Issue 1: Fast Fashion

1-Minute Read

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Buying your next T-shirt could feed households and reduce poverty in many countries in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, also known as “the clothing factory of the world”. In 2019, 65 million people worked in the APAC clothing manufacturing industry — that’s every seven out of 10 workers worldwide.

Fast fashion makes a lot of money for trend-driven fashion companies. It’s almost a vicious cycle as more clothes are produced, the more consumers want to buy. No wonder the industry is key to the economic and social development of many developing countries.

Would this affect the price? Is there such a thing as cheap and good? Here’s more to think about.

 

 

Want to know more about the economic impact?

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Photo by Maxim Tolchinskiy on Unsplash

How many clothing items do you buy and get rid of within a year? A survey involving 1,000 Singaporeans revealed that we buy 34 pieces of new clothing on average and dispose of 27 items within 12 months. For almost every item we buy, we throw away another.

Do you remember how often you wore a shirt before throwing it away? Clothes were only worn 7 to 10 times before being thrown out. Landfills are being filled with textile waste, generated through this throw-away culture.

From the production of raw materials to the disposal of clothes, the fast fashion industry consumes large amounts of chemicals, water and energy. It is a source of pollution for both air and water, accounting for 10% of all global carbon emissions. That’s more than the international flights industry and the maritime shipping industry combined.

The demand to be “on trend” leads to clothes churned out faster than we can wear them out. What would that mean to workers in the fast fashion factories?

 

 

Want to know more about the environmental impact?

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Photo by Rio Lecatompessy on Unsplash

We know all about fast fashion’s great economic impact. While that may be true, the industry has long been plagued by low wages, modern slavery, child labour and poor working conditions.

Factory workers in developing countries often work extremely long hours in harsh and dangerous conditions with a severe lack of occupational safety and health measures. Over a thousand workers were killed and another 2,500 plus were injured on 24 April 2013 when Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza building, which housed five garment factories, collapsed.

That’s not even including unethical business practices. During the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, many high street fashion retailers simply cancelled their orders as shops were closed and consumers stayed at home. Almost overnight, thousands of people lost their jobs and their source of income.

But it’s not all bleak in the world of fast fashion. As consumers are becoming more aware of these hidden costs, fashion designers and retailers are beginning to implement more sustainable initiatives.

 

 

Want to know more about the different business practices?

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Photo by Jess @ Harper Sunday on Unsplash

You head down to a store to get your fashion fix. Immediately, some clothes nearby catch your eye. You spot the tag and are taken aback by the high price. When you look closer, you spot it — a sticker labelled “Sustainable Fashion”.

This is why sustainable fashion may not be trendy or affordable. They tend to be more expensive due to their small batch production, additional manufacturing processes, ethical sourcing and fair wages. Some consumers are more likely to pay premium prices for going eco-friendly. There is also a lack of size inclusivity in sustainable fashion, with consumers facing difficulty finding the right fit.

Finally, you decide to buy a sustainable shirt. On the way home, you suddenly spot headlines of the brand being exposed for child labour. Weren’t they supposed to be ‘sustainable’? Research might be required as some companies use misleading marketing tactics and false sustainability claims to get you to buy their products.

Want to know more about sustainable fashion?

Click here for more resources on Fast Fashion.

Watch the full recording:

Speakers:

• Susannah Jaffer, Founder and CEO, ZERRIN
• Dr. Kapil R. Tuli, Professor of Marketing and Director of the Retail Centre of Excellence, SMU
• Corneliu Dinu Tudor Bodiciu, Programme Leader for BA Fashion Design and Textile and BA Fashion Media and Industries, LASALLE College of the Arts

Moderator:

• Irsyad Ramthan, sustainable maker and podcast host

About the Speakers and Moderator:

Susannah Jaffer is the founder & CEO at ZERRIN, Asia’s curated destination for creative, conscious brands. A Singapore-based global marketplace and media channel, ZERRIN connects you with the best in independent, D2C brands and content to inspire your green journey. She has spoken on the topic of sustainability in fashion/beauty/retail for companies like Coty, Great Eastern, Fashion Revolution and General Assembly. The platform has also been featured in notable outlets like The Straits Times, Her World, Channel News Asia and Vogue.

