Because a lot is produced and thrown away after one use or two because it’s so cheap. Most things that people spend money on doesn’t waste as much resources and produce as much garbage.
Fast fashion isn’t lower quality. It’s just a departure from very old traditions around “seasons” and having basically at the very most 4 changes of products per year. Fast fashion might have you releasing and retiring clothes 52 times a year. Fast fashion started in the 70ies and I have “fast fashion” clothes from the 90ies that’s still perfectly fine, quality is not what will have some people chasing “the most recent clothes” even if that means buying a new shirt every week.
It’s lower than quality in most cases. Fast fashion is about shopping for entertainment, and that means it needs to be cheap with a lot of variety. The planned obsolesce is a core part of it.
Not many people are buying Dior, or even just Adidas and throwing it away each week.
I’ve bought something from HM , it was the shittiest quality garment I’ve ever worn. Lasted about a week. It looked ok but it was made to fall apart.
I don't disagree with this, but I feel it's mostly to do with the volume and consumer demand (by the shopper types) rather than quality.
> It’s lower than quality in most cases. Fast fashion is about shopping for entertainment, and that means it needs to be cheap with a lot of variety. The planned obsolesce is a core part of it.
Quality-wise, not necessarily true -- depends on the purveyors. Yes, Zara (Spanish) and H&M (Swedish) are generally lower quality (Zara is hit or miss, H&M is uniformly lower quality), but Uniqlo (Japanese) clothing are decently high quality and cost slightly more. Most Uniqlo clothing I own have lasted years. The MTBF is about 5-6 years.
It's a bit like saying IKEA is fast-furniture. Yes, people have made fun of IKEA being a vendor of low quality particle board furniture, but my IKEA bookcases have survived > 5 cross-country moves over the last 24 years.
I don't believe Uniqlo falls under the fast fashion umbrella though. It's practical clothing, yes. But young people rarely shop at Uniqlo to pickup a new skirt before going out on Friday night.
Uniqlo, at least in Japan, isn't the cheaper stuff either.
You walked straight into the point, fast fashion has nothing to do with quality, it’s about releasing products faster. Adidas is fast fashion and has at least weekly updates to its portfolio.
While I agree with this, I have quite a few cheap items bought at NewYorker (a European fast fashion chain) that have long outlasted “quality” brands that cost 5-10x as much.
It seems like even long standing brands have enshittified to the point where fast fashion doesn’t seem much worse quality-wise.
The quality of the clothes is irrelevant. The problem is the idea that you need to wear this week’s fashion. If the clothes you bought last week are made to last or not doesn’t matter if you won’t wear them again either way. Good quality clothes would actually be even more wasteful.
It all depends. If you buy $500 worth of clothes that will last some years, or you fly transatlantic to meet some relatives every few years or make an trip important for your personal or professional development, I’m fine with both. If you buy $500 worth of fashion you’ll throw away in a few weeks or take a trip to Paris over the weekend only to be able to brag about it, not so much.
