#FAST FASHION

[tres13]

Soooo….anyone know what we’re supposed to DO about this? Not being funny, I genuinely want to hear ideas….

I'm so pissed right now. I know that fabric has been declining in quality for a while but I just bought new pajamas from kmart and they are literally see through. Not just through one layer of fabric either; I can see through the leg, that is, through 2 layers of fabric. These aren't clothes. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have strained soup through cheesecloth thicker than these pants. These are men's flannel pajamas, the kind people wear in winter, and they are made if shittier thinner fabric than even the most bargain bin bullshit halloween costumes. This "flannel" feels like plastic and is thinner than a chux wipe. Why is this even for sale.

[incognitopolls]

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[clothedinblack]

Even the thrift shops are filled with fast fashion now

[shannonpurdyjones]

One side effect of my research for this novel being steeped heavily in textile history is my swelling disgust with modern fabrics.

Firstly they're so thin? Like most things you see in Old Navy or even department stores might as well be tissue paper?? Even some branded sports t-shirts I've bought in recent years (that are supposed to be 'official apparel' and allegedly decent quality) are definitely not going to hold up more than a year or two without getting little holes from wear.

This side of even two hundred years ago fabrics were made to be used for YEARS, and that's with wearing them way more often because you only owned like three sets of clothes. They were thick and well made and most importantly made to LAST. And they were gorgeous?? Some of the weaves were so fine and the drape so buttery we still don't entirely know how these people managed to make them BY HAND. Not to mention intricate patterning and details that turned even some simple garments into freaking ART.

I know this is not news, the fast fashion phenomenon is well documented. Reading so much about the amazing fabrics we used to create and how we cherished and valued them, though, is making it hard not to mourn what we lost to mass production and capitalism. Not just the quality of the clothing and fabrics themselves, but the generations of knowledge and techniques that are just gone. It makes me what to cry.

I need to get a sewing machine.

[gwenthebard]

I feel like something that doesnt get talked about enough is how fast fashion is coming to hobbies as well. Sure, you can sew, knit, and crochet something better than youd buy in store, but good luck finding quality materials

Want a fabric that doesnt fray from being gently caressed? Want yarn thats not 100% plastic and splits if you touch it wrong? Good luck finding that if you dont have a genuinely good crafts store near you.

Go on any thread where people are trying to figure out where to buy fabric. 50% of it is people saying big stores are servicable, online stores work, or the like, and the other 50% are talking about how bad the quality is or how the quality of a website dropped because it was bought out

Were running into a problem where fast fashiob is so integrated into society that even the ability to make your own, comfortable and long lasting, clothes is being threatened by capitalism

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Apparently, some companies now are labeling mass-produced crochet items with "machine crocheted" to justify selling an entire granny square vest for 14 bucks.

1. Machines cannot crochet.

2. Knitting machines, to my knowledge, cannot make granny squares.

3. Even if there was a machine that could crochet, 14 bucks for an entire fucking vest is still too low to be paying people a livable wage basically anywhere in the world.

4. It takes me, a very fast crocheter, about twenty minutes to make one granny square in a single color with five rows. Multi-color granny squares take more time. I'll say 30 minutes. Next time you see a granny square anything in a big box store, count one row of squares and multiply by 20 (for single color squares) or 30 (multicolor squares). Then consider that it's skilled labor which should have an hourly wage you can live on. Then look at the price tag. This is Victorian piece work poor shit going on.

[lockerandom]

You know, with Shein, Alibaba and Temu being so popular, I was thinking that maybe we could make a list of some ethical and sustainable clothing brands. These will be more expensive, but if you buy from them you'll be helping someone anytime you make a purchase. Please list all the ones you know in a reply.

Pact Clothing sizes up to 2X. Sells men, women, and children's clothing. Items are sustainably made and Fair Trade.

Midnight Hour Sizes up to 4X with a few 5X items. Cute goth and alternative clothing. Items are sustainably and ethically made.

Able Sustainably and ethically made women's clothing. Sizes up to 3X.