Dr. Kapil R. Tuli is the Professor of Marketing and Director of the Retail Centre of Excellence at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business (LKCSB), Singapore Management University. Over the years, Dr. Tuli has published several papers in leading marketing journals, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Management Science. In 2017, Dr. Tuli received the 2017 Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award for his paper “Rethinking Customer Solutions: From Product Bundles to Relational Processes” that was published in the 2007 edition of the Journal of Marketing.

Corneliu Dinu Tudor Bodiciu is the Programme Leader for BA Fashion Design and Textile and BA Fashion Media and Industries at LASALLE College of the Arts. Romanian-born and London-trained, he received his Master’s degree in Fashion Design and Technology at London College of Fashion where he is currently pursuing a doctoral research degree. His designs challenge the way we think about the relationship between the human body and clothing. His work has been showcased in established fashion magazines, such as Vogue, Vision China, Bazaar Asia, Elle and L’Officiel Ukraine, and worn by Lady Gaga, Viktoria Modesta and Chicks on Speed or featured in movies like the Hunger Games: Mockingjay 1 & 2 or the Foundation series.

Irsyad Ramthan is the former co-Founder of Interseed, a digital platform that promotes sustainability solutions and supports various start-ups that utilize alternative sustainable materials for different consumer products. Over the years, he has designed innovation programmes for Southeast Asian under-35s to solve sustainability challenges. He is currently a sustainable maker and podcast host.

Here’s a visual map of the different perspectives:

Return to the 5 Perspectives:

Why fast fashion is hot: Imagine looking luxe for the price of a latte

Fast fashion is the norm now – because who doesn’t like being spoilt for choice, purchasing dirt-cheap shirts and supporting brands that celebrate diversity?

Entrance to UNIQLO Orchard Central. Shutterstock.

Go on, take a look at your closet. When was the last time you bought clothes? Where was it from and why did you choose to buy it?

Asia’s next top sidewalk model

Fast fashion brands quickly replicate a large variety of design trends from social media and fashion runways for low prices, allowing every single one of us to purchase them. With a significant reduction in the lengths of clothing production cycles, we now have the luxury of browsing fresh and new styles every week.

For instance, Thai fast fashion brand Pomelo Fashion pushes out two launches of new arrivals every week on its website and physical stores. Producing fast and affordable designs that incorporate Seoul’s streetwear styles, Pomelo Fashion lives up to its brand mission “Fashion born in Asia. On Trend. Online. On The Go."Its loyal customers are able to look swanky round the clock as its streamlined supply chain syncs up with the volatile trend cycle, churning out clothing pieces swiftly.

Many millennial and Gen-Z customers purchase from fast fashion brands when they look up to the brand's ambassadors, in hopes of emulating these celebrities’ fashion styles. Combined with influence from real-time trends on the Internet, this impulsive shopping culture is fuelled by our urge to keep up with celebrity culture and, by relation, our insatiable demand for ever-changing styles. For example, Singaporean influencer Andrea Chong successfully collaborated with local fast fashion brand Love Bonito for several runs of her &REA collection. By targeting customers who are drawn to Chong’s elegant image, the collection enjoyed immense popularity among young women who look up to her effortless styles.

Looking like riches, paying for rags

Fast fashion allows us to buy fashionable clothes for as little as S$1 per piece. You might not believe it but these ultra-cheap clothing pieces are so chic that you can be dressed to the nines for the price of next to nothing, at the snap of your finger.

Fast fashion expedites supply chains and lowers costs in order to accommodate consumers’ rapidly changing tastes. Shein monitors their customer data from social media platforms, and mass produces selected popular styles in real time, that in turn reduces the cost per garment and lowers their selling prices. This low-cost production then feeds back into the cycle of attracting more customers and securing a constant demand for large amounts of garments.

There is a science behind why we hanker after sales prices. Shopping panders to our appetite for instant gratification as it triggers our brains to produce a rush of positive emotions. Despite the inferior quality and inaccurate sizing of cheap clothing, we cannot stop ourselves from hunting for the next too-good-to-be-true fashion bargain because we are addicted to shopping.

