Trends

Fast fashion in this world of social media has become a slave to trends. Trends nowadays seem to change every other week, which for the average consumer is hard to keep up with. This may seem like this is just how the fashion industry is, but it isn’t, fashion retailers speed the rate that they change the clothing they sell to make the consumer feel the need to circulate their wardrobe. Mentioned in a good on you article, this only began to happen around 20 years ago. [1]

The constant change in trends only adds to the amount that people are buying clothes. It is an endless cycle of buying and people are able to do so because the clothes being supplied by these companies are so cheaply made. Companies are able to get away for the clothes being so cheaply made because the turnover of trends will make is so that they will get rid of the clothing item much sooner than usual. Even if these clothes are donated 84%[2] of all donated clothes ends up in a landfill.

Trends were not always this way, according to good on you an app devoted to education people on sustainable fashion stated that in the 60s and the 70s [3] people started creating trends, and clothing became a form of expression. People before tended to not see fashion and clothing in the same way. It wasn’t until the 90s and the 2000s that low-cost fashion really became popular. It was now so easy to keep up with trends, and since then it has only escalated to the consumer being a slave to the constant change in trends.

1-3. Good On You, What is Fast Fashion, 07/08/18, https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/

2. Newsweek, Fast Fashion Is Creating An Environmental Crisis, 09/01/16

https://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/09/old-clothes-fashion-waste-crisis-494824.html