Today, Explained - The high cost of cheap clothes

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Fast fashion took over the apparel industry, but consumers are tiring of its poor labor and environmental standards. Vox’s Terry Nguyen explains. Today’s show was produced by Amina Al-Sadi, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Haleema Shah. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Halima Shah. Before COVID-19 hit our bodies and supply chains, this was the best time of year to go shopping. When I was a teenager, I would wait till early January to get the cheapest deals and fill my closet with clothes that had been marked down after Black Friday and Christmas. I would go to the mall and find myself

a cheap version of Nicole Richie's now-chuggy skinny jeans. That's hot. But you don't really have to wait for doorbuster season or stock the clearance aisle like that anymore. You can buy current celebrity-inspired clothes that are really cheap any time of year. Because somewhere on TikTok, someone is trying to sell you a knockoff version of a catsuit that Cardi B wore a few weeks ago. Good job! And there's a word for this now ubiquitous fashion phenomenon. I feel like so many customers and consumers

have become aware of the word, which is fast fashion. Terri Nguyen is a reporter for The Goods by Vox. So when I talk about fast fashion, I also want to be mindful that I'm including like kind of the systems that enable it. But basically fast fashion is any kind of like cheap disposable kind of clothing that's made quite indiscriminately

without, you know, consideration for environmental and labor conditions. And these articles of clothing, these garments are usually mass produced. How can you tell if something is fast fashion? Usually price is a pretty good indicator of how an article of clothing is made or how brands produce their clothes. But I think it's important to consider that the systems that enable fast fashion, the outsourcing of this labor, the rapid speed of manufacturing and production, are no longer just exclusive to these brands, the Zaras, the H&Ms, or the Forever 21s of the world. So where did fast fashion come from?

Around the 90s, during the time where young millennials and older members of Generation Z grew up, during that time was when fast fashion really took off. And I think the company that people associate with it the most, Zara, this Spanish apparel retailer, they're credited for having the first successful fast fashion business model. I think for the past 20 years, we've gotten really used to seasonless clothing, at least for retailers that are not luxury fashion brands. Zara's founder decided to abandon the concept of producing, you know, fashion seasons for new styles that came in every couple of weeks.

And now, kind of as we've kind of reached this peak of fashion production, new styles are being released in stores and on websites pretty much every day. So if you go to an H&M store today and come back two days later, you will always find something new. Hundreds, if not thousands of styles are being released into this fast fashion environment. Okay, jackets are my favorite thing to wear in the winter just because they're cute. I could dress them up and my favorite type of wear is cute comfy. Any style you want is so accessible. So this one and this one and this one this one it cropped one and lastly this one it looks like the first one I showed just this one's a little shorter in length. Whether you're going in a store or you're going basically on the internet to search for a very specific kind of style. So I did it I got

on that Shein website S-H-I-E-N-E-I-N, I don't know, and I wanted to be like everybody else, so I ordered a bunch of stuff. That's just really fascinating to me because I think department stores and fashion designers used to dictate what women could wear, what was in for a season, what was in for a year. And now while there are, you know, trends that say that skinny jeans are out or flare jeans are in, you can technically still find these kinds of garments. It's not like no one is producing skinny jeans anymore. Like if you go on a website, these probably still have that style. They're just producing a lot less of it. We're talking a lot about women's clothing here, but does this also apply to men's fashion or gender-neutral clothing or plus-size clothing? Yeah, this applies to virtually every shopper just because kind of the system of fast fashion

has become so prevalent in all kinds of modern retailers. And which brands we talk about when we think about fast fashion has also changed. So about 10 years ago, you know, when we were growing up, Zara, H&M, and Forever 21 would have been considered these Goliaths, the most identifiable brands. But they're now kind of fading in terms of cultural relevance over the past even five years to these ultra-fast fashion brands, some of which don't even have physical storefronts. They operate solely online and market their goods through social media. And these stores have names like, you know, ASOS, Missguided, Fashion Nova, Shein, Boohoo. So it's really the fast fashion ecosystem has really proliferated. Let's talk about how much these clothes cost, because you could probably buy a really fancy

latte for about the same price as a fast fashion shirt. Yeah, very, very low. I came across this article from the New York Times in 2008, kind of around the time of the Great Recession. And it says that as consumers adjust to soaring prices for gasoline, food, education, and medical care, just about the only thing that seems a bargain today is clothes or mainstream clothes. And while the price of luxury clothes has gone up, it's become easier and easier never to find, you know, a t-shirt or a pair of pants for just under like $20. How did clothes like this become almost standard? Is it because some of these companies like ASOS, H&M, Shein, those were kind of made for the digital revolution?

