The State’s Harms
July 25, 2025
Fast Fashion: A Social Harm Perspective
Fast Fashion
Looking at fast fashion from a social harm perspective, we can rely on knowledge from related disciplines to advance the study of harms. One of the areas where harms of fast fashion are particularly prominent is the field of occupational health and safety.
This article focuses on occupational health measures and safety protections in the production of fast fashion items in major garment exporting countries, looking at both health-threatening working environments and unsafe working conditions as sources of social harm.
Occupational health and safety is a scientific field that deals with anticipating, recognising, assessing and managing hazards that occur in the workplace and present a potential danger for the health and well-being of workers and their environment (Alli 2008, pili).
The International Labour Office (ILO) estimates that approximately two million individuals die each year from work-related accidents and illnesses (mainly due to cancer, cardiovascular diseases and infectious diseases) (International Labour Office 2003) and a further 317 million people suffer from work-related illnesses.
Economic indicators show that globally 4% of the GDP is spent annually on compensation, lost working days, production interruptions, training, retraining and health costs due to work-related illnesses and work accidents (International Labour Organization undated).
These tragic events can be prevented by introducing measures such as reporting and conducting inspections. While the ILO reports that there is a global trend of improving international health and safety standards, workplace accidents and work-related illnesses are unfortunately still common.
The occurrence of accidents at work and work-related illnesses has fallen in the countries of the Global North over the last 20 years, while it has risen in the countries of the Global South (International Labour Office 2018).
The most common hazards to which workers in the garment industry are exposed are cotton dust, noise and chemicals (Brown, Deardorff and Stern 2013), as well as ergonomic issues.
Health problems are often caused by poor lighting, inadequate temperature, ventilation, electric wiring, humidity, dirt and non-compliance with fire safety rules (Padmini and Venmathi 2012).
Paul-Majumder and Begum (2000, p.19) find that only 10% of workers in the garment industry are healthy, compared with 31% of workers employed in the non-export sector.
A Social Harm Perspective
An empirical study on occupational health and safety covering 36 garment factories in Bangladesh by Samaddar (2016) finds that fire safety does not meet required standards, factories are full of dust from fibres and pieces of textiles, while most factories do not have an adequate dust control system.
Furthermore, the author observes that factories do not have a suitable temperature control system and that, in most of them, noise exceeds the recommended value of 75dB. Additionally, workers are unaware of the necessary preventative equipment, occupational safety training is rarely organised and health care provided by factories is minimal.
Similarly, a study investigating a factory in Bangalore that employs 400,000 workers (Ceresna-Chaturvedi and Kumar 2015) finds that measures to protect health and ensure safety are very basic.
Workers are in dire need of solutions for the ergonomic issues they face due to the monotony of work, repetitive movements, heavy physical exertion and inappropriate posture. Begum et al. (2010) report on the adverse conditions affecting the health of female workers in garment factories in Bangladesh, such as cramped spaces, a hot and humid climate and unhygienic conditions.
The main reason for work-related accidents in Bangalore are inadequately maintained workspaces and the improper use of protective equipment (Ceresna-Chaturvedi and Kumar 2015). Low worker awareness about occupational health and safety (Mridula and Khan 2009), poor nutrition and unhygienic conditions, together with the lack of trade unions and unresponsive state institutions, worsen the situation.
Regular medical check-ups and an effective complaint mechanism would be an important step in addressing these issues (Ceresna-Chaturvedi and Kumar 2015).
It is quite evident from the analysis above that conditions in the area of occupational health and safety in the garment factories of major garment exporting countries have negative effects on the physical and mental health of workers and are thus a source of the first category of social harms as defined by Pemberton (2016).
According to him (Pemberton 2016, pp.27–31), harm to physical and mental health occurs when an individual is unable to maintain a state of health that would allow him or her to live an active and prosperous life (Doyal and Gough 1991, p.54), which is a fair assessment of the lives of a large number of workers in the contemporary garment industry.