Fast fashion is faster than ever today, with sale promotions running at any given time of the day. E-commerce has shaped the sale phenomena, where special sale events like Black Friday and Singles’ Day are marketed as limited-time deals that everyone snaps up. Alibaba's Singles' Day shopping festival in 2021 bears testament to this — with more than S$114 billion in gross merchandise volume and 900 million shoppers browsing through 14 million steep discounts on e-commerce platform Tmall. The rise of e-commerce platforms has indeed made shopping extremely affordable with periodic discounts and sales events.

Every body deserves cool clothes

Fast fashion retailers are often the only size-inclusive brands that produce extended-size clothing lines that most people can afford. As they have greater economies of scale in their production lines to produce the same clothing range in several sizes for marginal costs, these brands make stylish clothes accessible to people of diverse body types. The same cannot be said for smaller sustainable brands who do not mass produce their plus-size lines at the scale of fast fashion brands due to the uncertainty of these lines' saleability, therefore selling their plus-size pieces at higher prices. To put these words into figures, this simple straight-sized striped dress costs a whooping S$162 from ethical brand Everlane and just S$24 on UNIQLO’s racks.

Positioned as a technology-centred fashion company “made for all", Japanese brand UNIQLO sells essential modern styles in extra sizes that run from XS to 3XL for both men and women. Their low prices can be attributed to the brand’s ability to place high-volume orders with their manufacturers and partner factories. This is only possible with UNIQLO’s brand strategy of mass appeal, as they market their minimalist and high-quality casual wear to shoppers of all sizes. To embrace body positivity, UNIQLO has released the Uniqlo U Future Lifewear collection that feature versatile essentials such as the U wide-fit curved pants - trousers that cinch in at the waist, with a tapered wide-leg fit that looks flattering on multiple body types including petite and plus-sized figures.

Ultimately, we find ourselves stuck in a Catch-22 situation — we can look chic without burning a hole in our pockets, only if we purchase clothes from unsustainable fast fashion brands.

Think about who might lose out from the value that fast fashion brings to consumers.

Futher reading:

• What if we just forgot about fashion? (Science Focus)
• If fast fashion disappeared… (The Finery Report)

1-Minute Read

Fast fashion giants: Big Data, bigger inventory, biggest profit

Brands from Zara to Shein have revolutionised fashion consumption. With a different style to shop for every time you set foot in their stores or open your browser, these brands keep up with trends with shocking speed. One giant has emerged as reigning champion with bags of profit in tow — Shein and its almighty algorithm.

Shein online store.

Shutterstock.

How often do you feel like you need a wardrobe update? Are there many options for you to do so?

Take a walk through the streets and most people have on either a Uniqlo T-shirt, or something you have seen on ASOS. Before this homogeneity, there were the eclectic styles (and questionable graphic T-shirts) brought to us only by the brandless stores in Bugis Street or Far East Plaza — and maybe blogshops.

Fast fashion’s prescient ability to keep up with the latest trends has almost wiped out small-scale and independent shops. Amidst quickly developing data technologies, brands like Zara and Shein have revolutionised fashion consumption, saturating consumers with affordable styles almost every other week.

Goodbye Bugis Street, hello H&M!

In 2011,H&M opened its flagship store in Orchard Building. Hundreds of people lined up to be the first to enter the store. Since then, H&M had a hold on Singapore shoppers. Queues — some 3 days long — would form every time there was a drop, whether it was for the Kenzo or Balmain collaboration. By offering trendy luxury labels at affordable prices, H&M dominated fashion retail in Singapore.

A Zara store in Hong Kong having a sale.Shutterstock.

1-Minute Read

When shopping becomes your personality: FashionTok and overconsumption

Although flash sales, point rewards and aggressive marketing are popular sales tactics, it’s often a familiar (or attractive) face that rakes in the most cash. With the rise of social media, everyone can be an influencer. Hopping on trends to get views, many TikTokkers show off Shein hauls and styles that last as long as a TikTok trend cycle — that is, barely a month.

A collage of TikTok #sheinhaul videos. TikTok.

