Why fast fashion is slow death for the planet | Fashion. Every morning when I wake up I am confronted by my fashion history. Mistakes, corrections, good buys, bad buys, comfort buys, drunk buys: they refuse to go away. This is because my wardrobe is opposite my bed, and the door, like a broken zipper, will no longer pull across to hide the tale of excess. In the cold light of day many of the micro trends I've "invested in" – T-shirts with chains, a one-shouldered jumpsuit, and other designer lookalike items – merge to form a type of sartorial wasteland.
My collection is testament to the extraordinary way we now consume clothes. And I don't have to come around to your house and have a look to make a good guess at what you've got in your cupboards, because over the past decade and a half not only have we bought more at increasing speed, but our tastes have become increasingly homogenised. You now demand roughly four times the number of clothes you would have in 1980.
Zara's policy was a game-changer. So how does Big Fashion keep costs so low? Asos' new boss Nick Beighton sticks by strategy of winning over young shoppers. 5 New Solutions For The Fashion Industry's Sustainability Problem | Co.Exist | ideas + impact. It's the holy grail for the fashion industry: Can manufacturers seamlessly close the loop on fabric, so an old T-shirt or dress headed for the landfill can be turned into something new? The world now buys more clothing than ever before in history; the average American throws out 68 garments in a single year. A new €1 million competition asked for new ideas to help the industry become more circular.
"Fashionista or not, clothes are a necessity, and one of the biggest challenges facing today's fashion industry is how to create fashion for a growing world population while protecting our planet," says Erik Bang, project manager for the Global Change Award, sponsored by H&M Conscious Foundation, the nonprofit created by the Swedish fast fashion giant. Waste—and the unsustainability of the supply chain—is a problem endemic to the entire apparel industry, but especially interesting in the context of fast fashion.
Here are the five finalists in the competition, which is now open for public vote. Opinion: Consumers have transformed the catwalk into a real-time runway | Opinion | Retail Week. Zara Is the Latest Fast Fashion Retailer to Launch an Eco-Friendly Line. Zara’s owner Amancio Ortega is the second richest man in the world, according to Forbes, with a $67 billion dollar net worth. And someone who’s made such a killing off a fast fashion clothing brand certainly knows that his wealth doesn’t come without a cost to the environment. Next to oil, the fast fashion industry has been noted as the second most polluting industry in the world, and with this information, it’s up to leaders in the business to do something about it. Luckily, Zara is following the lead of other fast fashion retailers like H&M, launching the Join Life collection, an eco-friendly range of clothing crafted from materials like Tencel, recycled wool, and organic cotton.
“The collection embraces a woman who looks into a more sustainable future,” Zara explained in a post to Instagram. Zara has rolled out environmentally friendly initiatives before. ASOS Releases Statement Addressing Working Condition Allegations | British Vogue. FOLLOWING a spate of allegations regarding the working conditions in its Barnsley warehouse, ASOS has issued a six-page statement refuting the recurring accusations in detail. “I’m disappointed that inaccurate and misleading things have been said about how we manage our warehouse at Barnsley in Yorkshire," CEO Nick Beighton wrote in the document published on the brand's website.
"I take huge exception to the idea that we are secretive and exploit our people. We have nothing to hide and much to be proud of. " "We don’t pretend to be perfect and we are learning all the time," he continued, highlighting some recent changes that have been made to the practices in the South Yorkshire warehouse following discussions with its staff-elected Employee Forum. These include reducing the probation period for employees and an upgraded time-tracking program to more accurately record lateness, ensuring that "employees are paid for every single minute they are working". ASOS Responds To Allegations. Social Media, Fast Fashion, and the Supply Chain. Keeping up with the latest trends is essential to success in the clothing industry. To beat your competitors, you'll need to learn how to use social media, fast fashion, and the supply chain to your advantage. Research from the Pew Internet Project shows 74 percent of Internet users also use social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Perhaps even more importantly, 89 percent of people between 18 and 29 years old use social media. This creates multiple opportunities for companies to reach new customers. Personal reviews are effective because people trust their friends more than ads. Historically, the apparel industry has lagged behind in market-research-led innovations. You may notice that social media has much in common with fast fashion. Fast fashion thrives because it makes affordable, attractive clothing that keeps pace with the market's whims. Leading manufacturers leverage that short lead time as a unique selling point. Social media is behind the new fast fashion revolution. New York: New York Fashion Week this season has put "click and buy" on the map, revolutionizing the antiquated global fashion calendar with clothes that now can be ordered straight from the catwalk.
For more than 100 years, the world of high fashion has been divided up into four seasons -- spring/summer, autumn/winter. Designers debut their collections at fashion week, fashion magazines write them up and go to print a few months before the clothes are available to buy in boutiques -- six months after they first grace the runway. But gone are the days when only magazine editors, socialites and the in-crowd grace a fashion show. The rise of Instagram, Snapchat, live feeds and bloggers now zaps images from the catwalk across the Internet in real time. That means that high-end clients no longer want to burn thousands of dollars on an outfit that has been plastered all over the Internet for six months.
