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- DictionaryFast fash·ion
noun
- 1. inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends: "the high-street leader when it comes to fast fashion"
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Apr 24, 2024 · What is fast fashion? There isn’t a set price, product offering, or even seasonal cadence that makes a fast fashion brand. Rather, it’s a way of manufacturing, marketing, and selling...
- Alyssa Hardy
Learn the meaning of fast fashion, an approach to clothing design and marketing that emphasizes speed and low cost. See examples, word history, related articles and entries, and how to cite this source.
Nov 10, 2021 · Fast fashion is a term for cheap and low quality clothing that are rapidly produced and discarded to meet new trends. Learn how fast fashion harms the environment and what you can do to avoid it.
- Olivia Lai
Dec 7, 2023 · Fast fashion is a business model that produces and sells cheap, trendy clothing quickly and frequently. It has environmental and social impacts, such as waste, emissions, and worker exploitation. Learn how fast fashion companies evolve, address sustainability, and face regulation.
- Overview
- History of fast fashion
- Environmental impacts
- Exploitation of workers
- Finding solutions
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fast fashion, a term describing the rapid production of inexpensive, low-quality clothing that often mimics popular styles of fashion labels, big-name brands, and independent designers. By endlessly offering new trends at cheap prices, fast fashion brands such as Shein, Zara, and H&M encourage consumers to continually buy more clothing. Consequentl...
The fast fashion model emerged in the 1970s when retailers began exporting production to countries, particularly in Asia, where they could pay workers lower wages than in Western countries. It took hold in the 1990s as companies accelerated output to keep up with trends. Previously, new clothing collections could be expected four times a year, but ...
Fast fashion has significant environmental impacts both during and after production. The fashion industry as a whole is responsible for 10 percent of carbon emissions, uses large quantities of water, and employs dyes and chemicals that pollute the environment. It also produces a lot of textile waste. Fast fashion in particular, with its low prices ...
In addition to its environmental impacts, fast fashion tends to exploit the workers responsible for its production. Most clothing production is done in the Global South, including postcolonial countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, where laborers have few protections against long hours and unfair wages. Many work 16 hours every day, make ver...
The consumer can play a pivotal role in mitigating the effects of fast fashion by practicing so-called “slow fashion,” which involves purchasing fewer and higher-quality pieces of clothing. Although more expensive, such clothing can last longer. Once a user is done with a garment, he or she can donate it instead of discarding in order to help divert textiles from landfills. Although some donated clothing goes directly to landfills, a lot of the items that are not resold at donation stores are sent to textile recycling centers, where they are processed into filling for furniture or insulation for buildings. The overproduction and poor quality of fast fashion, however, has increasingly challenged donation centers and secondhand clothing shops that struggle to keep up with the volume of donations and find it difficult to sell inferior products.
Retailers have taken steps toward moderating the damage caused by fast fashion. Some brands now offer sustainable collections, but, because there is no oversight or consensus about what constitutes sustainability, the legitimacy of claims that these items are better for the environment is up for debate. Moreover, many of these measures fail to take into account the harsh working conditions of manufacturers. In addition, retailers, such as H&M, have begun accepting gently used clothing in exchange for store vouchers. These items are then either sold secondhand, reused for other clothing products, or shredded and recycled for insulation and furniture padding.
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Fast fashion is the rapid production of cheap, low-quality clothing that imitates popular styles. Learn about its origins, environmental and social consequences, and how to practice slow fashion.
Nov 24, 2023 · Fast fashion is a business model that focuses on the production of garments in bulk, and as quickly as possible, in response to current trends, according to Dr. Preeti Arya, an...
Fast fashion is the business model of replicating recent catwalk trends and high-fashion designs, mass-producing them at a low cost, and bringing them to retail quickly while demand is at its highest. The term fast fashion is also used generically to describe the products of this business model, particularly clothing and footwear.