Where do you get your style inspirations from?

Social media’s ubiquity makes it seem like it should be somewhere in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The power of its influence is far-reaching — in the UK, about half of online fashion shoppers shop based on social media inspirationsreported the same.).

Users, influencers and celebrities are constantly posting fit pics to flex their taste in fashion. Instagram now even has a shop feature, replacing where the notifications tab once was. Social media platforms and their influencers are transforming the way people shop, and often in unhealthy ways.

With so many driven to shop the latest trends to carve out their own personal brand, our sense of identity is inevitably moulded by our pocket computers.

#OOTD

The phenomenon of the influencer — becoming popular from shopping a lot or posting haul videos — tells us that consumption has become a personality trait in and of itself. Dressing up for the ‘gram, and by extension shopping, is now a fundamental mode of self-expression and communication.

Many brands have caught on that the most powerful advertisement is a friend’s recommendation (or maybe a rival’s flex). Of course, what a “friend” means is stretched on social media. Nowadays, many form parasocial relationships with influencers and celebrities, whose life updates appear alongside our friends’ on the same feed while lending their eponymous influence toward brands they wear.

Fast fashion brands are tapping into this influence on social media. For instance, Fashion Nova decking influencer Kylie Jenner out in their products or even developing an entire collection with rapper Cardi B, all posted on Instagram.

Missguided makes a replica of a dress hours after influencer Kim Kardashian posts a picture. Instagram.

Besides celebrities, influencers are notorious for their product promotions and sponsored posts. Sent public relations (PR) packages from shops like Shein, they wear free clothes in exchange for posting a cute fit pic on the ‘gram. Zara, for instance, featured influencer Teesh Rosa, garnering over 300,000 views.

Consequently, followers’ feeds are a series of fast fashion drip — a quick class on what is hot this week — and these brand names.

Marketing in this form instead of full-blown campaigns is considerably effective. The influencer market industry was worth US$9.7 billion in 2020, a figure expected only to grow.

This market is certainly impacted by a new social media player: what do cottagecore, normcore,and goblincore have in common besides their suffixes? They are all fashion trends (inspired by the aesthetics of rural living, functional normality and, well, goblins, respectively) from TikTok, now a major player in fashion trendsetting.

This one my #sheinhaul

TikTok, arguably one of the most influential social media platforms today with 1 billion active users in 2021, is saturated with #sheinhaul videos — TikTokkers buying hundreds and thousands of dollars’ worth of fast fashion items and flaunting them.

Person recording themselves with a new sweater and clothes.

Yes, even people who are not sponsored are doing haul videos and tagging brands. Haul videos are popular for both creator and consumer. With algorithms that reward focusing on niches and consistency, content creators are hauling in views, TikTok fame and sometimes even money.Meanwhile, viewers get to keep up with trendy items at basically no expense.

The problem, however, is that these haul videos result in intense trend turnover. While trend cycles used to last 20 years from introduction, rise, acceptance, decline to obsolescence, they are now squeezed into just about 20 days.

Mandy Lee, a trend analyst and fashion writer (@oldloserinbrooklyn on TikTok) explains the “microtrend” phenomenon to Lithium Magazine. Since brands send out PR packages in one big push with influencers having a limited time to post their fit pic, “you can definitely notice it on your Explore page: where is this yellow leather fur-trimmed set coming from that’s here for a week and then never seen again?”

More than that, haul videos are normalising overconsumption. “They’re just glamourising it,” Lee notes. She explains that even counter-responses to such fast fashion haul videos, like “Trends I Hate” videos or thrift hauls can contribute to overconsumption. Such content simply forms yet another stylistic or trend niche which will suffer the same rapid turnover.

I buy, therefore I am

Platforms like TikTok prey on our need for self-affirmation. Allowing users to express their individualism offers a sense of identity security that keeps them addicted.

Psychologist Paul Verhaeghe explains in his book What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Societythe phenomenon of an “economic social Darwinism” in a consumptive society. It is selection of the fittest, with fittest being the one who has the ability to display a desirable social status.

