Fast Fashion

For this week’s blog post, I have decided to talk about fast fashion. There is always a debate online on TikTok or Instagram about how the clothes we order off. Shein is made by children from other countries like China or Europe. However, how many people do you actually hear say they’re not going to order off of Shein anymore for this reason? I feel fast fashion is just mostly based off the most popular trends at that time, like what’s in one week could be out in the next week because one online site might have cheaper prices than the next one, and then once they notice all these people are starting to order more stuff from them because their prices are cheaper. They start to slowly rise. Their price is more while everyone’s still interested in their website. Social media encourages fast fashion so much because when all these influencers are doing their get-ready-with-me or their haul videos, most of the time they’re ordering off these fast fashion sites to save themselves money. I’ve noticed that these trends often start debates because they promote self-expression in a harmless way, but they’re also promoting overconsumption. Realistically, we do not need to order $400 worth of clothes for every haul video. Ultimately, we the buyers find it difficult to avoid fast fashion, even when we are aware of the negative effects, because it sits at a point of affordability, trend culture, and ethical impact. Social media, particularly the culture of influencers and haul videos, contributes considerably to the normalization of excessive consumption by presenting frequent buying as a form of enjoyment and self-expression. Fast fashion will continue to exist despite numerous arguments about its negative effects until platforms and customers start to place a comparable importance on sustainability and fair manufacturing as they do on low costs and viral trends.