As a business model, fast fashion was already under serious strain, even before the colossal and catastrophic impact of a global pandemic.
Ethically-conscious consumers were already increasingly aware of the excessive air miles, disposability and dubious labour practices associated with fast fashion. A 2019 report found that in 2018, 72 per cent of consumers said they preferred to buy from environmentally friendly brands, compared with just 57 per cent in 2013. Now it’s becoming clear that changed trading patterns ushered in by Covid-19 could deal a lasting blow to disposable clothing with consumers favouring more durable products manufactured closer to home.
Even before the pandemic, a “sea change” was beginning to happen in terms of people’s attitudes towards fast fashion, with its ultimate disposability becoming more unpalatable, says Alison Gault, senior lecturer in textile art, design and fashion, and employability lead at the Belfast School of Art, Ulster University. She believes the pandemic may have simply hastened the slow death of fast fashion.
“An awakening has been coming for a number of years and Covid has now accelerated that,” she explains.
“There is the whole mantra of ‘buy less, buy better’, and if it’s an investment and spending €400 on a coat rather than €40, it’s getting back to what it was like when I was a child where you paid money for the craftsmanship that went into clothing. You only got one coat and the first year it was your best coat and the next year it was your everyday coat,” Gault says.
“We also need to think about how our grandmothers and mothers would have mended things, that has pretty much stopped. There used to be a sense of how much went into producing clothes and they weren’t discarded that easily. There used to be more of an emotional attachment to clothes.”
But it’s not only the consumer whose attitude has changed. Gault says fashion businesses have used the pandemic to implement new production and manufacturing methods, reducing the number of collections they produce or paring back on certain items. A number of projects she has been involved in over the past few years have sought to address issues such as reducing waste throughout the production process or recycling textiles.
“It’s about reaching that level of thinking before you even begin to design something, rather than just producing it and then thinking about all this,” she explains. “It was on its way, but Covid has made things change very quickly. Companies were looking at doing these things over the next decade and instead they’ve done it in a matter of months.”
Gault notes, however, that there can be “a lot of greenwashing” and she calls for transparency in terms of what companies define as sustainability practices. These are the fashion firms that will survive the pandemic, she says.
“Companies that produce locally, whether it’s food or fashion, are those that are doing better. Crafters who make beautiful garments are in demand, from a heritage and quality perspective. They have been able to maintain their production and thus their client base, because they are more expensive, but the quality is there,” she says, citing examples such as Donegal Yarn and Inis Meáin Knitting.
Re-evaluation
Aideen O’Hora from Sustainability Works agrees Covid is showing up weaknesses in all global supply chains, as well as the fragility of the global marketplace. Noting that there are many factors that affect our buying behaviour – from economic to social from beliefs and attitudes – she says that right now consumers are re-evaluating what is truly essential when it comes to spending their money.
“Those that have been through the 2008 crash and previous downturns are sensibly prioritising what to spend their money on, and ways to save,” O’Hora explains. “It is ‘wants’ versus ‘needs’. There is less impulse buying, which is what really fuels fast fashion.”
According to O’Hora, the fast-fashion industry has been on a merry-go-round to keep up with the latest trends. “Its business model is based on generating revenues by selling more products, and therefore retailers must constantly offer new collections. Until Covid, the industry was locked in a cycle of providing ‘immediate’ fast fashion. But now after forced lockdowns across the industry, it has provided an unexpected opportunity to rethink the way the industry works,” she says.
O’Hora believes the pandemic is prompting many people to re-evaluate their attitude to fast or disposable fashion. “This is compounded by the belief that the industry exploits workers and that its take-make-dispose model causes significant environmental damage.” On the latter point, the statistics speak for themselves; some 20 per cent of global wastewater and 10 per cent of global carbon emissions are produced by the fashion industry, while every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned.
Sustainable fashion is about creating a “slower clothing design and production cycle”; if trends aren’t changing as quickly as they used to, companies won’t feel the need to produce as much, O’Hora explains. This could see more of an emphasis on quality, and clothes that can transcend all seasons.
But Gault warns the death of fast fashion is not all good news.
“It’s a very complex situation – think of all the Bangladesh workers who lost their jobs overnight because so many fast-fashion companies were forced to cancel orders. There are lots of fast fashion companies who endeavour to support developing world countries as part of their ethos. It definitely isn’t black or white.”