Fashion in
our daily life

Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine our lives without various garments in our closet. Indeed, fashion has always clashed with history and developed in the same way. Since the genesis of humans, fashion has changed and progressed as we did. From simple animal furs to highly decorated apparels and from that to casual clothes. It has always been concomitant with evolution and changes in life. Today, the majority of society considers clothes as hallmarks of a personality, and we can certainly bear that stereotype. For example, individuals tend to choose the color, according to their mood. Each person has his or her own style and by wearing different attire they express their individuality. Even when we meet a person, at first, we look at what they are wearing. When we conjecture the one aspect we always take into consideration is the clothes. So, it appears that fashion actually has a bigger role in our daily lives than we think. 

what’s fast fashion?

Fast fashion is what all of us use in the 21^st century. This name might seem something enigmatic and new, though it has been integrated into our lives for a lot of time. Fast fashion is a phrase that defines a characteristic of the shop. Furthermore, fast fashion is a market that provides consumers with very affordable and trendy clothes. Usually, those shops are widely spread in the world and give people access to the garment, that is seen on celebrities or in runaways of luxurious brands. Those clothes are manufactured from cheap materials by the workers who are paid very little money. This all makes it so sought-after and pervasive. I guess, we all are constant customers of those brands, however, we didn’t know anything about their business. After reading this topic, I think, you will look at everything in a different and maybe dubious way. 

The history of fast fashion

In the old days, the attire wasn’t affordable and it was very scarce to get one. Before industrialization, raw materials, workers and creativity were lacking and only the gentry could afford to have apparel. The representatives of working-class wore clothes made out of rough and filthy fabric. They wore the same clothes for many years, due to the fact that they couldn’t buy new ones. Everything changed in 1920s in the USA and then in 1970-1990s all over the world. The breakthrough of technologies effected on this field, as well. At the end of the 20^th century, new devices and inventions arose that could crucially facilitate the hard and tiring work. Those inventions made it possible to fabricate clothes rapidly and inexpensively. For the last 30 years, with a help of advanced technologies tons of new garments have been produced. When society acknowledged the advantages of fast fashion they became constant customers. Now, this was piece of cake for this industry to make profit and attract many people. Soon, they begin to practically use fast fashion and went on manufacturing rapidly and imitating well-known brands. Of course, hurried production of something means that the business has to force their workers to do more and more labor and completely eject the disadvantages or consequences of recklessness. This caused chain reaction and careless actions affected the environment. 

The use of fast fashion

Throughout history, the world population was always around 2-3 billion people and tended to decrease rather than increase. Some major impacts that influenced the amount, though the new industrial world encouraged that number to grow. Overpopulation effected the fashion sphere, as well.

Firstly, people need something to wear. We don’t live in a primitive society and, of course, nobody walks without clothes on in the streets today.

Secondly, As I’ve mentioned people away back wore the same clothes for years, however, fast fashion made clothes affordable. This causes people to buy clothes for each season and maybe few times for each season, too.

Lastly, as those garments are mostly available, individuals buy them frequently and crave more variety in style or color. This aspect critically increases the number of clothes produced.

The pervasiveness and high demand for garments brought about rapid manufacturing. There are approximately 7,8 billion people and most of them can’t afford clothes from luxurious and renowned brands. As fast fashion provides cheap clothes, the vast majority of population is their consumer. Usually, we buy apparel from those shops and have no idea about the impact or why it can harm the environment. For instance, a person buys T-shirt that costs just from 2 to 5$, wears it for some time, and then throws it away. There’s nothing that seems wrong. Maybe clothes litter the environment, but, as we know they are being recycled. So, what’s the problem and why do we see so many topics about the disadvantages of fast fashion. In fact, behind trendy and appealing clothes, many secrets are concealed.

The impact on the environment

To understand how clothes are polluting the environment, we should know what the low-quality clothes are made from. As they are cheap, of course, we can’t expect luxurious fabrics, real fur, leather, etc. Fast fashion uses different kinds of fabrics and the main material they use is polyester also known as synthetics. They comprise 65% of fast fashion products. Polyester is harmful in many ways. To begin with, for producing it, we use a lot of resources: 125 megajoules of energy and 14,2 of CO2 to produce one kilogram. Normally, synthetics are produced from oil and just in 2015, 330 million tons of oil were used for it.