He furthermore suggests that the quality of life one is able to lead is an indicator of whether harm has or has not occurred, and that in order to avoid harm, a wide range of needs must be met, such as access to adequate health care and housing, a healthy diet, recreation and a safe physical environment (Pemberton 2016, pp.27–31).
Environmental impacts
Pemberton (2016, p.24) specifically emphasises the preventability of social harms, if they remain within human control, contrasting it to the more prevalent discourse of ‘intentional harm’ in capitalist societies.
Looking at the long list of health problems itemised in Table 1, it is clear that the harm that occurs could be avoided by implementing ILO’s occupational health and safety standards (Alli 2008, pili).
The analysis above depicts only a minor fragment of the whole picture of harms to the physical and mental health to which workers in the fast fashion industry are subjected.
Physical and mental health of the workers is likewise affected by long working hours, extreme overtime, the absence of a decent wage and paid annual leave, as well as gender discrimination (Simončič 2019).
The environmental impacts of the fashion industry, which has been characterised as one of the top global polluters (UN News 2019), represents an additional aspect of fast fashion that has devastating consequences for the future of the planet as well as a negative impact on the health of the workers.
Another source of social harm affecting the physical and mental health of workers linked to the field of occupational health and safety are work-related accidents. Industrial accidents were common in the garment industry long before the boom of the ready-to-wear industry in the 1920s (Farrell-Beck and Johnson 1992).
Victims of these accidents are sometimes referred to as ‘fashion victims’, since the rapidly changing preferences of those buying the clothes are one of the factors that lead to accidents, albeit indirectly.
Out of the fear of losing business, factories do everything they can to meet deadlines, which requires overtime and leads to cuts in spending on basic safety measures and ventilation (Human Rights Watch 2015).
Some of the most notorious industrial accidents in the garment industry were the fire at the Triangle t-shirt factory in New York in 1911, where 146 people died due to inadequate fire safety standards (McEvoy 1995), the fire at the Tazreen factory near Dhaka in Bangladesh in 2012, where more than 100 people died (Bajaj 2012), and the fire in a factory in Karachi, Pakistan, where 259 people were killed
Grenfell Tower
As with the diseases experienced by workers described above, these accidents prevent the workers from maintaining a state of health that would allow them to live an active and prosperous life (Doyal and Gough 1991, p.54).
More than 1,100 dead garment workers and 2,500 injured is a tragic event, but such a disaster propels further harmful consequences that unfold in ripples, spreading geographically and longitudinally (Tombs 2020).
In an astute analysis of harm that resulted from the fire and collapse of the Grenfell Tower in West London in 2017,
Tombs (2020) lists some of these ripple effects as: airborne toxins, the heightened likelihood of drug and alcohol dependency because of the trauma of the fire, various mental health problems, such as stress, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety.
Furthermore, financial costs of health treatments and loss of employment have a negative impact on the well-being of the workers affected and their whole families as well. One can draw similar conclusions in the case of Rana Plaza.
Aside from the harm to physical and mental health analysed in this article, workers in the garment industry also experience the other two categories of harm formulated by Pemberton: autonomy and relational harms.
Autonomy harms occur when an individual lacks a certain degree of autonomy that would allow him or her to make decisions and to have the capability to act in accordance with these decisions (Pemberton 2016, p.29).
Low wages, for example, cause autonomy harms, since the labour workers carry out is inadequately recognised and insufficiently rewarded.
Another source of autonomy harms are restrictions on unionising, since they prevent individuals from exerting control over circumstances that significantly impact their lives (Simončič 2019).
In addition to autonomy harms, various aspects of the fast fashion industry are also a source of relational harms, which occur when an individual is excluded from social relationships, is perceived as the ‘other’ or is not accepted in the society in which he or she lives due to their lifestyle (Pemberton 2016, p.30). Relational harm is primarily experienced by female workers as victims of gender discrimination.
