What is Ultra-Fast Fashion? And How Can We Avoid It?
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Fashion haul videos typically have several things in common: dozens of garments purchased at unsustainable prices from brands like Shein, H&M, or Boohoo. As of April 2022, the hashtag #sheinhaul had accumulated 4.8 billion views on TikTok.
This Chinese fashion retailer has taken fast fashion to the next level. While brands like Zara and H&M have been launching new styles every week, ultra-fast fashion brands like Shein and Boohoo release new designs every day.
What is ultra-fast fashion?
Ultra-fast fashion brands exploit labor and environmental practices to produce thousands more styles than their fast fashion counterparts with even lower prices. Brands like Shein, Cider, and Boohoo use plastic fabrics and violate human rights in order to cash in on the unsustainable pace of microtrends.
While brands like Zara and H&M have been introducing new styles weekly, ultra-fast fashion brands are exacerbating everything that is wrong with fast fashion. According to Shein’s COO, Molly Miao, it released 700 to 1,000 new items a day in 2022.
The lower price points make it even more alluring. As of July 2023, Shein's U.S. website has hundreds of tops listed below $5, with the cheapest being $1.By releasing thousands of new styles per week, they set new trends at a rapid pace.
Ultra-fast fashion brands create a sense of insecurity and fomo in our lives by constantly bombarding us with ads and haul videos that make us feel like we don't have enough. Once we engage with these videos, they use precise data-driven tactics to hook us on ultra-fast fashion.
Meanwhile, they underpay workers and purchase the lowest quality fossil fuel fabrics like polyester and rayon so they can charge super low prices and lower the risk of impulse buys. But we are paying a price for all of this.
Why is ultra-fast fashion bad for the planet?
Nearly 85% of all of our textiles go to landfills every year. In May 2023, a high-resolution satellite captured a gigantic heap of unused clothes in Chile's Atacama desert.
Many ultra-fast fashion clothes are made from plastic materials like polyester, nylon, and lycra. The production of virgin polyester has doubled in the last two decades and its production process emits the same amount of CO2e as 180 coal-fired power plants. They could take centuries to decompose, meanwhile they pollute our land and water.
When we wash these clothes, they shed microplastics — tiny pieces of plastic that don’t biodegrade. According to a 2017 report, 33% of all the microplastics in the ocean came from washing clothes made from materials like polyester. These problems could get worse with ultra-fast fashion making us believe that clothes should be treated as disposable.
These brands are not good for the people making them either. A 2021 report found that workers making clothes for Shein worked more than 75 hours a week and got one day off a month. These workers are doing multiple jobs while Shein pays them as little as 4 cents per item.
3 Ways to Avoid Ultra-Fast Fashion
Although the rise of ultra-fast fashion may seem overwhelming, together we can stop supporting their unsustainable production. By making small changes to our shopping habits, we can create a more sustainable and responsible fashion industry for the future.
1. Repair your clothes instead of buying new
If your old clothes have minor damage, don't throw them away. You can increase their lifespan bymending them. It's not as difficult or time-consuming as you might think.
2. Shop secondhand
We all want clothes that are high-quality and will last a long time. But sometimes it’s hard to give up the affordability and convenience of fast fashion for sustainable clothing brands. A great solution to that is buying secondhand clothes. When you buy secondhand, you keep the item in use for longer and prevent it from ending up in a landfill.
Imagine getting the $100 hoodie for $25 at a resale market or on a resale app. The cost becomes comparable to the new fast fashion one but you get affordable sustainable clothing.
Companies like Patagonia that are not fashion brands are making it convenient to buy secondhand clothes. It runs a program called Worn Wear where you can trade in and buy used Patagonia gear. This helps to keep clothing out of landfills. Good on you, Patagonia.
3. Choose more sustainable brands
Because sustainable brands pay employees fairly and use more sustainable materials, the cost is often higher, but so is the longevity of the clothing.
It's important to consider the cost-per-wear of your new pieces rather than just the up-front cost. For example, if you buy a high quality sustainable, ethical clothing piece for $100 and wear it 50 times, the cost per wear would only be $2. In contrast, a fast fashion item that costs $30 but is only worn three times would have a cost per wear of $10, making the sustainable clothing piece more economical in the long run.
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