After manufacturing the fabric, workers dye and adorn it with noxious chemicals. When people consume those materials, it’s completely harmless, though from time to time it comes out. The most impact chemicals have after ending up in the environment. Only in the USA, 11 million tons of clothes turned out in nature and the US population is 4,5% of the world’s population. Now imagine the litter the whole world mass-produces. Solely the mass of trash is a form of pollution and to imagine 11 tons, it would look like a small island. Nevertheless, it’s not the amount that concerns society, but the poisonous effect they give out. The chemicals contaminate both types of water, drinkable and saline. Obviously, drinkable water becomes dirty and humans can’t use it. However, saline water is oceans, seas and lakes. In this type of water, marine life is in danger. The chemicals are nocuous and lead to the extinction of animals. As it is produced from oil, polyester is considered to be plastic. So, fast fashion is also responsible for plastic waste. 

The risk among workers

We became acquainted with the reason why fast fashion is so affordable. However, not only cheap materials are the cause of inexpensiveness. It’s apparent that someone should design, cut in shape, and sew those garments. Most of the work is done with modern technologies, though, people are much easy to maintain. For example, to buy proper equipment, companies have to spend quite a lot of money. Whereas, in the countries like China where the population is too much and jobs are comparatively scarce, entrepreneurs give them a very little wage. There were rumors how some popular companies paid one dollar to employees. Fast fashion brands are one of them and they use the same means. So, fast fashion influences on employed individuals. One impact is psychological which refers to badly-paid jobs and higher expectations from employers. Another peril is chemicals, due to the fact that they are highly toxic. Some of them are acid, others cause health problems and so on. With so minute wage and enormous risk, workers are under uncontrollable stress that apparently affects health. Therefore, humans gain damage not only through the polluted environment, but also directly from factories. 

The risk among consumers

Now, what about consumers and why they are at risk? Some people might think it’s because of chemicals, however, clothes are completely harmless when we use them. So, if not chemicals what else? -The psychological factor. Generally, any business uses psychology to attract individuals and indirectly force them to buy their product. Those are well-known methods such as no clock in the shop, red and yellow colors on discounted goods, slow background music and so on. On the other hand, fast fashion has the same or maybe worse effect on people. Since garments are cheap, customers tend to buy more and more clothes and visit the shop frequently. As they buy new clothes, they get rid of the old ones. Additionally, apparels can be easily damaged because of their low-quality. This thought leads to a culture called “throw-away”. We buy and eliminate such a big amount of clothes that tons of garbage are gathered in the form of polyester. Correspondingly, we can’t control how much money we spend on them. As long as they are low-priced, we buy a big amount of clothes some of which we never wear. It’s an emotional background that distracts and prevents us from rationalizing. Individuals think that paying big amount of money or purchasing something enormous is always better. In the end, we have great quantity of garments which we later throw away. Accordingly, our pockets and we are also in mental and financial danger. 

Our role and measures

In the 21^st century, environmental problems emerging every, day and non-governmental and international organizations object the pollution. Consequently, when fast fashion causes such circumstances, it can’t be concealed from the organizations or the world. Needless to say, people protest the overwhelming use of materials and industrial waste in the environment. In fact, fast fashion waste is the second main contaminator sphere, after agriculture.

There are trials and processes to inhibit fast fashion to pollute the earth. Unfortunately, as they are monopolistic businesses, it’s hard to counter them. The only hope is recycling, which can be beneficial for enterprises, as well. Although, just 14,7% of garments are recycled up to now. This number is concerning because pollution increases every second and it’s hard to clear up the world after littering. What we can do about it? The only helpful way for us and the environment is to reduce buying them. We can go shopping more seldom, choose clothes of better quality and buy only the necessary ones. Individuals reckon that one person can’t make changes. However, if each of us acknowledges our role, together we will change it. Everything starts from scratch and then grows. Remember: “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, we have to trust the process. 

The Summary

To sum up, fast fashion surprisingly has a momentous effect on the environment. These are advantages that actually originate disadvantages. For most of people, it’s very clear that something cheap and useful should have secrets that overweighs the benefits. But, does that mean we mustn’t buy clothes anymore or buy expensive ones? The only thing we can do is to choose and get clothes rationally and sensibly. Strikingly, it’s ambiguous why mega-companies don’t recycle garments, in a world where some of the fabric is made of waste plastic or even cactus. It is just an effort that entrepreneurs don’t make. Furthermore, they don’t concede that they crucially harm the environment their ancestry is going to live. (116)