Long working hours, the absence of paid annual leave and meagre wages all cause relational harm, because they prevent the worker from taking part in quality social relationships. Inadequate working conditions lead to a breakdown in social relationships, which represent an indispensable support network for every individual (Simončič 2019).
A State-Corporate
One of the goals that corporations and states in neoliberal capitalist societies aspire to is the consumption of economic goods, which is, aside from international trade and economic investment, one of the main sources of economic growth (Ross 2019).
The ideology of growth is based on the belief that unrestricted growth of production and productive forces is the central goal of human existence (Castoriadis 1991, p.184). It is advocated by businesspeople seeking to increase their profits as well as by governments who view it to reduce unemployment.
Fast fashion, aligned with these goals, is thus considered as an unproblematic or even desired consumer practice in societies. Korten (2001, p.59) notes how the notion that economic growth is supposed to lead to the satisfaction of basic human needs, including poverty reduction and environmental protection, is one of the more entrenched ideas in modern political culture.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for example, claims that economic growth can create cycles of prosperity. Since high growth and employment opportunities encourage parents to send their children to school, who then grow up to be entrepreneurs and active citizens, putting pressure on their governments, the OECD concludes that high economic growth contributes to human development (Department for International Development 2008).
Furthermore, even proponents of increased government spending for the purposes of social security see high economic growth as a welcome source of funds to finance these expenses (Wiener 1978, p.50).
Pursuing the ‘righteous’ goal of economic growth is therefore one of the justifications for fast fashion brands to pursue profit maximisation, cause harm along the way and for states to support them in this endeavour.
Aside from limited liability and legal personhood, profit maximisation is one of the main characteristics of corporations (Bakan 2004) and a particularly problematic goal that fast fashion brands strive towards.
According to Bakan (2004), corporate managers are not only entitled, but legally obliged to put shareholders’ interests above everything else – the workers, the environment and the future of our planet.
Bakan recognises a certain kind of deviance to the way corporations are designed and labels them as ‘pathological institutions’ (p.2). In this light, the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is somewhat futile, since profit maximisation will always collide with socially and environmentally conscious alternatives.
Next to the pervasive pressure for goal attainment, the availability and the attractiveness of illegitimate means is another element contributing to criminal or deviant behaviour at the organisational level (Michalowski and Kramer 2007, p.210).
The illegitimate, or more accurately legitimate, yet harm-producing means for deviant behaviour in the production of fast fashion are the weak, non-existent or unenforced national and international legal frameworks that stipulate the rules of the fast fashion industry.
Occupational health
These rationalisations are extremely problematic, as they neglect the fact that poverty and the structurally imposed obstacles that these workers face were not something they voluntarily chose (Lee 1996).
When it comes to the field of occupational health and safety, almost 80% of ILO documents address these issues, either directly or indirectly, while the right of workers not to be victims of illness or injury resulting from work is one of the principles of the ILO’s founding charter.
The organisation has adopted more than 40 standards that deal with occupational health and safety issues and more than 40 CoC on the subject (Alli 2008, pili). These non-binding soft law provisions are welcome; however, for real change to occur binding legislative solutions implemented by governments are necessary as they raise the expectations the public has towards MNCs as well as make it more likely that MNCs will comply with the non-binding legal provisions (Steinweg and Kate 2013).
On the international level, discussions about corporate responsibility take place particularly in the context of the OECD, the United Nations (UN), and the European Union (EU); however, no transnational human rights regime that would apply to transnational corporate activities exists to date (Kinley and Tadaki 2003, p.938).
There is likewise no judicial forum that would assess complaints regarding human rights violations of transnational corporations (Letnar Černič 2013) and no national legislation adopted that would render companies liable for the impact their activities have on the individuals and the environment (Meyer 2019).
