I'm not blowing anyone's mind here
by saying that fast fashion is bad, right?
I'm pretty sure we've read all those articles
and watched all those videos before,
but then at the end of last year, I saw the viral TikToks
where six influencers were invited to go to Shein.
Instead of doing, I think, what Shein intended, it
really undermined the credibility
of the brand and made it look like they had something to hide.
But if so many of us understood
that this was a publicity stunt
how do we explain Shein turning a $30 billion annual profit?
Or how Temu was able to afford a Super Bowl ad?
“I’m shopping like a billionaire”
The rise and wild success
of these companies can only mean one thing.
We're still buying them. Why?
It actually is deeper than you think.
But we can do better.
There are two prices for the items we buy online:
the price you pay, and then the actual cost.
The actual cost consists of things
like material, labor,
and this.
Fashion is an industry
that generates a stunning amount of waste.
Recent estimates say that 92 million
tons of clothing end up in landfills each year.
The trouble with the actual cost
is that it's usually deliberately hidden from us.
A 2023 report from the Fashion Transparency Index
found that 45% of major fashion
brands haven't disclosed their supplier list,
and only 1% of major fashion brands disclose
the number of workers being paid a living wage.
Everything we wear was put together by human hands.
There are no clothes-sewing robots.
You cannot put a bunch of fabric into a machine,
press a button, and a shirt comes out the other end.
It was made by people.
It was made by humans sitting at a sewing machine
and putting it together.
Labor is supposed to be
the most expensive part of making something,
so that when you get it and it's $5,
the question should be, well, who ...
Who got shortchanged?
That lack of transparency is part of a system
that's rapidly developed and become normalized over the years.
Fast fashion brands like H&M and Zara
initially existed to bring you trends from runway
to rack, at affordable prices, fast.
But with the rise of e-commerce,
we have turbocharged what we mean by fast and cheap.
H&M and Zara are still problems.
They're not good guys here.
But companies like Shein and now Temu,
I believe, outpace them by orders of magnitude.
To give you a scale.
A company like Gap typically produces
around 12,000 styles annually.
The OG fast fashion brands like H&M
and Zara more than double that output.
And where is Shein on this scale?
Recent estimates put that number closer to
1.5 million new styles each year.
Styles. Not items.
So what can we do about it?
Fast fashion actively takes advantage of us in a few ways.
Let's talk about the misinformation machine.
Starting with this gear.
Companies have conditioned and confused us about
how much we should have in our closets
and how long it should stay there.
The amount of money we spend on clothing
has actually dropped quite a bit in the last decade,
and the quality has also dropped.
So not only are workers being exploited,
but the items we're buying are not lasting as long.
This sucks for everybody.
Now, it's hard to justify spending significantly
more when you're used to paying less.
But the truth is, those pricier items will last longer.
One way to go about breaking
this gear is to set strict limits on purchases.
Tell yourself okay, I'm only going to buy
two new items over the next three months.
What do I want them to be?
Does this sound impossible?
Let's look at why, by analyzing
these two other relentless gears.
This one is the consumption problem.
And that's why Temu’s tagline is “shop like a billionaire.”
We're buying more than ever.
In 2018, the average American was buying
68 new items of clothing each year,
and at that time, Shein was only valued at $2 billion.
Today, TikTok is a huge culprit for trying to convince us
that we just need more all the time.
I spent $900 on Shein.
So I kind of went crazy on Shein.
I went on Shein to buy a few things and ended up
buying 40 things.
That is a new phenomenon.
The notion of the hauler who's a regular,
everyday person, who's been watching influencers
and seeing what they buy, getting dozens of outfits
very cheaply, often, you know, for just a few dollars
with the intent
of not wearing them very long
with the intent of throwing them out.
Shein and other companies are paying influencers
to normalize buying in excess.
And what we have to remember
is that doesn't benefit the individual.
It only benefits the brand.
Why would anyone want to
to make it a goal to consume like a billionaire?
Like knowing how
it's not possible for someone to be an ethical billionaire.
Why would someone still aspire
to want to imitate that behavior?
The first step in shutting down
this year is blocking the haulers.
Curate your timeline and algorithm away
from these things that only make you want to buy.
The second step is recognizing that companies
like Shein don't care what you want to wear.
They make billions because you don't know what to wear.
You feel that there is something lacking in your wardrobe
if you don't have the latest trend?
The answer to that is to figure out what your style is
and then shop around your style.
And that way you will always have something
that you want to wear in your closet.
Impulse buys are a huge source of regret.
One study done in the UK found that 60% of consumers regretted
a clothing purchase in the past year.
We need to slow down.
Changing those two habits isn't easy,
but you can give yourself some grace and time
and when things get really difficult,
you can think about this final gear,
which is incredibly strong.
That total lack of transparency
being used to manipulate you.
We don't want to believe the choices we make are unethical.
But once you pull back that curtain,
you can stick by the conviction that the true cost
is not justifiable in any sense.
I don't fault people for not knowing.
I do fault people for knowing and then not caring.
Of course, it's not entirely on the consumer.
Legislatures in the US and Europe are trying to crack down
on some of these larger environmental issues
and labor practices.
In the meantime, you can take comfort in knowing
that our dollars do have power,
and we ultimately decide where they go.
We should think about clothing
the way people have done for millennia,
which is something to hold on to, something to treasure,
something to take care of,
something to make deliberate decisions about.
That means the next time
someone tells you to shop like a billionaire.
Ask yourself,
do you really want to?
This shouldn't be a hopeless conversation.
I want people to have clothing that they enjoy.
I want people to have a closet full of things they love.
Wanting people to make better choices
isn't about depriving them of of beauty or of things they enjoy.
It's about wanting people to be more deliberate
so that they can be surrounded by garments
that they feel are the truest expression of who they are.