more years. Instead, buy a new coat every season. The latter option may be “cheap” and/or “trendy” at the starting gate, but once you cross the finish line, you’ll have far more financial loss as well as horrible impacts on the planet to your credit.

“Okay!” you might be saying, “We get it, stop beating the dead horse and tell us how to eliminate the problems?”

The thing is - and it is a BIG thing…you must pay up AND cut back. You must do a bit of soul-searching and convince yourself that you SHOULD be paying more for fewer items. And, more importantly, learn just why the price helps you identify the right items.

Does pricey always mean better? Nope. Costly brands may be cashing in on their reputation alone and not offering a truly superior product. You’ve got to make an effort to identify sustainable, ethical brands.

What does the unethical, unsustainable brand look like? Podcaster and ethical fashion advocate Amanda Lee McCarty explains that fast fashion brands aim for labor costs to account for the least amount possible. The example she gives is this: “About 70% of the cost goes into fabric, which means the other 30% goes to transportation, duties and taxes, and, finally, workers’ wages. In other words, if a brand spends $10 to manufacture a dress, only $1 may go to the worker.”

The manufacturers and brands look to pay workers less than legal amounts, even threatening to relocate if the prices don’t match their plan. Again, McCarty explains that ethical brands always emphasize “paying workers fair wages, which often means going beyond legal requirements and setting their own standards for what counts as a living wage.” She cites brands like shoe and boot maker Nisolo and clothing company Able as two good examples. Not only do they guarantee good working conditions and a living wage, but pay independent parties to consistently verify this of their manufacturing partners.

Does this get passed on to the consumer in the form of a higher-priced product? You bet it does, but shouldn’t it? Again, fast fashion has trained us to feel entitled to a low cost for human labor. Human effort should cost the consumer enjoying it. Fair is fair.

As McCarty so aptly explains, “An Able T-shirt, for example, costs $48, and a pair of Nisolo boots costs $250. It’s more than you’ll pay at Target, but you know that the workers who made your products could feed their families.”

You’ll also know the supply chain is better. Materials cannot be ignored. While you might immediately notice that lower-priced, fast fashion items, skip features like zippers, functional pockets, and working buttons, this is not really where costs are cut. It is that fabric full of impossible-to-recycle materials. In another of our blogs about sweaters, we looked at an article in The Atlantic that describes most modern sweaters as garbage. Referencing the way that even pricier sweaters pill and thin quickly, it noted that few garment makers use truly pure materials.

We already know that fast fashion pollutes at every level of production. The ethical and sustainable brands take great pains to avoid such problems. They choose durable fabrics and natural materials. There is, of course, the caveat – they cost more to make. For instance, pure cotton is roughly 25% more costly than any of those plastic and petroleum-based blends. And if you’re going organic, that goes up another five to ten percent.

The brand Pact is famous for using organic cotton for almost all its items. Clearly, they’ll cost you, but they’ll also hold up a lot longer and feel better over the long term. And the feel of a garment is another reason to go for the more costly items.

AI is showing itself to be quite helpful, but that doesn’t apply in fashion. Generalized measurements have never been a good fit (pun intended) where clothing is concerned. If you’re one of millions who feel that new clothing doesn’t seem to fit as nicely as it used to, you’re not wrong.

Garment makers used to use an array of human models and multiple fittings to get the cut and fit right for a broad population of wearers. Today, fittings with human models are skipped entirely and enormous numbers of pieces are banged out using best guess measurements. These items don’t fit or look good and are returned where they go directly to a landfill.

The ethical brands cannot afford such waste and financial gaming. They use fittings, and lots of tweaks to ensure the largest number of consumers can enjoy wearing the item, and also implement quality checks all along the way. This is why higher-priced, ethically produced items fit and feel better. Such quality controls guarantee comfort, but also a much longer life span as you’ll continue to wear an item so well-made and well-designed.

The one glitch for many of us, beyond training ourselves to pay more, is that a lot of the sustainable companies can only produce so much each year. Their goal is to never overproduce and end up sending things to the trash. These brands typically try to predict what will be needed and they get penalized for doing so. At least, they don’t get the discounts that factories offer to the fast fashion producers and their ridiculous scale.

As Segran notes, “Sustainable fashion brands are deliberately trying to push back against the status quo and find ways to operate that are more respectful of the earth and of workers. And all of this comes at a cost.”

But that cost is only a “for now” sort of thing. After all, you have power in your pocketbook. You can start by purchasing a few items from sustainable brands this year, add a few more next year or next season, and so on. As more consumers follow that path, brands will be able to increase their output and, eventually, lower the price.

(Some are using a pre-order model that limits their production to items ordered directly at the time a design is announced. For instance, the Paynter Jacket Co. makes limited-edition chore coats that sell out within hours. This enables a bespoke experience for the buyers, and cuts waste to zero!)

Keep in mind, that fast fashion has trained us to believe clothing is supposed to be cheap and disposable, so a sustainable wardrobe will never be as low-priced as items from fast fashion brands. The key is to stop thinking exclusively about the price and think more about the longevity of the item, the fit and feel, and the human and environmental cost. “Buying slow fashion means getting an article of clothing that is well made and designed to look good on you. When you consider the cost per wear, you’re actually getting a better deal from these sustainable brands,” Segran says.

We must all sit up and pay attention to the enormous amount of manipulation at work. As an article from The Guardian in the UK expressed, we should “use the language of ‘oversupply’ more than ‘overproduction’, because we’re talking about the marketing mechanisms used to push oversupply onto consumers. Brands are manufacturing demand in the same way they manufacture too many clothes.”

Creating FOMO (fear of missing out), brands work hand in hand with marketing teams and social media to relentlessly generate demand and consumption. Just think of the texts and emails along with targeted digital and social media messages you receive about clothing and shoes. It is never-ending because fast fashion brands require constant financial input from consumers.

So, what can be done? So much! And that’s why we chose the END of National Secondhand Wardrobe Week to introduce this subject.

You can use the idea of shopping “secondhand first” as a starting point.

If you need a new blazer or want a flannel shirt…skip the internet and head to any of the many secondhand or reselling stores in the area. Here in the Portland area, we have a long list of options ranging from traditional Goodwill-style shops to upscale boutiques where once-expensive items can be found for pennies on the dollar. If you insist on going online, why not use resell sites like Poshmark or thredUp? You can even scout around on Facebook Marketplace before doling out the dough for brand-new items.

In the coming months, we’ll look at this whole issue in even greater depth and show you how your investments in better clothing can be protected with premium garment care, optimal laundering, and so much more. Until then, down with fast fashion and up with secondhand wardrobes!