November does not only bring colder weather and darker days. It also brings the worst day of the year: Black Friday. This year, the fast fashion giant PrettyLittleThing managed to show us everything that is wrong with the fashion industry with a 100% off sale. Yes, they gave away clothes. For free. I am fuming with anger and here is why you should be too.
Black Friday began in the US in 1952, but the success of Black Friday soon spread outside of the US and it is becoming increasingly popular, with brands offering more and more outrageous deals to top the bargains of yesteryear (Barber 2021:152). Black Friday generates overproduction and overconsumption. In other words, people are buying stuff that they do not need from companies that make too much stuff.
Case in point is the 100% off sale by UK based fast fashion Boohoo Group retailer PrettyLittleThing, founded in 2012 by Umar and Adam Kamani - and other companies that are dumping overproduced clothing on uninformed consumers. Do not think of these sales as conglomerates getting into the holiday spirit and giving back to their customers! This is nothing but a sneaky way to cover their losses by mining website-visitors’ data, marking the overproduction off as a marketing expense and covering the last tiny bit of loss from shipping fees. If you bought anything from one of these sales and do not feel even slightly ripped off, then let me try to make you see the bigger picture.
Screenshot from PrettyLittleThing Instagram post, on 29th November
Global Crisis
So, ever heard of the global environmental crisis? These sales are at the core of it. Supporters might tell you that giving out clothes for free is better than sending them to landfills. But as long as these companies find ways of disposing of overproduced stock, they will continue to overproduce, leaving you with the burden of disposing of the unwanted clothes. The fact is that a company giving away their products for free or selling them at a retail price of 80% off or for 1£, as with Boohoo’s 1£ Party, while still making huge profits should raise red flags. Something within that supply chain is being overused, and it is not only the farmland and the environment - it is also the farmers and sweatshop workers making these clothes. It is people, real human beings, being enslaved to make thousands of free crop tops, ripped jeans, and PU sandals (Lindsay, 2021) for you to wear once or twice and then throw out.
Let’s start off with the environmental degradation. Fast fashion impacts farmland, water supplies, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions. Fast fashion products are treated with pesticides, are fossil-fuel based (in the polyester and other oil-based materials), and not properly legislated (read the Fossil Fashion reports from Changing Markets Foundation for profoundly worrying facts, https://changingmarkets.org/portfolio/fossil-fashion/. It will make you check washtags, not for instructions, but for materials used.)
In line with this mentioning of fast fashion’s role in earth’s demise is the final destination of the 1 £ crop tops or free pair of ripped jeans. If you think you can just donate these unsustainable garments after you do not need them anymore, think again: only 10% of clothes that are donated to thrift stores actually get sold (Morgan, 2020). 73% of clothing is landfilled or incinerated. Less than 1% of clothes are recycled to make new clothes (Changing Markets, 2021). The average consumer buys 60% more clothes compared to 15 years ago and disposes of the lowest priced garments after just 7-8 wears (Changing Markets, 2021). The
Picture from Metro, 26th November problem is not just the material - it is the sheer amount of it.
Essentially, PrettyLittleThing is giving away clothes for free and shoving their responsibility on to the consumers, thus never having to take responsibility for polluting the planet and making the consumers pay that price in other ways.