Partly. I think from a business perspective, it made a lot of sense for all kinds of retailers to shift to this rapid production pace because it significantly increases profit margins. It also kind of trains customers even before the social media era to keep coming back to stores because there is always something know, always something new. Like, why would a customer want to spend $100 or $200 on one item when they can get about, you know, four items for the same price? You know, it's tempting to say that social media is directly correlated with fast fashion's rise. I think it makes more sense to say that it contributed to how shoppers conceive of and discover fashion. A regular person, you know, might suddenly feel self-conscious posting an outfit twice on their

feed, or they feel like they don't have nice enough clothes to show off. So I definitely think that social media has contributed to that self-awareness, that desire to present yourself or perform for the internet in a more specific way through your clothes. Yeah, I can see fast fashion making it very easy to have a different OOTD every day. Outfit of the day for brunch, tank top is Zara. Leather pants are Missguided. This like shacket jacket flannel thing is from Zara also. Then my Amazon crossbody, Shein combat boots, stock things. Yeah, it's interesting because it's become so much easier for fast fashion brands also to crib off these high fashion looks from popular celebrities and market these clothes as an instant trend.

And I think TikTok especially is notorious for bringing to light these underground aesthetics or internet trends like cottagecore or dark academia. Then I got this collared white shirt, this dark gray jumper and this pleated beige skirt together. And then I tried to put on some knee highs, it did not work. Retailers can produce clothing that fits that aesthetic and directly target to a young audience. So a celebrity's dress in an Instagram post or on the runway might inspire a knockoff version on Shein. But does the relationship work in reverse also?

Does fast fashion have the power to influence high-end designers and runway fashion? Yeah, so trends are just really fleeting in this day and age. And they're no longer as reliant on runway, but they're predicated more often on social media virality. So we are seeing kind of like a symbiotic relationship happening with whatever is popular on TikTok and luxury brands also wanting to cash in or to get in on that hype. We're also seeing kind of mid-luxury brands like Madewell, Aritzia, Reformation, also relying on fast fashion production systems and trends to keep up. I think something really interesting that I realized a couple of weeks ago when I was shopping on Sandro, it's this Parisian brand. On its site, it admitted to fusing manufacturing

aspects of fast fashion with luxury craftsmanship so that it can appease modern consumers. And I thought that explanation was so fascinating. It seems like luxury brands also have to think in terms of fast fashion so they can keep pace and stay relevant in such a rapidly changing environment. Are you saying Madewell and luxury brands like Reformation are fast fashion? I would say that they rely on fast fashion systems. I wouldn't say they're, you know, ultra fast fashion brands. But I do think there's a lot of greenwashing involved in how they market themselves. I wouldn't say they're entirely like ethically or sustainably made at all. Shit. Sorry. I really thought I was doing well.

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Terry, we've established that fast fashion is cheap, plentiful, and more prevalent than people might realize. What is the broader cost of this industry? Yeah, it's not just cheap clothing, I think I want to emphasize. It's also just the sheer amount of clothing that the fashion industry is producing year over year. Last year, I interviewed Aja Barber, a writer and activist who published this book called Consumed. And in it, she wrote this really shocking statistic that the industry produces 14 times as many clothes each year as there are humans on the planet. And that number has stuck with me since. But, you know, with the human cost, there are workers that are being underpaid or not being paid what we consider to be a living wage in the West.

Some might operate under poor working conditions and workers might develop long-term health conditions due to exposure with chemicals and dyes. We used to drink water from this river and cook food with it. Now we can't even wash our hands here. We get rashes in our feet if we stand in these paddy fields. We can't eat fish from these waters. Don't you see there are no more fishermen around? You know, we've heard about a factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed over a thousand people,

and most of these were garment workers. If this all looks tragically familiar, it is. Bangladesh has one of the largest garment industries in the world, and it's notorious. Last fall, there was a deadly fire at a factory that produced clothes for Disney, Walmart, and Sears. We don't often talk about the day-to-day exposure to these chemicals and the type of backbreaking labor that they experience to produce clothes mainly for the West. This is Accra's nearest official rubbish dump. It's now closed.

It can no longer cope with the around 50 tons of clothing waste a day. Now places like this, informal dumps are multiplying. It's become basically a dumping ground for billions of, you know, quote-unquote donated garments a year coming from North America, Europe, Australia. Terry, I have a confession. About four years ago, I started divesting from fast fashion. At least I thought I was until you told me that made well, it could still be considered fast fashion. But before I got to that point, I bought a lot of clothes from H&M and ASOS, like a lot of clothes. Why did it feel so easy for consumers to turn a blind eye to the costs of this industry?