Aside from advocating for and creating an enforceable legal framework that ensures worker protection, there are several other changes that national governments could implement to reign in corporate power and minimise the harm that occurs in occupational health and safety.
Governments in the countries of production could include information about the harmful effects of mass production and mass consumption of goods in school curricula, they could tax unethically and unsustainably developed products as well as limit their advertising, offer economic incentives to ethical and sustainable products and carry out media and educational campaigns.
The strategy that renormalised smoking in the USA, for example, was comprehensive, encompassed all the above and was extremely successful in lowering the number of smokers (Bayer 2008).
However, one of the main reasons for the success of the anti-smoking campaign was scientific research that highlighted the dangers of smoking for the health of non-smokers (Hirayama 1981.
Tsioropoulos et al. 1981; White and Fröbe 1980), which is difficult to replicate in the case of fast fashion that causes most of the immediate harm in the countries of production and not in the countries where those clothes are sold.
In the USA, for example, the federal and state governments proposed or implemented a number of polices aimed at reducing fast food consumption, such as a ban on the use of trans fats in restaurants (Resnik 2010), nutrition requirements for fast food meals that are marketed as children’s meals (the so-called Happy Meal ban) (Bernstein 2010) and policies restricting the density of fast food restaurants (Severson 2008).
Conclusion
The goal of this article was to emphasise the deviance that occurs in the context of normalised practices, such as fast fashion, as well as to demonstrate the relevance of the concepts of social harm and state-corporate crime in order to analyse these harmful practices.
Both concepts help us understand why fast fashion is criminologically relevant and why more academic and public discussion about its deviant aspects is needed.
Looking at the fast fashion industry through the lens of Pemberton’s (2016) social harm concept brings to light various types of social harm that occur in the fast fashion industry.
The scope and severity of these harms indicate the need to question the normality of consumerist practices, endemic in neoliberal capitalism. This article focused solely on the inadequacy of occupational health measures and safety protections in the production of fast fashion; however, several other extremely problematic aspects of the fast fashion industry are equally deserving of attention.
Long working hours, low pay, workplace discrimination and unionisation constraints all result not only in harms to health but also in autonomy and relational harms (Simončič 2019).
Furthermore, other individuals, aside from workers in the textile industry who grow, pick, clean cotton, weave fibre into fabric or handle artificial fabric, are likewise negatively affected by the fast fashion industry.
Consumers, for example, experience various types of harm due to the informal social control to which they are subjected in a consumerist society (Scheerer and Hess 1997), most notably, mental health harm (Simončič 2019).
As Saleel (2009) warns, the seemingly limitless choice that a consumer is faced with daily does not lead to greater happiness, but rather contributes to feelings of inadequacy, guilt and anxiety.
Furthermore, while this analysis focused on the main clothing exporting countries on the global level, such as Bangladesh, China, Vietnam and India, where harm that occurs is most prominent, working conditions of garment workers in many countries of the Global North are likewise inadequate and deserving of scrutiny.
An investigation of working conditions in the garment sector in nine post-socialist European countries and Turkey conducted by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) War on Want indicates, for example, that poverty wages and terrible living conditions are an issue in many European countries as well (Alam, Blanch and Smith 2011).
Last, aside from the workers and consumers, the fast fashion industry, producing 80 billion items of clothing annually (US Environmental Protection Agency 2017) takes a huge toll on the environment.
Emissions of chemicals, wastewater, solid waste generation, excessive fresh water, minerals, fossil fuel and energy consumption are only some of the devastating environmental consequences of clothing production (Allwood, Laursen and de Rodriguez 2006).
On the other hand, the employment of the state-corporate harm concept helped me to shed some light on the causes of harm these practices produce. The analysis showed how the pressure for goal attainment, the availability and perceived attractiveness of illegitimate means as well as the absence of effective social control (Michalowski and Kramer 2007) all contribute to deviant behaviour of the fast fashion industry.
In pursuit of economic growth and profit maximisation, with little regard for harmful consequences, corporations, supported by governments, cause various types of social harm.
