Fast fashion: the fashionistas of the digi couture era

In the fashion industry in the first decade of the new millennium, a new business model - fast fashion - has been introduced across the board. It radically changed the face of fashion business and led to the fact that the consumption of textiles increased by forty-seven percent. The essence of this system is that designs are created in one country, produced in another, and sold worldwide. It has the advantage of making new styles available at low cost, but the flip side of the coin is the endless production and consumption, resulting in a much higher cost to the environment.

Recently, it has become obvious that the fashion business is only interested in what happens in the next five minutes. This is the problem of the previous twenty years: time frames and cycles of clothing production are getting shorter and shorter. That's what fast fashion is.

Over the last hundred years, production has changed from customized orders to mass uniform production at a fixed price, which generally reflects the modern trend of time scarcity. In the world of fashion business, there is a company that is really concerned about such a dangerous trend. This is the Patagonia brand, which specializes in the production of outerwear. It was founded over forty years ago and immediately established a committed approach to environmental issues. Rick Ridgway, who has been responsible for environmental initiatives at Patagonia since 2011, tries to understand how we got to this point and where did the concept of fast fashion come from?

Rick: "We can assume that the concept of fast fashion comes from the power of companies to create fashion faster and faster, along with the ability to deliver inexpensive clothing. Clothes are made where the lowest prices are, delivered at the fastest possible speed, and changed weekly and monthly. With that kind of capacity, you come to the concept of fast fashion, because fast fashion meets people's expectations and needs. If what Rick is talking about is true, then consumer desires are where change comes from.

The company finds programs through which it tries to inspire and help consumers recycle clothing. In 2011, Rick and his team launched an ad campaign, c a message to the consumer that goes against everything taught in business schools. The ad took up a full page in the New York Times during Black Friday.

Don't buy this jacket!" reads the headline. The hidden message of the advertising campaign is to convince consumers to buy only what they really need. Rick: "When the recession hit in 2009, we realized that people were changing the way they thought about things, including clothes. We realized that we are actually saving money when we buy expensive items that then last for a few seasons, consequently we buy fewer items. Our idea is not to not buy that jacket, but to not buy it until you really need it. We wanted people to start following our philosophy and buy only what they need, take care of the clothes, mend them, resell them, and if they don't use them, give them to someone who needs them or recycle them.

Surprisingly, after this commercial, the company's sales went up and continue to grow. The team hopes to have inspired more and more people not to buy a lot of clothes they don't really need. Rick: "I'm suspicious of claims about any product that is supposedly climate-positive, and this applies not only to clothing but also to food. Farmers are also trying to develop technologies that use only energy from the sun. Realistically, we can't make clothes that are 100 percent climate-positive or at least neutral, but we can make clothes that have as little impact on climate change as possible."

I think it's wonderful that there are people in the world who support such initiatives, but it's literally a drop in the ocean of the fashion industry.