What is fast fashion?
- In fast fashion, companies generally are both the manufacturer and retailer. They control the entire process from design to sales, allowing for extremely short cycles from start of process (idea/design) until you see the clothes on racks in the store. Generally, that is a 2-4 week cycle producing 12-24 collections/year.
- In fast fashion, design and production steps are “optimized” and done at the most humanly possible minimum cost. Labor is included in the “optimization”.
- Fast fashion is generally trendy clothes. They are made every 2 weeks and are meant to come out of fashion within 2 weeks. A sense of urgency to buy is created because of the short timeline. In 2 weeks time, what you bought is almost out of fashion. It's where "fast fashion" comes from. To achieve this production pace, fast fashion companies must cut corners everywhere they can.
- Fast fashion cuts corners with 1.The design process: They often copy real designers because it is faster and cheaper. 2. Production: produces very high quantity to bring down the per unit cost. They pre-produce everything in those high quantities, more than what they forecast. They do this because the 2-4 week cycle is so fast they don’t have time to reproduce anything. If they make too much, the rest is waste. 3. Where they produce: Fast fashion tends to produce in cheaper labor countries where labor laws are less enforced but there are fast fashion products with "made in USA" tags on them.
- Since there is no time to re-order and so much over production, unsold products end up as waste in landfills.
- Fast fashion price tags can be really cheap, but not always. Some fast fashion stores charge higher prices, but produce their products in same factories, and with same materials, as cheaper fast fashion stores. It's not made with better quality, it just has crazy high margins because of the brand.
When a garment label says, "Made in X Country", it does not mean that the entire garment was produced in that country. Only the country where the garment was manipulated last needs to be on the label. It is not unusual for fabric, threading, labels, assembling and packaging all to occur in different countries.
Are you currently looking to be part of the solution against fast fashion and sweatshops? We would love to help you at Adored Boutique! Stop in and visit us in-store, or online, www.adoredboutique.com