Furthermore, the weak, non-existent or unenforced national and international legal frameworks that stipulate the rules for the fast fashion industry convey the message that ‘business as usual’ is perfectly acceptable.
As they strive to attract and retain foreign capital, governments of the countries of production located in the Global South have little bargaining power vis-à-vis fashion brands in the form of MNCs and TNSs and thus fail to effectively protect their workers
Rana Plaza
In 2013 the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, where clothes for various famous fast fashion brands were made, collapsed, killing 1,134 and injuring 2,500 (War on Want 2014). The collapse of Rana Plaza, the deadliest accident in the history of the garment industry, occurred due to unregulated fire exits and poor maintenance of the building.
The workers noticed cracks in the building prior to the accident, but their complaints were ignored (Bolle 2014). The helplessness of the workers vis-à-vis their employers and the constraints put on trade unions contributed to the tragedy (Strochlic 2013).
According to the Economist (2013), responsibility for the accident should be attributed to the Bangladeshi government, because it failed to enforce national building regulations and turned a blind eye to the influential and well-connected landlords.
Fashion brands that did not require their subcontractors to comply with occupational safety standards were likewise to blame.
After the accident, the Bangladeshi Labour Act was reformed, raising the minimum monthly wage from 3,000 BDT to 5,300 BDT (51 euros), among other measures. In October 2013, the ILO, in co-operation with the Bangladeshi government, launched a three-year programme designed to improve
Bangladeshi garment factories, which included fire and construction safety assessments of 1,000–1,500 factories and occupational health and safety training (Nolan 2014).
Furthermore, the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety (2013), a legally-binding agreement signed between brands, retailers and trade unions, was signed.
Because of the agreement, factories were subjected to thorough inspections for the first time (Foxvog et al. 2013) with 767 factories having completed more than 90% of the required remediation activities in safety (Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety 2013).
The Rana Plaza Arrangement scheme, under which fashion brands and certain other donors contributed $30 million to a fund that was distributed to victims of the disaster, was adopted in 2015 (Rana Plaza Arrangement undated).
Despite these positive reforms and measures undertaken, a few years after the accident, the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) reported that similar initiatives have not followed in other countries and that labour law reforms, increased minimum wage and trade union rights in Bangladesh were being violated again (Foxvog et al. 2013).
Deaths and injuries that occur because of work-related accidents in the fast fashion industry are another source of the first category of social harms as defined by Pemberton (2016).
Critical Crimes
Aside from the social harm perspective introduced in the previous sections, the concept of state-corporate crime originating from critical criminology is also a particularly valuable framework to study harms of fast fashion, including inadequate occupational health measures and safety protections.
While the responsibility for the harm that occurs in the fast fashion industry lies on the shoulders of a number of players, from market regulators, supplier regulators, mediators, designers, marketers, producers, suppliers, the media to consumers,5 it is clear that multinational corporations (MNCs) and transnational corporations (TNCs) and states are the ones that set the rules of the game.
A major role in the generation of harm around occupational health and safety is played by the former, that is, fashion brands, clothing retailers, seed and chemical companies. Their legal commitment to maximize profits, frequently without regard for the consequences, makes them ‘dangerous carriers of great power that they exercise over individuals and society’ (Bakan 2004, p.2).
States often collaborate with corporate players and contribute to harmful activities, often by refusing or failing to act responsibly, thus committing so-called ‘crimes of omission’ (Kauzlarich, Mullins and Matthews 2003, p.245). Vegh Weis and Magnin (2021, p.274) call these acts and omissions ‘essential crimes’ as they are ‘essential to the maintenance of an order that benefits (these) elites.
According to Michalowski and Kramer’s (2007) conceptualisation of state-corporate crime, criminal or deviant behaviour at the organisational level results from a coming together of
‘(1) pressure for goal attainment,
(2) availability, perceived attractiveness of illegitimate means, and (3) an absence of effective social control’ (p.210). These three elements occur at the level of political and economic structures, organisations, as well as individuals.
