Only now are consumers becoming aware of the shocking lies that fast fashion brands tell every day to greenwash their products and reputations. Here are 6 of the worst for you to keep an eye out for. Read to the end to cast your vote and do your bit to support true slow fashion values.
Fast Fashion Lie #1: High-Quality at Low Prices. Fashion Democratisation…
The biggest lie that the entire fast fashion industry is based on: desirable, high-quality, supposedly sustainable clothing can be made available at rock bottom prices. It’s a lie that has endured because of how alluring it is, and for how easy it is to maintain with the use of glossy advertising campaigns. It’s also a convenient lie for fast fashion brands to sell – their entire business model predicated on products having a short lifetime value, so that customers are incentivized to buy more and more.
Hear a brand say “fashion democratisation” and your bullshit alarm should start blaring.
The old adage of “You get what you pay for” still rings as true today as it ever has, but is now being eroded by PR campaigns that use fancy buzzwords like “fashion democratisation”. Who doesn’t want more democracy? Who doesn’t want more inclusion? But who does selling copious amounts of trash really serve? Certainly not consumers, and certainly not the environment, but more on that later…
Fast Fashion Lie #2: Workers Paid Fairly & Treated Well
The name of the fast fashion game is to create huge profit margins and to hell with the consequences, in complete contrast to true ethical fashion which tries to strike a delicate balance. Such wide margins are made possible by the rampant exploitation of everything and everybody. Workers particularly bear the brunt of this abusive business model.
Most fast fashion brands produce their clothing in poor developing countries where minimum wages are low or practically non-existent. For example, textile factory workers in Cambodia were recently granted a pay rise from $204-a-month to a whopping $208-a-month. Impressed? No, neither are we. Supplier codes of conduct hold little water in places like Cambodia and Vietnam, where unspoken agreements with suppliers to increase production no matter the human cost are prioritised. But because all this is happening on the other side of the planet: Out of sight, out of mind!
Fast Fashion Lie #3: We Care for the Planet
Fast fashion comes a close second to the fossil fuel industry in the greenwashing stakes. Whether it’s promising to reach net zero by 2050 (never going to happen) or using some flimsy ethical slogans or philanthropic projects as cover for the cold hard truth, fast fashion fails on every level to care for Mother Earth.
A brand’s mission statement – it’s reason for being – dictates how it conducts itself in the real world. Why bother waiting for fast fashion brands to change?
Why is fast fashion incapable/unwilling to care for the planet? A brand’s mission statement – it’s reason for being – dictates how it conducts itself in the real world. This means that for most fast fashion brands they are always working backwards, trying to correct their harmful ways of doing business, instead of starting out with a holistic approach in the first place. All this begs the question: Why bother waiting for them to change, when there’s no clear indication they really want to, and there are so many better eco fashion options available to slow fashion fans?
Fast Fashion Lie #4: We Care for Customers
Think it’s just workers and the environment getting exploited by fast fashion? Think again. Above all, customers are exploited to the max by these clothing goliaths. Most recently it was discovered that high levels of toxic chemicals were present in many fast fashion garments. Value your skin and overall health? Yeah, fast fashion really doesn’t care.
And it’s not just your physical health that fast fashion takes for granted, your mental health is expendable too. There can be no doubt that the hyper consumerism encouraged by fast fashion brands plays a huge part in the rising levels of anxiety and depression prevalent in modern society. Just what we all need! But, thankfully, fast fashion brands are quick to cover their tracks by gaslighting consumers with their very own mental health awareness campaigns… Oh joy!
Fast Fashion Lie #5: We Care for the Planet
Selling more and more clothes year-on-year is never a good recipe for caring for the planet, especially when those clothes are predominantly made from virgin synthetics that rely on yet more fossil fuel extraction. Once again, the very essence of a fast fashion brand is the antithesis of sustainability.
Don’t believe us? Just compare what a fast fashion CEO’s stated business goals are and compare them to their bold environmental pledges. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the brand's true motivations. This is in complete contrast to a sustainable fashion brand like TWOTHIRDS, whose raison d'être is ingrained in everything our brand does.
Fast Fashion Lie #6: We Promise to Change
After everything you’ve read up to this point, on a scale of 1-to-10 what do you think the chances are of fast fashion brands changing their ways for the better?