”Fast Fashion” Exhibit, Berlin, 2020, photo by K.Sark
Modern Slaves And Human Capital
Aside from the planet, remember the part about the people? Remember the enslaved sweatshop workers and the scammed farmers that the fashion industry depends on, at whose expense and health, the record-breaking profits in the Global North are even made possible? The garment workers from the factories that these fast fashion brands use are pressed beyond limits, and the only way to rightfully describe their work is modern slavery. Garment factories are the only jobs available and the wages are nothing but a tool for factories to gain leverage over the workers. Whenever the workers are protesting against low wages and the inhumane working conditions, the companies put pressure on the factory owners to suppress them even more, by busting unions, threatening to cut wages completely, or through sheer intimidation, harassment, and discrimination, and violence. Modern slaves through monetary chains continues to operate on the racist and colonial ideology that the human rights and dignity of a worker of colour in the Global South is worth less than the comforts and economic security of consumers in the Global North. (Morgan, 2021)
”Fast Fashion” Exhibit, Berlin, 2020 photo by K.Sark
Textile farmers are not any better off than the garment workers. The companies that make the GM (Genetically Modified) cotton seeds are the same companies that make the fertilizer and the chemicals. They are also the same companies that make the medicine for the diseases caused by it. Every time a farmer gets side effects from using the chemicals, these companies make more profit. Adding to this scheme is the companies’ hidden ownership of the farm. Because they own the seed by patent, they use this as leverage over the farmers whenever they can not deliver increasing orders. They eventually own the full grown plants and can legally take over the farms as payment of debts. And what is the eventual cost of doing business like this? Lives. Human lives. Literally. There have been more than 250.000 recorded farmer suicides in India throughout the last 16 years. It is the largest recorded wave of suicides in history. That is how much it costs for you to get your free jeans. Human capital. (Morgan, 2021)
I hope this research makes you understand your own responsibility as a consumer in the current unsustainable fashion system, and reconsider some of the purchases you made this month. Emotion is a driving factor for change and change is desperately needed. International legislation is key and so are new consumer mindsets. Reconsider your habits and shop responsibly because the price of environmental degradation and human lives is happening on your watch, at your expense!
Don’t let these companies keep getting away with it. Cancel fast fashion.
References
Morgan, A. (Director). (2021). The True Cost [Motion Picture]
Lindsay, J. (2021, November 26). Is PrettyLittleThing's up to 100% off' Black Friday offer worth shopping. Retrieved November 2021, from Metro: https://metro.co.uk/2021/11/26/is-prettylittlethings-up-to-100-off-black-friday-offer-worth-shopping-15668657/
Changing Markets Foundation. (2021). Fossil Fashion: The hidden reliance of fast fashion on fossil fuels.
Cumbers, J. (08. December 2020). Building Customer Awareness for the Next Biotech Startup: Lessons from Brands & Biology. Hentet November 2021 fra Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johncumbers/2020/12/08/building-customer-awareness-for-the-next-biotech-startup-lessons-from-brands--biology/?sh=5c31bb4343b5
Aja Barber, Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism Climate Change, and Consumerism. New York: Balance, 2021.
Additional Research
Lanfranchi, M., & Cline, E. L. (2021). Cotton: A Case Study in Misinformation; A Report on Building Critical Data Consumption in Fashion. Transformers Foundation.
Cao, H. (2020). Fibers and Materials: What is Fashion Made of?. In S.B. Marcketti & E.E. Karpova (Eds.). The Dangers of Fashion: Towards Ethical and Sustainable Solutions (pp. 53–70). London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Retrieved November 16 2021, from http://dx.doi.org.proxy1-bib.sdu.dk:2048/10.5040/9781350052017.ch-004
Hiller Connell, K.Y., & LeHew, M.L. (2020). Fashion: An Unrecognized Contributor to Climate Change. In S.B. Marcketti & E.E. Karpova (Eds.). The Dangers of Fashion: Towards Ethical and Sustainable Solutions (pp. 71–86). London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Retrieved November 16 2021, from http://dx.doi.org.proxy1-bib.sdu.dk:2048/10.5040/9781350052017.ch-005
Quinn, B. (2010). Intelligent Textiles: The Future of Fashion. In J.B. Eicher & P.G. Tortora (Eds.). Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion: Global Perspectives (pp. 267–275). Oxford: Berg. Retrieved November 16 2021, from http://dx.doi.org.proxy1-bib.sdu.dk:2048/10.2752/BEWDF/EDch10037
Karpova, E.E., & Hawley, J.M. (2020). Disposing Fashion: . . . To the Good. In S.B. Marcketti & E.E. Karpova (Eds.). The Dangers of Fashion: Towards Ethical and Sustainable Solutions(pp. 223–240). London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Retrieved November 16 2021, from http://dx.doi.org.proxy1-bib.sdu.dk:2048/10.5040/9781350052017.ch-014