For Dana Thomas, the future of fast fashion is bleak

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Fast fashion as an industry has been through a lot. Since the advent of Zara across Europe and the US, customers have grown accustomed to a way of shopping that is fast, convenient, and affordable.

With players like Shein and Temu coming into the fold, Dana Thomas, a journalist and author of the book Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion, says the industry has only gotten worse, both in terms of sustainability and labor standards since its heyday.

Despite regulations since the tragic Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh and the widening discourse around the environmental impact of the industry, Thomas believes the industry still has a long way to go.

According to recent estimates, the global fast fashion market is worth $103.2 billion in 2022 and it is only going to continue to grow. But at what cost?

In an exclusive chat with Retail Brew, Thomas discussed the failings of the industry and why she holds little hope for change in the future.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What was a major turning point in the recent history of fast fashion?

The greatest turning point, of course, is globalization, that these brands were able to expand globally in the age of globalization. Zara went from having two dozen stores in Spain, and one or a few across Europe to having hundreds and hundreds of stores worldwide. And the same with H&M, which has been around since the 1950s. In the age of globalization, it blew up into this huge global retailer with hundreds of stores worldwide. Globalization made their product more in demand, but also just easier to sell worldwide, because we were living in a global economy and people wanted to dress the same everywhere.

But the other thing in globalization that made these brands really boom is the offshoring movement that began in the 1990s and really amped up in the early 2000s where manufacturing was moving from France and Spain and Italy and the United States to places like Mexico following the enacting of NAFTA in the mid ’90s and and then to Central America. And in Europe, a lot of the manufacturing moved to the Far East, such as with the opening of China. I guess the turning point was China. China joined the WTO, therefore opening the doors for more manufacturing, and China becoming the world’s factory.

Have things gotten better since the Rana Plaza collapse?

No, it’s only gotten worse, because now we have ultra fast fashion with algorithms, AI with internet shopping, Shein, Temu, social media—all these things made it even more accessible and easier to sell, and you didn’t even have to invest in stores. Shein didn’t even exist, or if it did exist, it was just founded while I was starting my book or finishing my book.

By the time my book came out [in 2019], Shein was one of the No. 1 retailers of fast fashion just in a blink. That brand came from nowhere to rule the industry. It was wholly online, and they were selling even cheaper because they didn’t have to spend any money on brick-and-mortar stores. They didn’t have to spend money on marketing beyond social media, which was not terribly expensive. So they just really rolled it out in a huge way, and just dominated the business so fast and remade the game.

What do you think about the current set of regulations on fast fashion across Europe?

No other industry has so little major regulation. It’s shocking how little regulation is in the fashion industry. We don’t know how many things the fashion industry actually produces every year, how many items, because nobody has to actually report how much they produce.

There have been some improvements in labor standards, but not a lot. And the sweatshops still exist, the factories still burn down, and there’s still forced labor, and there’s still sexual harassment and abuse, and there’s still no pay for overtime. So it really hasn’t changed much. Okay, the Bangladesh workers got a raise, but it’s still half a living wage.

Do you have hope for change in the future?

I wanted to have hope. I wrote a book about hope, but the more I see how things are going—and plus, the whole fashion industry is kind of moved on from sustainability, that they saw it as a trend. It’s not a trend; it’s a way we need to all be living. But they’ve moved on. I just saw the fashion shows, and the one thing nobody was talking about was sustainability or the environment, except for Stella McCartney, and that’s about it. That was really depressing.

A healthy planet is not a trend. Paying people and treating people with dignity is not a trend.