Svaha Own by an Indian woman. Very cute science themed clothing for men, women, and kids. Clothing is mostly made in India and is ethically sourced. Sizes go up to 5XL

Proclaim ethically sourced bras and underwear and basics that comes in three shades of "nude". Sizes S to 3XL

Toad&Co Clothing inspired by nature. sizes S to 2XL.

Raven and Lily Supports female artisans creating handmade jewelry, bags, and homewares. Empowers communities through fair wages.

Altar Specializes in alternative and custom fashion. Sizes S to 6XL.

EDIT: I did not expect the to blow up! I want to find all the suggestions in the reblog and add them to the OP. I'm a bit swamped with work this week though. I may make a whole new post later. In the mean time, please check the notes for some other excellent suggestions! Some are here on tumblr! Shout out to

@freshhotflavors @morningwitchy @crowlines @mayakern

@mayakern has posted images of her clothes in the notes and they are all very cute!

I want to stress that you can't do everything. This post isn't here to judge anyone who needs new clothes but can't afford an ethical brand. I once had my apartment flood (basement unit!) where the ceiling fell in the bedroom and had to replace everything! Clothing that fit me is hard to find and I think I bought everything from Walmart. This is just for some suggestions and to advertise these other brands.

[reasonsforhope]

"California has approved a bill to help address the dark side effects of the externally glitzy fast-fashion sector, putting the onus on manufacturers to implement repair and recycling programs. 

According to CalMatters' Digital Democracy project, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024 on Sept. 28, more than a year after the bill began making its way through the state legislature. 

The act seeks to address the growing problem of waste from the fashion industry. CalMatters notes in its analysis that the Golden State tossed more than 1.3 million tons of textiles in 2018. 

As it stands, the state ships 45% of the items that are donated overseas, which contributes to environmental pollution, and once there, much of it still ends up in landfills, where it produces potent heat-trapping gases such as methane. 

In Ghana, for example, which has seen its beaches polluted by fast-fashion waste, 40% of the 15 million garments received each week are discarded. All in all, despite the fact that 95% of California's materials are recyclable, only 15% of clothing and textiles are reused. 

Democratic state senator Josh Newman, the bill's sponsor, told the Guardian that these concerning figures inspired him to take action.   

"We worked really hard to consult with and eventually to align all of the stakeholders in the life cycle of textiles so that at the end there was no opposition," he explained. "That's an immensely hard thing to do when you consider the magnitude of the problem and all of the very different interests."

According to the Guardian, the program is expected to go into effect in 2028, with its numerous backers anticipating it could create as many as 1,000 jobs in the Golden State. 

Details are still being hammered out. However, garment manufacturers who aren't already participating in eco-friendly programs will have incentives to adopt greener practices, with recycling collection sites and mail-back programs among the possibilities.  

And while some have worried that small businesses and mid-sized brands could be disproportionately impacted by the legislation and end up passing on the prices to consumers, Newman estimates that the cost should be less than 10 cents per garment or textile."

-via The Cool Down, October 3, 2024

[bitchesgetriches]

Fast Fashion: Why It’s Fucking up the World and How To Avoid It

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[stardew-bajablast]

if you haven’t at least tried sewing or crocheting or knitting your own clothes, you really should. even if it’s just one time and you never do it again, i really think everyone should do it at least once

learning how to crochet was what finally made me grasp the abject horror of the fast fashion industry and realize just how laborious and time consuming it is. i have to take a few days off a week so my back/wrists don’t get sore — and i get to do this as a leisure activity in the comfort of my own home, rather than in a sweatshop. it takes dozens of hours to produce a single item. there is just something about trying it yourself that makes you realize just how little the people making our clothes are being paid for retailers to be able to sell clothes at such obscenely low prices.

i understood in the abstract that people were earning literal slave wages to make my clothes, but that concept wasn’t real to me in a way i could understand until i spent 14 hours making something that i myself wouldn’t have even been willing to pay more than $10-20 for if i saw it in a store.

i have not bought any new clothes since learning how to crochet. every time i see clothes at a store (especially obviously handmade items like crochet), and i look at the price tag i feel genuinely sick to my stomach.

