Cheap Clothing, High Costs
How college students are impacting and counteracting fast fashion
Jarred Watkins
Visuals by Katie Preston
The fast fashion industry is booming.
Brands like Zara and H&M can be found in malls across the United States, and the online retailer Shein became the most popular fashion brand of 2022, according to Time Magazine.
The methodology of fast fashion companies is to offer low-quality items at a fast pace for very cheap prices. The model relies on recurring, rapid consumption and impulse buying.
By offering so many products and keeping up with trends, brands are able to instill a sense of urgency in consumers, which leads them to repeatedly purchase the newest fashion pieces.
According to Forbes magazine, 72% of college students reported indulging in fast fashion last year. But these trendy clothing pieces come at a humanitarian and environmental price.
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Fast fashion appeals to many college students due to the convenience and affordability of the clothing. It has also become a habit and source of entertainment for many young people.
“Shopping used to be about fulfilling the needs of your wardrobe,” said Rebecca Robinson, visiting assistant professor of fashion at Miami University. “Now, shopping is about filling them with cheap clothes to wear a few times before discarding them and buying the next trend to stand out or wear to a party.”
Forty percent of college students reported browsing fast fashion websites or apps at least once a day, and 1 in 2 admitted they watch social media fashion hauls at least once a week where it is hard to resist the temptation to buy an item, according to thredUP Newsroom.
That idea is furthered by firsthand consumers on Miami’s campus who admit they don’t often consider what went into making their clothing.
“I don’t like the aesthetic of thrifting, and I don’t have the money to shop high-end as a student, so I go to places like Shein sometimes,” said senior psychology and biology double major Taylor English. “I shop and buy basically whenever I need new clothes, [which is] a few times a year. It is cheap and the clothes are cute.”
Students at Miami may have some concerns about the fast fashion industry and its impact on the environment, but many of them, like sophomore social work major Ava Courtney, often find the convenience of fast fashion and buying clothes online is just too good to pass up.
“I don’t think about much when I am buying clothes from places like Shein or H&M,” Courtney said. “I wear all the clothes a bunch before throwing them away. That being said, I tend to buy my clothes in bulk once or twice a year and try not to shop there too often because, deep down, I know they are bad.”
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The fast fashion industry is responsible for some concerning statistics.
Zara makes approximately 450 million clothing items on an annual basis. It also produces 20,000 new styles a year that are trendy for a short duration before being replaced, according to Business Insider. However, that is nothing compared to the online fast fashion retailer Shein, which releases 6,000 new styles daily.
According to Time Magazine, the online fast fashion retailer Shein also produces almost 6.3 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. With such rapid production rates, not all of the clothing is sold and it becomes waste that is difficult to dispose of. According to the BBC, the fashion industry is responsible for 92 million tons of textile waste annually.
According to the European Environment Agency, the fashion industry also pollutes the ocean with upwards of 200,000 tons of microfibers and plastics yearly. These microplastics often contain toxic chemicals that can leach into the environment as they break down.
In addition to these environmental concerns, much of the textile industry operates in impoverished nations and areas where government intervention is limited. This leads to poor working conditions for many people.
“Beyond the environmental impacts, we have labor concerns, fair wage concerns and the safety of workers. … There is so much more, too, that is concerning,” said Sarah Dumyahn, assistant teaching professor for the Institute for the Environment and Sustainability at Miami.
For example, the average Ethiopian garment maker only earns $26 a month, according to CNN.
“So much of the work is done in [developing] countries where labor is cheaper and margins are tight,” Robinson said. “Fast fashion relies on volume. The less money these companies pay employees and the cheaper the fabrics can be made, the better.”
According to the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, approximately 160 million children ages 5-17 were employed in illegal labor practices globally in 2021. Children are involved in all stages of garment and textile production, including planting and picking cotton, spinning fabrics, and creating ready-made garments to be sold, according to the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations.
Even if a company has strict guidelines about labor in its factories, much of the child labor work is facilitated by subcontractors who operate independently. This means the companies that rely on contractors and subcontractors and sell textiles in the U.S. can’t tell consumers where the garments come from with certainty. These systems can make it challenging to prevent child labor or avoid unethically made clothing.
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Despite the troubles of the fast fashion industry, a counterculture of thrift shops and secondhand sellers has been steadily growing.
Apps like Depop, thredUP and Poshmark arose as the result of this counterculture growth.
Depop is a clothing resale application for users to sell gently used or new clothing at a fraction of their original price. Services like thredUP and Poshmark operate similarly.
As of 2022, Depop had over 30 million registered users. Of these Depop users, over 90% were found to be under the age of 26, according to Time Magazine.
As the app has grown, it has provided users with an alternative to the fast fashion industry. Depop consumers stop textiles from going into landfills each year by reselling and buying clothing items. There are currently over 16 million items for sale on Depop.
Miami and the surrounding Oxford community have come up with their own local counterculture of fashion, as well.
Zero Waste Oxford, a student-run organization at Miami, encourages students to think more critically about where their clothes are coming from. One way they do this is by setting up a thrift shop in the Armstrong Student Center every month.
The president of the organization, senior English literature and philosophy double major Ryan Rosu, said that even if they are not making a large-scale impact on the state of fast fashion, they are at least saving a few pieces from going to the landfill.
“Our pop-up thrift shop in Armstrong takes donations from anybody — a lot of which are fast-fashion pieces from places like Shein,” Rosu said. “Reselling these pieces makes the labor of that piece so much more valuable. And people really do buy them from us, which is great. It is nice knowing that we have extended that life cycle.”
Some fast fashion retailers, including H&M, are showing signs of change to become more sustainable. The company hopes to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040. It also has plans in place to help offset the remaining 10% and reach net-zero emissions.
Until then, consumers can know for certain that they are making a difference when they shop with resellers like those on Depop or at the Zero Waste Oxford thrift shop and avoid giving in to fast fashion consumption.
