Feedback Here

fbook  tweeter  linkin YouTube
Global contents also translated in Chinese

Looking beyond ethics of fast fashion, focus on garment workers

"Campaigns against “fast fashion” scapegoat working-class consumers while doing little to improve the conditions of garment workers. “The high cost of cheap fashion” has alerted customers to the debasing labor conditions and environmental practices that are involved in the production of cheap trendy clothes, or so-called ‘Fast Fashion’. Having realized its impact, many are opting not to buy/shop at fast-fashion retailers, and the short cut to fashion trends."

 

 

Looking beyond ethics of fast fashion focus on garment workers

 

Campaigns against “fast fashion” scapegoat working-class consumers while doing little to improve the conditions of garment workers. “The high cost of cheap fashion” has alerted customers to the debasing labor conditions and environmental practices that are involved in the production of cheap trendy clothes, or so-called ‘Fast Fashion’. Having realized its impact, many are opting not to buy/shop at fast-fashion retailers, and the short cut to fashion trends.

It’s hard for most people to sound such outlandish excess; it’s become hard for the excessive spender to feel the full glory of her excess when the status barometer is forever on the rise. Fast fashion looks more like robbing workers of a living wage and safe working conditions, and robbing legitimate designers of their creative property. Opposing fast fashion is intuitively appealing. It often springs from a genuine desire to make the world a better place, to limit exploitation, and foster creativity.

Looking beyond ethics of fast fashion focus on garment

 

Anti–fast fashion stances give rise to racist, class-biased, and historical myths about garment workers. To decry  this low-level, already stigmatized market is to either misunderstand or intentionally ignore the structural relationships and realities of the larger fashion system. Campaigns urge consumers to avoid budget retailers to show that they stand against the exploitation of fashion workers and intellectual property theft.

Fast fashion is a market within a massive apparel and commercial industry. Its designs generally don’t capture headlines or public attention. The central myth of anti-fast fashion discourse is that low prices signify low standards of production (and a lower-quality product), while high prices indicate high standards of production (and a high-quality product).

At present many expensive fashions are associated with higher-status consumers whose tastes are morally superior, ethically discriminating, and knowledgeable about the “high costs of cheap fashion”.

However it isn’t just fast fashion brands that copy other designers or use sweatshop labor. These practices exist across the industry, from budget to luxury fashion. It’s not uncommon to find workers in the same factory producing both fast fashion and luxury fashion garments. Purchasing more expensive clothes based on some misguided code of ethics does nothing to reduce global capitalism’s racially gendered divisions of labor, opportunities, and rewards.

 
LATEST TOP NEWS
 


 
MOST POPULAR NEWS
VF Logo