CLICKsumerism

If you told someone ten years ago that they could go shopping without needing to get off their sofa, they would probably think that you’re crazy.

But if you told someone today that you always go shopping at physical stores to feel the fabric, they might laugh at you. It’s true, why would people want to spend time and effort going down to stores, when they can get the exact same thing with a few simple clicks?

Online shopping has greatly changed the way we consume. Nowadays, if things are faster, cheaper, easier, they’re usually better. People want things convenient, and that’s how fast fashion came about.

Today, fashion brands have 52 ‘micro-seasons’ a year – a stark increase from the Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter collections of the yesteryears. Brands churn out new products every week so that consumers buy more and buy more often, according to Factory45 founder Sharon Lohr, who runs an online accelerator program for sustainable fashion companies. As new looks are created weekly, customers feel off-trend after the first wear, making way for more buying.

And what better way to sell fast than to sell cheap? Between a $50 hand-made blouse from a local boutique and a $7.99 top from H&M.com (free shipping included), consumers are more likely to purchase the cheaper option.

With the internet, prices of clothing plummet even further. Gone are the costs of opening an additional physical shop – rent, employee wages, and utilities – online retailers only need to pay for their URL. That’s how popular online megastores such as Wish, Fashion Nova and Yesstyle manage to sell their clothing items as cheap as $0.99.

Many of these shopping sites market themselves as ‘direct from the factory’ take Ali Express for an example. People trust that their goods are sold cheap because production factories are the ones selling to them without middlemen. The lack of transaction partners leaves little room for mark-ups, allowing consumers to get their goods as cheap as possible.

But now the question is: how did production costs get so low in the first place?

We’ve all heard the narration of underpaid workers in sweatshops, cooped up in small rooms with little ventilation, unable to leave their sewing machines until they’ve finished their 100th crop top. In addition to that, however, is also a sharp drop in the quality of the goods.

“To keep prices low, [fast fashion brands] have to cut costs,” said light industry researcher Xiong Xiaokun in an interview with China News. According to Mr Xiong, these brands rarely use high-quality or durable materials. Clothing dyeing processes are sped up, leading to poor colour fastness, unsafe pH levels and more.

This is why these clothing only last a few washes, and fast-fashion brands are okay with that. With the rate that the brands churn out clothing, they only need to make sure that their latest collection will sell to that consumer who over-stretched their pullover.

The internet further contributes to the fast fashion industry in a different way – advertising. Brands sell on social media, and they engage in influencers, sponsoring famous internet personas with their products to reach out to their large following.

YouTube, for instance, is a main target for advertising. One of YouTube’s biggest subcultures is ‘haul videos’ – footage of YouTubers presenting and describing what they’ve bought. This is a perfect place for brands to appear: simply send a large package to a YouTuber with a sizeable following, along with a promotion code for their followers to use if they want to shop at that brand after the video. And this form of advertising is effective: YouTuber Zoella’s Primark haul had 4.25 million views and is one of her most viewed videos on the social media site.

This propels the throw-away society that we live in today: we overconsume and excessively produce short-lived items over durable goods that can be repaired. Consuming low-quality clothing gives way to buying more similar products when the old ones wear out, simply because they are cheap. And even if a shirt is in perfect condition, we keep it tucked at the back of our closets after a few wears, because people tell us that it is no longer in trend.

But things are changing. Fast fashion brands have started launching what they call their ‘sustainable collections’ which use more environmentally-friendly products, or ethical trade practices – such as H&M Conscious, Zara’s Join Life Collection, and ASOS’s Vintage Marketplace. Some brands have even pledged to become ‘fully sustainable’ in the near future: H&M vowed to make all their stores climate positive by 2040.

Nevertheless, it is up to the consumers to make real change. Fast fashion companies chase profit and go wherever consumers allocate that profit, said Mr Rami Helali, co-founder of ethical and sustainable basics company Kotn, to Huffpost. “There isn’t enough consumer pressure for it to become detrimental for [fast-fashion brands] to operate in the way they’re operating now.”

(first published in HdM Stuttgart's magazine, Laufmasche (SS19), by the VielSeitig student writing club, Jul 2019)