Displaying social superiority comes down to expression of taste, which ultimately boils down to what you buy. With quick trend turnovers and fast fashion’s ubiquity, it’s becoming about how much you can buy.

With this in mind, media becomes avenues for identity-construction and self-presentation. Social media allows people to look for styles to incorporate into their repertoire, while flaunting their latest acquisitions — whether it’s a $20,000 watch or a sleek slit dress. Putting up a sort of online façade, users are incentivised to keep posting and scrolling to build that stylistic identity they have found.

Beyond that, it has been shown that Facebook and Instagram are designed to be addictive. By hogging your attention and offering a (faux)sense of identity security through style replication, these platforms are perfect breeding grounds for influencer marketing campaigns from the likes of Fashion Nova and Missguided, as well as profits for all — except the user.

What responsibilities should social media platforms have when it comes to issues of consumer behaviour?

Further Reading:

• Facebook Delays Instagram App for Users 13 and Younger ( The New York Times)
• There is a Dark Side of Social Media, and It Is Data Privacy and “Second Order Consent” (University of Texas)

Go even deeper:

• Social Media Influence on Consumer Behaviour: The Case of Mobile Telephony Manufacturers (MDPI)

1-Minute Read

The Real Price Tag of Fast Fashion

Affordable clothing should be accessible to everyone. But when the world buys too much and too often, who is really footing the bill?

5-Minute Read

The Fast Fashion Crisis: Is There a Way Out?

From exploitative labour practices to environmental destruction, the fast fashion industry seems to be a giant red flag for our planet. Governments, businesses and consumers alike have started looking towards more ethical solutions to bridge the sustainability divide.

How have you tried to shop more sustainably when it comes to fashion?

The planet is spiraling into crisis mode due to our incessant need to update our wardrobes.

The fast fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions worldwide. Overconsumption and overproduction also mean that 92 million tonnes of textile waste are sent to landfills annually, while 93& of fashion brands do not pay their workers a living wage.

Fast fashion has clearly brought the world to a tipping point, but is there a way out of this crisis?

Fighting Back Against Fast Fashion

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza factorybuilding in Bangladesh which killed over 1000 garment workers brought to the forefront the disastrous consequences of the fast fashion economy.

Governments around the world are responding by implementing legislations that will hold fashion brands accountable for unethical supply chain practices. For example, the German government is introducing a 'due dilligence' law that enforces legal penalties against German companies for labour abuses and a lack of compliance against environmental standards in their global supply chains.

Female garment workers demanding for compensation for the survivors of the Rana Plaza factory building collapse. The factory took only over 90 seconds to collapse, with unions referring to the event as a “mass industrial homicide.” Shutterstock.

In the battle against fast fashion, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also play a salient role in pushing for greater oversight and accountability from commercial juggernauts.

The Hong Kong-based environmental NGO, Redress, uses public education campaigns and art installations to draw attention to broader issues in Asia’s fashion industry. They also work closely with industry partners, from designers and garment manufacturers to retailers, to drive change towards a more sustainable direction.

Fashion Goes Green

Consumers are increasingly calling out greenwashing practices from fashion brands and demanding them to take action for unsustainable production processes. According to the South East Asia Fashion Sustainability Report 2021, 80% of consumers in the region prefer to purchase from brands that are committed to social and environmental causes.

While the sustainable fashion movement is still in its infancy in Singapore, advocate Raye Padit agrees that local consumers are warming up to sustainable fashion options. As the founder of The Fashion Pulpit, a Singapore-based clothes-swapping platform, Raye believes that clothes swapping can offer a viable solution to the waste generated by fast fashion.

“Swapping helps you extend the lifespan of your clothes. This means we can reduce on average 20% of textile waste, water usage, carbon emissions and land use per person. Swapping also lets you explore your personal style through ‘new-to-you’ garments, without generating more waste,” shares Raye.

Raye’s journey in sustainable fashion started in 2013 when he realised that the fast fashion economy was producing at such a rapid rate that clothes were being thrown away as quickly as they were made. A budding fashion designer himself, Raye wanted to be “a part of the solution instead of the problem”.

A store in Sweden, Stockholm, which produces clothes from recycled materials. Shutterstock.