The first element contributing to criminal or deviant behaviour at the organisational level is pressure for goal attainment that occurs at all the three levels listed above; industrious individuals work in organisations that reward their workers according to their ability to achieve goals set by the organisation in a society that prizes goal attainment religiously.
Garment production
Garment production is, for example, regulated on the national level in the countries of production, and by international human rights instruments and non-binding corporate codes of conduct (CoC).
However, the level of protection is often either weak or there is a lack of compliance with standards. Production countries that might impose stricter human rights protection and demand the respect of those rights fear and risk becoming uncompetitive.
The countries of the Global South are thus caught in the role of extras; the only role available to them in a game in which the rules are set by the economically stronger countries of the Global North.
Particularly worrying are fashion brands, and seed and chemical companies in the form of MNCs and TNCs, which operate globally, manage vast economic resources and see the countries of the Global South as a good investment opportunity.
Corporations may be a welcome source of foreign capital, technical knowledge and technological know-how, while being able to exercise control over the economies and the development of the countries of the Global South due to their economic power, not unlike former colonial powers (Kurek 1981).
In the age of fast fashion, most brands are not willing to invest in a long-term relationship with a single supplier, with whom they would create a loyal rapport and ensure consistent compliance with labour and environmental standards.
Instead, they outsource their production to mega suppliers in production countries, that is, to massive conglomerates that distribute work between thousands of factories (Hobbes undated).
To increase corporate profitability and product value, improve work efficiency and market responsiveness, reduce risks and gain a competitive advantage, corporations are indirectly (via their suppliers) responsible for causing various types of social harms in production countries (Hung Lau and Zhang 2006).
In the eyes of many, the fact that companies can, often in an entirely legal way, take advantage of either inadequate legal frameworks in production countries or, more often, profit from the countries’ lack of resources to sanction breaches, legitimises the existing system in which fast fashion operates.
There are likewise various rationalisations of exploitation, for example, the argument that the garment industry contributes to the development of a production country and that it offers at least some sort of employment opportunities and thus a chance of survival for many (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 2013).
However, the fact that alternative work available to garment industry workers is often even more exploitative or dangerous than the work they do in the garment sweatshops and the fact that these workers choose the work voluntarily (Powell 2014, p.12) does not render their exploitation legitimate.
Effective taxation
In the field of fashion, a good example was set in 2019 in the UK by the Environmental Audit Committee that proposed a tax reform to the Parliament offering tax reductions for fashion brands producing clothes that have a smaller environmental impact and higher taxes for those that refuse to implement environmentally friendly changes.
There was, furthermore, a proposal to draft legislation that would allow only the import of goods that are made in accordance with UK labour, human rights, occupational health and safety and environmental standards (Environmental Audit Committee 2019).
Effective taxation does not represent an excessive cost for the state (Baldwin, Cave and Lodge 2012, pp.41–4) or a major logistical or organisational issue; it does however oppose the interests of the wealthy elites who wield the power and influence to oppose such regulation (Monkam and Moore 2015). Tax regimes are very often designed in favour of those taxpayers who have the greatest bargaining power.
Many countries in the Global South have, for example, waived the taxation for MNCs operating in their territory altogether, leading to major deficits in their budgets. Jansky and Šedivy (2019), in an investigation of 14 countries in the Global South, estimates potential tax revenue losses resulting from bilateral tax treaties to be within hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the countries of production, on the other hand, Hobbes (undated) notes that it would be necessary to set up new or empower existing agencies that work towards preventing worker exploitation.
Albeit weak, most countries of production do have legal provisions that protect workers but are unable or unwilling to ensure that these laws are enforced (Nolan 2014, p.10), as this would mean opposing the interests of foreign capital, which brings employment to the country.
