As someone whose fashion motto is "Never in style, never out of style," as someone who hangs onto clothing for years, I'm pretty much the antithesis of the fast fashion consumer. (Of course, it doesn't help that I'm old and certainly not the demographic that fast fashion targets.)
It's not that I don't buy clothing. I do. But it's focused in two categories.
Practical, day-today items that get replaced when they're worn out or too dreadful to wear out. The list here covers jeans, sweats, tee-shirts, turtlenecks, fleeces, socks, PJ's, undies and sneakers. (Et a few ceteras. It's not that I don't have a lot of clothing. I do. I wear fleeces all the time in winter, and I have three of the same sweater-fleece from LL Bean, in different colors.) It's just that when it comes to any of the above, my "style" - or lack there of - hasn't changed in decades. Most things in this category are from LL Bean or - for my fancy duds - are Eileen Fisher items found on a TJ Maxx "On the Runway" rack.)
I have a picture of myself and my sisters that was taken at a gathering at my sister Kath's shortly after my mother died, more than 20 years ago. We took the picture because, oddly, the three of us were all (completely coincidentally) wearing the same LL Bean capri pants and the same LL Bean checked shirts (different colors on the shirts: dark pink - T, light green - K, pale periwinkle - M).
I still have - and I still wear - both of these items.
Of course, I can get away with hanging onto clothing forever because, since I do have a lot of clothing, things don't wear out all that fast.
And when something doesn't wear out, I hang onto it. Unless I don't wear it for a year or two, in which case it gets donated. (If it's not good enough for donation, it goes into a city-sponsored recycle bin that takes clothing items and shoes.)
Cool, artsy sweaters, shirts, jackets, and dresses that I pay plenty for and keep forever. In 1989, my husband and I went to Berlin over New Year's to watch The Wall fall. We even helped chip away at it. For that trip, and to celebrate my 40th birthday, I'd gotten a pretty pricey and gorgeous black wool cardigan with a multi-colored pattern running through it. I've had elbow patches added, and each winter I find a few unraveling bits here and there, which I stitch up. But I'm determined that I'll still have that sweater when I'm ready for the grave.
And that's not the only ancient sweater I still have. There's at least one - a purple sweater with pink intarsia flowers on it - that predates the Berlin Wall sweater.
So, I'm not a fast fashion kind of gal, and never have been.
But I get that, if you're young and stylish, fast fashion has a great deal of appeal.
There is, however, a colossal downside to being a fast fashionista.
Channel 4 in the UK recently aired a documentary on Shein which, at £14.5bn in annual revenues, may be the biggest purveyor of cheap, fashion-forward clothing on the Internet.
Shein's model is to rip off designs they find trending, and quickly have knock-offs made in their sweatshops in China.
So there's two not so good things going on here: stealing the designs of others and - far worse - running gruesome sweatshops.
Like any savvy brand, Shein outsources manufacture so, when the sweatshop factories are exposed, they can tut-tut and say that they're shocked, just shocked, that subcontractors are violating Shein policies.
Going underground in two Shein supply factories, documentarians found that workers are putting in 18 hour work days and getting one day off a month. (Chinese law calls for a 40 hour work week, so do the math.)
How much are Shein workers paid?Shein markets aggressively - all online - and gives free merch to smaller TikTok and Instagram influencers in exchange for glorious reviews. Shein ads pop up everywhere, and given the number that I've seen fly by me, their algorithms aren't all that brilliant.
Workers are severely underpaid, with it being discovered that workers in one factory earned a base salary of 4,000 yuan (approximately £492) per month to make 500 pieces of clothing per day. If workers made a mistake on an item of clothing, they were penalised two-thirds of their daily wage. (Source: Glamour UK)
This is the Shein look. As you can see, this garment is not aimed at an LL Bean/Eileen Fisher shopper. And yet...
Of course, their strategy does work well enough to let Shein build a business worth billions. So what if their ad pops in front of the eyeballs of an occsional old lady non-customer?
Another downside of Shein's approach:
The brand has also been criticised for toxic chemicals, such as lead, PFAS and phthalates found in clothing, following an investigation conducted by Marketplace last year.
The company has also launched a resale program, which they announced on the same day of Channel 4's documentary release. This environmentally friendly model with the Shein Exchange encourages shoppers to buy and sell previously owned products.
In promoting the Exchange, Shein's asking it's consumers to be "mindful consumers."
Good luck with that.
But the truth is, we all need to be more mindful consumers. I, for one, must confess that I buy way too much stuff I don't need. (Seriously, three identical fleeces sweaters because I liked a new color each year?) Not to mention whether what I buy is all that ethically produced or environmentally sourced.
I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year, and thought I'd punch things up a bit with some new napkins. The ones I ordered from Wayfair are pretty, and they weren't all that cheap.
They're in the washing machine now. I'm hoping to wash away at least some of whatever ghastly chemical they were treated with. And I'm sure the workers in the factory in India where they were made isn't exactly a paragon of good labor practice. At minimum, they exposed their workers to whatever chemicals I'm trying to wash away.
Maybe I need to take a non-consumption vow. Which I will any day now. Maybe once I order a new vacuum cleaner...
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