Courtesy : DIPLOMA IN FASHION DESIGNING (DFD)
Concept
A H&M store in Downtown Montreal
Fast fashion brands produce pieces to get the newest style on the market as soon as possible. They emphasize optimizing certain aspects of the supply chain for the trends to be designed and manufactured quickly and inexpensively and allow the mainstream consumer to buy current clothing styles at a lower price. This philosophy of quick manufacturing at an affordable price is used in large retailers such as SHEIN, H&M, Zara, C&A, Peacocks, Primark, ASOS, Forever 21, and Uniqlo. # ISO certification in India
These retailers produce and sell products in small batches, keep surplus manufacturing capacity on hand, and frequently induce items to be out of stock. This is designed to give retailers the ability to make substantial and immediate adjustments to manufacturing. For example, up to 85% of Zara’s merchandise can be changed in the middle of the season. This is because a fast fashion system like Zara’s can quickly update designs, resulting in short product cycles where a garment does not sit on the stores shelf for long periods of time, giving the store a sense of exclusivity and raising the attractiveness of an item.# ISO certification in India
It particularly came to the fore during the vogue for “boho chic” in the mid-2000s.According to the UK Environmental Audit Committee’s report “Fixing Fashion,” fast fashion “involves increased numbers of new fashion collections every year, quick turnarounds and often lower prices. Reacting rapidly to offer new products to meet consumer demand is crucial to this business model.”# ISO certification in India
Fast fashion has developed from a product-driven concept based on a manufacturing model referred to as “quick response” developed in the U.S. in the 1980s and moved to a market-based model of “fast fashion” in the late 1990s and first part of the 21st century. The Zara brand name has become almost synonymous with the term, but other retailers worked with the concept before the label was applied, such as Benetton. Fast fashion has also become associated with disposable fashion because it has delivered designer product to a mass market at relatively low prices.# ISO certification in India
The advancement of technology has allowed for fast fashion to gain popularity over the last decade. Technology has allowed for designers to create specifically what their consumers want according to what is “in” at the given moment. Every month there are new things trending and new things being displayed in stores to market towards the youth. Technology has the power to change all the issues within the fast fashion industry. Brands such as Zara have been listening to its consumers and thinking green to improve their environmental impact. As Nina Davis states, “[Companies] are also adopting advanced technologies to improve supply chain efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint.”# ISO certification in India
Slow fashion counter
The slow fashion or conscious fashion movement has risen in opposition to fast fashion, naming responsibility for pollution (both in the production of clothes and in the decay of synthetic fabrics), poor workmanship, and emphasizing very brief trends over classic style. Elizabeth L. Cline’s 2012 book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion was one of the first investigations into the human and environmental toll of fast fashion. Fast fashion has also come under criticism for contributing to poor working conditions in developing countries. The 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, the deadliest garment-related accident in world history, brought more attention to the safety impact of the fast fashion industry.# ISO certification in India
In the rise of slow fashion, emphasis has been given to quality, considerate clothing. In recent Spring/Summer Fashion Show 2020, high end designers are leading the movement of slow fashion by creating pieces that develop environmental friendly practices in the industry. Stella McCartney is one luxury designer who focuses on sustainable and ethical practices, and has done so since the nineties. British Vogue explains that the process of designing and creating clothing in slow fashion involves consciousness of materials, consumers demand, and the climate impact.# ISO certification in India
In her 2016 article titled “Doing Good and Looking Good: Women in ‘Fast Fashion’ Activism”, Rimi Khan criticizes the slow fashion movement, particularly the work of high-profile designers and slow fashion advocates Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood, as well as other well known industry professionals such as Livia Firth, for creating slow fashion products which cater to a mostly western, wealthy, and female demographic. Khan points out that because most slow fashion products are significantly more expensive than fast fashion items, consumers are required to have a certain amount of disposable income in order to participate in the movement.# ISO certification in India
Khan argues that by proposing a solution to fast-fashion that is largely inaccessible to many consumers, they are positioning wealthier women as “agents of change” in the movement against fast fashion, whereas the shopping habits of lower income women and people of other genders are often considered “problematic”. Andrea Chang provides a similar critique of the slow fashion movement in her article “The Impact of Fast Fashion on Women”. Chang argues that the slow fashion and ethical fashion movements place too much responsibility on the consumers of fast fashion clothing, most of whom are women, to influence the industry through their consumption.# ISO certification in India
Chang suggests that because most consumers are limited in their ability to choose where and how they purchase clothing, largely due to financial factors, anti-fast fashion activists should target lawmakers, manufacturers, and investors with a stake in the fast fashion industry rather than create an alternative industry that is only accessible to some.# ISO certification in India