I think, first of all, the phrase fast fashion has been around for so long. It also seems like the poor labor practices are so prevalent, like across the board. And at a certain point, I think it's easy for consumers to be desensitized to kind of the burden that they face to make good, sustainable choices. And it's really hard to avoid. Like, I'm sorry for bursting your bubble, but, you know, unless you're shopping secondhand or buying from small local handmade retailers, a lot of these brands have just implemented these manufacturing systems and quotas into their business model. I also think so many modern day consumers are just so divorced from the reality of the labor that's poured into their clothes. I think there

was once a time when people knew someone who was in the garment industry, so people were more active in mending their clothes, in repairing, in tailoring their clothes, and now that basically is no longer encouraged. The system of fast fashion has also warped how customers perceive the price. All of a sudden, it just doesn't make sense anymore to spend money on well-crafted clothes or even to tailor something. I recently watched a documentary about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. On March 25, 1911, all these forces converged in an garment workers in Bangladesh and killing thousands of people, we had these issues at home. It was largely poor immigrant women who died in

the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Is this kind of a constant problem for the fashion and apparel industry that's just never really been solved? Yeah, the fashion and apparel industry has always operated on the labor of, you know, working class men and women, immigrants, you know, people of color. It's just simply become outsourced and removed from our day-to-day realities. I think like New York and Los Angeles, for example, used to be like garment manufacturing capitals in United States. I think it's just overwhelmingly moved overseas. And so we don't think or engage with that. And the realities of people not making, you know, a living wage for producing clothes, it's just something we don't really think about often, both politically and like socially. Yeah. And we've talked a lot

about, you know, young people being the primary consumers of fast fashion. But we also know that young people, especially Gen Z, have sustainability and the environment at the top of their political priorities. As consciousness about these issues grows, are we seeing consumers push fast fashion to do better? I definitely think there is an emphasis from consumers that fast fashion companies should do better. Is this generation? We wear it. Is this generation? It's evident through the number of public relations campaigns

and kind of greenwashing efforts. Repeat after me. Reuse, repair, recycle. Done by companies to promote their sustainability efforts. We wear it. We wear it. We wear it. We wear it. We wear it. We wear it. to promote their sustainability efforts. But still, I think there's a lot of murkiness there. There's a lot of PR talk. And even for a very conscious consumer like yourself, you said you gave up fast fashion.

I tried. You know, traditional fast fashion brands. There's still just this underbelly of misinformation or hidden information that unless you're really in the weeds about it, it's really easy to think that, you know, you're doing enough and you're making ethical decisions. So what do we do, Terry? How do you know if a brand is the real deal? The first thing you can do is to shop from brands or stores that are clear about their supply chain and really investigate the definition of sustainable. I always try to be critical when I see that label, when brands present it to me, especially when they're giving me a new item. Buying vintage, buying used or secondhand goods is always the most sustainable thing you can do or just not buy at all.

And I think that's a really hard solution when you present it to consumers who are rightfully so very tired of bearing the burden of making sure they're making right decisions. I guess buying secondhand could be pretty economical, but it seems like if you want new clothes and just can't afford some of the sustainable but more expensive clothes, fast fashion might be your best option. Right. I think that's an argument that I've heard a lot, especially reporting on fast fashion. And

again, to mention Adria Barber, I spoke with her about this and she said that low-income people are not keeping these multi-billion dollar fast fashion companies afloat. It's an accumulation of income from middle-class, upper middle-class people, wealthy people as well, who are keeping the fashion industry profitable. If you're buying, you know, five items of clothing from Zara a year and you're wearing the shirts or the pants until they rip, then what you're doing is more sustainable than someone who's changing out their closets every couple of months. And clothes overall have gotten so affordable over the past, you know, 10, 20 years that I don't think it's right to, you know, make this

an argument about, you know, low-income shoppers because low-income shoppers, the amount of money they provide or just barely create a dent in the profits of these massive corporations. So if you're a listener who's like, okay, today explained, you've made me feel sufficiently guilty about the clothes I buy. How much impact can an individual consumer changing their ways have on the fast fashion industry and on the environment? Yeah, it's a tricky question because it boils down to individual versus corporate responsibility. And it's frustrating because individuals, no matter how much we try, we just know carbon footprint wise that unless, you know, H&M like does their supply chain differently or produces much less like not much is going to

change but i also do think that personal choices carry some weight and although it's hard to quantify the environmental impact of individual lifestyles you can be vocal about it and start discussions start critical discussions about fashion that might lead to, you know, policy changes. And just, you know, spreading awareness, like telling your friends that this brand that they're shopping from might not be the best brand for the environment or that this brand is lying to you about how they're producing their goods is a good way to just, you know, help people just become smarter, sharper consumers. Terry Nguyen covers consumer and internet trends for the goods at Vox.

You can head over to Vox.com to see all her writing on fast fashion. Today's show was produced by our supervising producer, Amina Alsadi. The rest of the Today Explained team includes producers Miles Bryan, Victoria Chamberlain, Hadi Mawaddi, and Will Reed. Laura Bullard fact-checks the show,

Matt Collette edits it, and Afim Shapiro is our engineer. We use music from Breakmaster Cylinder and sometimes Noam Hassenfeld. Liz Kelly Nelson is the vice president of Vox Audio, and Jillian Weinberger is her deputy. I'm Halima Shah, and Sean Ramos-Furham will be back with us next week. It's Today Explained. Thanks for listening. Thank you.