Fast Fashion

Make do and mend

 We hear a lot about fast fashion and and how cheap low quality clothing is sold to consumers and has a relatively short life before being thrown away.  However my experience is that it is not always cheap clothing that falls into this category, often perfectly good (better quality) clothing becomes discarded because it is no longer 'on trend'. This, I believe is the real problem. I come from a generation where clothing was expensive and money was short so any item of clothing had to last and would be used until it was no longer possible to wear it as it had worn out. Items of clothing would be passed down from older to younger members of the family in order to extend the useful life of the garment. There was never any consideration of fashion or what might be 'on trend'. 

This way of thinking was influenced by the rationing of clothes from 1939 until 1949, an subsequent years of austerity where money was tight and clothing relatively expensive. Disposing of a perfectly good garment was not an option it was too valuable a resource to throw into the bin. The term 'make do and mend' was common in those days, clothing was repaired where possible, or to use modern day language, re-purposed by either using the material to make something else or adjusting it to fit another member of the family. My Mum spent many hours knitting jumpers etc for the family, when someone grew out of one, it would be dismantled, the wool rolled into balls and prepared fro the making of a 'new' jumper. I seem to remember at one point all my jumpers were made in this way. I even had a knitted (girls) swimsuit, that Mum had made for one of my sisters, it was ok until it got wet..........

I still have this way of thinking very much in my mind, I never throw anything away that might still have life of some sort in it. My train of thought when I buy clothes is that they are purchased for life, unless it doesn't fit, in which case I will pass it on to someone who can make use of it. Other than that it will remain in my collection and probably re-surface at some point. I do not follow fashion, I buy what appeals to me and I think suits me. I wear 'modern' clothes but I can just as easily wear a 50's style dress if the mood suits. But of course I am not every body, others have a very different outlook.

Fast fashion should not be confused with cheap fashion, although the two do crossover quite a lot. My research has shown that in the UK, H+M, Zara and in the past Topshop were exponents of the fast fashion marketing. Make no mistake, it might be presented as providing the customer the items they desire, but ultimately it's about selling product, the more they sell the more money they make. These and no doubt other retailers play on consumers desires to have the latest thing, the latest must have. They feed that desire with a never ending stream of new products and have been very good at following the fashion trends, designing, making and delivering products in a very short period. This is supported by social media campaigns and consumers personal use of social media where it seems you have to share you life with the world, and if, god forbid, you wear the same dress twice, someone will call you out and make a fool of you.

So it would appear there are two problems here, the retailers desire to capitalise on the consumers ‘need’ for the latest 'thing' and the consumers never ending thirst for 'cutting edge fashion'. What drives all of this is consumer demand, the only way to reduce the amount of perfectly good clothing being deposited in the bin is to change the mind set of consumers. That would not be easy, however there is some light at the end of the tunnel.  There is an increasing willingness on behalf of consumers to buy second hand, sorry 'Pre-Loved' with the rise of the online sites like eBay, Etsy and Vinted. Buying second hand many years ago was regarded as something only those below the poverty line would consider, but a bit of 'rebranding' into Pre-Loved has made it almost fashionable. Make do and mend has also been through rebranding into 'up cycle' and Re-purpose' what ever they call it, if it extends the life or gives a second life to a product, then that has to be a good thing.

I saw a piece on the television news the other day about retailers looking at hiring clothes to customers, there has been hire around for years, particularly for events, proms, weddings formal dinners etc. For a formal event it is quite expensive, but much cheaper than buying a designer long dress that you will only ever wear once. However for lower ticket items I can't see much if any profit it it. By the time the item is checked, cleaned and repackaged ready for the next customer it seems unlikely to work. I say this because items returned to major on line retainers, irrespective if it being faulty or not are not generally put back into the retail stock. If you return a dress to one of these retailers the items are bundled up and sold on to people who will then cut the labels out a d sell them on auction sites. This hardly helps the situation with regard to cheap clothes flooding the market. I buy dresses this way, from one of the auction sites, usually paying between £20 and £30 for a dress costing £80 or so. However I do not regard these dresses as throw away items because they are cheap, I keep them and wear them again and again. I suspect others think differently........

Ultimately it will be the changing of consumers buying patterns that will decrease demand and change the product supply form retailers. Another factor is cost, the increase in energy costs will impact prices in shops, and the high cost of living at the moment will reduce demand, a bit. Ultimately the move to greener economy and the reduction of the use of fossil fuels will increase costs of many synthetic fabrics as oil is often used in manufacture, the lower demand for oil will increase the cost of what is pumped out of the ground.  There are of course plant based alternatives, but just because it is plant based it should not be regarded as disposable, a huge amount of resource, energy and in many cases water are used in the manufacturing process and that should not be wasted...........