Fast fashion industry trends are an industry term used by retailers and manufacturers to describe an extremely lucrative economic model based upon mass-produced low-cost garments, and copying popular catwalk styles and high-fashion designs. The term fast fashion also is used generically to describe the generic goods of this particular fast fashion industry model. In recent years fast fashion has grown into a massive global business, worth billions of dollars annually. A typical fast fashion sale contains a huge range of products – from printed clothing to handbags, shoes and jewelry. This article will detail one of the fast fashion industry trends, which has developed particularly during the last decade or so, and which is set to continue growing in popularity in coming years.
One of the most important aspects of a fast fashion trend is the adoption of technologies such as digital printing and assembly line production. This enables manufacturers to use lower-cost raw materials and reduce the need for labour, therefore encouraging the adoption of a ‘fast’ lifestyle. As a result, many fast fashion garments are made using cheap and affordable raw materials, with no consideration for the impact these will have on the environment. A good example of this would be garments made using child’s clothes or even human hair. These types of items tend to have a very high emission rate, as they generally contain a large amount of unwanted water vapor, leading to large amounts of water waste, and ultimately causing the destruction of a large number of tropical forests.
If we consider the quality of some of the garments produced by the fast fashion industry, then we will see that they are of a substantially lower quality than those produced by traditional methods, such as hand-made garments. Although some fast fashion manufacturers do attempt to use fair-trade materials and employ people on a low-waged basis, the production process itself will still likely be environmentally damaging. The fast fashion industry will continue to place a greater emphasis on cost over the quality of items, in order to boost their profit margins. It is this reason which has seen many clothing items being sold at substantial discount prices, as they are cheaper to produce and do not require a large amount of labour to produce.