The History of Fast Fashion

By: Althea Ocomen

Dress shopping used to be an intermittent and a rare event—an occasion that happened a few times a year, when the seasons changed, or when we grew out of our clothes. But around 20 years ago, something changed. Clothing got cheaper, trend cycles sped up, and shopping became a leisure activity that became accessible to everyone. Because of fast fashion, the worldwide chains, large industries, and corporations presently rule our clothing industry and online shopping. But what is fast fashion? And how does it affect individuals, the planet, and marine creatures? It is too good to be true. All these stores are selling cool, trendy clothing you could buy with your free change or extra discount, wear a handful of times, and toss away after. Abruptly, everybody could be able to dress like their favorite celebrity or wear the most recent patterns fresh from the catwalk. But most individuals don’t realize that every piece of clothing they buy comes with a price.

Fast fashion can be characterized as cheap, stylish clothing that samples trends from the runway or celebrity culture to turn them into articles of clothing sold in popular street stores at breakneck speed to meet shopper requests. The idea is to induce the most current styles on the advertisement as quickly as conceivable. Customers can snap up clothing items when they are still at the height of their notoriety, and after that, tragically dispose of them only after a few years. It slowly cultivated the “throwaway” culture among consumers, encouraging them to buy more than what they need, and dispose of it afterward. It plays into the thought that outfit repeating could be a faux pas, that looking famous or gaining millions of followers on Instagram must be by sporting the most recent looks as they happen. It shapes a key portion of the harmful framework of overproduction and utilization that has made the fashion industry one of the biggest sources of pollution within the world. Before you are ready to go about changing it, let’s take a look at history.

In 2013, the world had its reality come crashing to them when the Rana Square clothing manufacturing complex in Bangladesh collapsed, killing over 1,000 employers and workers. This devastating event was a huge wake-up call to all consumers and business enterprises. Following the incident, shoppers truly began addressing fast fashion and pondering what the true and dangerous costs of their $5 t-shirts were. By reading this article, you are now able to be made aware and more knowledgeable of the fast fashion’s dark side, but it’s worth investigating how the industry has compelled itself to this point. And it starts by acknowledging these telling historical events.

To understand how fast fashion came to be, we have to rewind in time. Before the 1800s, the fashion design industry was moderately paced. There weren’t concepts such as overproducing or wasting natural resources. You had to source your materials like wool or calfskin, prepare the material, and weave them to make a dress. The Industrial Revolution presented modern technology like the sewing machine. The dress became simpler, faster, and cheaper to create. Dressmaking shops rose to cater to the middle class. A parcel of these dressmaking shops utilized groups of clothing workers or domestic laborers. But at this ancient time, fast fashion was not yet recognizable, since creating clothes still took much effort and dedication. It was around this time that sweatshops developed, in conjunction with a few recognizable security issues. The first major garment factory calamity was when the fire broke out in New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Production line in 1911. It claimed the lives of 146 young workers, numerous of whom were youthful, female immigrants.

By the 1960s and 70s, young teenagers were making new patterns, designs, and clothing styles that made fashion become a frame of individual expression, though there was still a qualification between high design and high street. Fashion became more accessible to the majority of the community, and it slowly transformed into a piece of art. Within the late 1990s and 2000s, low-cost design reached its pinnacle. Online shopping took off, and fast-fashion retailers like H&M, Zara, and Topshop took over the large fashion industries. With new designs, cool innovations, and accessible products, it’s no wonder consumers were obsessed with these stores. These brands took the beauty and components from the best high end fashion industries and replicated them rapidly and cheaply to attract more customers. With everybody presently able to shop for an on-trend dress at any given instance, it’s easy to understand how and why the marvel of fast fashion caught on.
Sources
Good on You
https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/