Even though many solutions exist, reforms are modest and slow. The reluctance of governments in both countries of production and consumption, to enact meaningful legislative changes, often referred to as the ‘lack of political will’ contributes to the continuation of harmful practices.
Finally, the absence of effective social control is the third main factor contributing to criminal or deviant behaviour at the organisational level (Michalowski and Kramer 2007, p.210).
According to Michalowski and Kramer (2007), societies with high operationality of social control are more likely to produce companies with corporate cultures that favour compliance with the law and individuals with moral principles who prevent them from engaging in organisational deviance.
Both, the righteous goal of mass production backed by the ideology of growth (‘pressure for goal attainment’) as well as the legal framework that tacitly allows exploitation (‘availability, perceived attractiveness of illegitimate means’) described above contribute to a normalisation of fast fashion and impede any serious backlash against it.
Naturally, if national and international laws allow such harmful practices (or if existing law is not enforced) and if, countries and corporations alike champion growth, effective resistance against a harmful practice such as fast fashion, is extremely difficult.
Furthermore, the postmodern society we live in is, according to Bauman (2004), a consumer society, since an individual is perceived and addressed foremost as a consumer. Our needs arise as a product of marketing and advertising; they are a result of ‘the dictatorship of the production sector’ (Baudrillard 1998, p.38). Corrigan (1997, p.20). expands on this and states that advertising does not so much create the need for specific goods but creates a desire for desire itself. Excessive and omnipresent advertising of fashion products is another factor contributing to insufficient opposition to the fast fashion industry.
Celebrities, for example, terrified of being seen in the same outfit more than once, have played an important role in the marketing of fashion brands for more than a century (Bhasin 2019). In the past few years, their role has, to a large extent, been replaced by influencers (Wissinger 2015), that is, individuals with many followers on social media (Bakshi et al. 2011).
Fashion brands invest large sums to link their brand to likeable influencers who take pictures of themselves in new clothes sent to them every day. These individuals lend their ‘brand’ to the company and with it also a specific cultural meaning (McCracken 1989).
In the past few years, there has been, for example, an explosion of ‘haul’ videos on YouTube in which young women, hired by brands, present bags full of new fast fashion items that they bought for a ridiculously low price.
The cheaper the item, the more pride the influencer exhibits. In 2014, for example, more than 50 million viewers dedicated more than 1.6 billion minutes of their time to watching ‘haul’ videos (Sykes and Zimmerman 2014).
It is important to note that while the vast majority still considers fast fashion as just another component of contemporary capitalist society, important changes have occurred in the past few years. In the UK in 2018, for example, the consumption of ethical clothing grew by 19.9% and consumption of second-hand clothing due to environmental concerns grew by 22.5%.
One of the reasons for the surge is supposedly increased reporting about the harmful effects of fast fashion in the media (UK Ethical Consumer Markets Report 2018).
According to McKinsey, a new global ethos of consumption to express one’s beliefs is emerging with millennials and centennials (that is, individuals born between 1997 and 2012), particularly in the Global North, becoming increasingly socially and environmentally conscious (Amed et al. 2018).
Nine out of ten centennial consumers believe that fashion brands are obliged to address societal and environmental issues (Cone undated).
An example of this new ethos is Fashion Revolution, a global movement that has been gaining momentum since 2018 and is supported by academics, researchers, designers, writers, retailers, fashion brands, producers, workers and others, advocating for fashion industry reforms that would reduce harms to workers and the environment (Fashion Revolution undated).
Furthermore, fashion brands are increasingly aware of the fact that investors have been recognising environmental and social factors as drivers of value (Berhow, Klempner and Magnin 2017).
While these new developments give hope, it is also important to note that core characteristics of the fast fashion model, that is, the fashion ability of items and a frequent and fast response to consumer demand are fundamentally incompatible with the concept of sustainability. For real change to occur, fast fashion brands would have to reform their business model in its entirety.