She's bored, she wants something new. Difficult challenge. Fashion Bloggers, the Perfect Example of Influencer Marketing Potential - Thismoment Content Marketing Blog. One lazy Sunday afternoon, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and realized that the majority of the content I “follow” is fashion-related. And, the producers of that content aren’t my friends or people I know, but rather famous fashion bloggers. I found myself caught in a trap of never-ending engaging fashion content, beauty tips and information on the latest trends. I started thinking about fashion bloggers, have they appeared in recent years or have they been here for a while? Some may say their popularity is a new fad that will diminish, is that true?
And more importantly, should brands think seriously about finding ways to work fashion bloggers into their content marketing and influencer strategies? I’m sure all marketers know the terms “opinion leaders,” “influencers” and know about “turning customers into brand advocates.” How influential are fashion bloggers? They create powerful content and brands are noticing.
How and why your customers engage with bloggers? Follow: Why You Should Mark Fashion Revolution Week By Making Your Own Clothes | Huff... Our attitude to clothes and fashion is frivolous - it’s estimated that the average British woman is hoarding £285 worth of clothes she will never wear. Fashion trends are moving ever faster and the rise of social media means we feel the need to keep up with the extensive wardrobes of celebrities, bloggers and peers whether we need it or not. But I think it’s about time we started to slow down. We need to start embracing slow fashion and become truly conscious consumers. Fashion Revolution is highlighting the importance of understanding where our clothes come from and most importantly being who made them. In their White Paper report they found that from 219 of the biggest retailers, only half knew the factories where their clothes are being made. Fashion Revolution emphasise that if the retailers have no idea who is making their products, how can they be looking out for their worker’s human rights?
Sewing your own clothes allows you to take back ownership of your wardrobe. Shift in Power: the Blogger and Vlogger Influence on the World of Fashion | Huffington Post. Zoella, Sprinkle of Glitter, Inthefrow, That Pommie Girl; these are all names that are currently having an impact on the world of fashion, and with hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of adoring fans it’s no wonder PR companies and brands have switched on to promoting their products through them. However, because of this, there has been a real shift in power when it comes to bloggers and vloggers and they are now celebrities in their own right with real influence over what people buy.
Zoella (Zoe Sugg) is the strongest example of this. With 3.77m followers on Twitter, 2,404,527 likes on Facebook and a subscription list consisting of 9,172,815 viewers on YouTube at the time of writing, she has a lot of credibility with a lot of people. The 25-year-old earns £20,000 a month from advertisers alone, who all want to feature their products alongside her beauty videos and lifestyle posts. There are a lot of hoops to jump through now when it comes to bloggers and advertising.
Who Are the Fast Fashion Leaders And Why Does It Matter? Recently Sourcing Journal quoted John Thornbeck, chairman of Chainge Capital, that Fast Fashion is the rapid translation of design trends into multi-channel volume. Fast Fashion may be the most important disrupter in the retail industry today. He also said that disruptive innovations, or product or services, that transform an existing market by introducing simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability, have the most positive impact on a company.
Zara, Inditex’s leading brand, has been a groundbreaker in bringing new fashions, new designs, and new ideas quickly to its stores. Zara’s relentless push of on-trend merchandise into the supply chain pipeline keeps its stores in stock on the latest fashions at saleable prices. Many new ideas from the fashion shows that just finished in New York, Paris and Milan will soon be on Zara’s racks. Mango is another successful Spanish fashion company that understands fast fashion pays off. The benefits are huge. How social media has changed the fashion industry - BBC Newsbeat. Fast fashion and social media have made fashion into entertainment, so clothing companies now need to act like media companies — Quartz.
When this race became a referendum on what it means to be an American, Hillary Clinton thought she had victory in her sights. But voters had a different idea than the wily veteran of over four decades of American political life. In far greater numbers than expected, voters rejected her in favor of Donald Trump, an erratic tycoon whose mean-spirited campaign attracted unprecedented criticism for a major-party nominee. In the end, Clinton’s fraught history—symbolized by the baroque investigations into her private e-mail server—overcame whatever advantages her centrist agenda, critiques of Trump’s outrages, and well-funded, professionally run campaign could give her. Soon after Pennsylvania’s 20 votes in the electoral college were called for Trump by the Associated Press early Wednesday (Nov. 9), it was clear the path for a Clinton victory had disappeared.
It does not seem likely he can deliver on those promises, but voters appear all too used to politicians who don’t keep their promises. Fast fashion is “drowning” the world. We need a Fashion Revolution! “Nothing to wear?” Well here’s something to think about: Every piece of clothing we buy has had an impact on our planet before we even bring it home. That’s before you step out of the door, walk down the street, and spot that attractive item you see hanging in the window. A shop at “International Jeans Wholesale City” in Xintang, the “denim capital of the world" in Guangdong province, China.
In Xintang, where the economy is centred around textile production, Greenpeace East Asia has found high levels of industrial pollution and has documented the effects on the community. First, there’s water consumption. 2 billion pairs of jeans are produced every year, and a typical pair takes 7,000 litres of water to produce. For a t-shirt, it takes 2,700 litres of water to make just one – that’s the amount of water an average person drinks over the course of 900 days! And what about the clothing that doesn’t make it to market? So how did we get this way? One obvious reason is fast fashion. Get crafty!