i’m not saying everyone needs to make their own clothes in order to be against fast fashion, but what i am saying is if hearing about the conditions and wages secondhand has not been enough to make you stop buying it, if you find yourself becoming desensitized to the suffering of the people who make your things, you should try making something yourself.

you need to see firsthand how physically and mentally demanding it can be and imagine how much worse it would be if you were forced to sit in a sweatshop for 16 hours a day doing it nonstop, earning pennies an hour to do so. you need to spend weeks laboring over something only for it to turn out looking like shit so you realize just how much wisdom and technical skill goes into these supposedly “unskilled” and undervalued jobs. if the abstract concept isn’t enough to get through to you, then you need to get hands on.

[dresshistorynerd]

The Morrisian case against fast fashion

Today I discovered that H&M made a William Morris collection some years ago. The heath death of the universe can't come quickly enough. We can stop now. Satire is dead and we killed her.

It's not just the whole concept of H&M using William Morris' designs for their fast fashion which is insanity inducing, but also the critical response it garnered. Like sure, people did realize this is insane and there was a lot of think pieces about it at the time, but I read several of them and they all seem to still miss the point in spectacular way.

The basic premise of these think pieces go along the lines of: "Would William Morris spin in his grave with a speed of light because of the H&M collection of his designs? A difficult question indeed. William Morris was a complicated man. He wanted art to be affordable to everyone. Isn't H&M affordable? That kinda fits. Though probably he would have some concerns about H&M's practices."

On the surface - yes - but like in reality - fuck no. There's no nuance in this particular issue. He talked about many times what he though of the H&Ms of his time, the retailers selling poor quality industrially produced "fashionable" bullshit. We know exactly what he would have thought of H&M. Here's couple of quotes from his 1884 lecture "Art and Socialism", which makes it very clear.

"It would be an instructive day's work for any one of us who is strong enough to walk through two or three of the principal streets of London on a week-day, and take accurate note of everything in the shop windows which is embarrassing or superfluous to the daily life of a serious man. Nay, the most of these things no one, serious or unserious, wants at all; only a foolish habit makes even the lightest-minded of us suppose that he wants them, and to many people even of those who buy them they are obvious encumbrances to real work, thought and pleasure. But I beg you to think of the enormous mass of men who are occupied with this miserable trumpery, from the engineers who have had to make the machines for making them, down to the hapless clerks who sit day-long year after year in the horrible dens wherein the wholesale exchange of them is transacted, and the shopmen, who not daring to call their souls their own, retail them amidst numberless insults which they must not resent, to the idle public which doesn't want them but buys them to be bored by them and sick to death of them."

He is describing the birth of consumerism, which was taking form during his lifetime in the late Victorian Era, which fast fashion is the extreme logical conclusion of, and he fucking hated it. He specifically railed against endless consumerist products, which H&M is the perfect representation of. It was definitely not the art and beauty he believed everyone required and deserved. He makes the distinction often.

"Now if we are to have popular Art, or indeed Art of any kind, we must at once and for all be done with this luxury; it is the supplanter, the changeling of Art; so much so that by those who know of nothing better it has even been taken for Art, the divine solace of human labour, the romance of each day's hard practice of the difficult art of living."

"And here furthermore is at least a little sign whereby to distinguish between a rag of fashion and a work of Art: whereas the toys of fashion when the first gloss is worn off them do become obviously worthless even to the frivolous—a work of Art, be it ever so humble, is long lived; we never tire of it; as long as a scrap hangs together it is valuable and instructive to each new generation. All works of Art in short have the property of becoming venerable amidst decay: and reason good, for from the first there was a soul in them, the thought of man, which will be visible in them so long as the body exists in which they were implanted."

When he thought of popular Art he thought of the craftsmanship of the common people. The art people have made from useful everyday objects with skillful handicrafts. This is what he means by "divine solace of human labour". It's not reverence of Puritanical work ethic, on the contrary, it's the reverence of creation, of the earnest joy people feel when they get to express themselves through their creative pursuits. He certainly didn't believe in work for work's sake, work needed to be worthwhile and enjoyable. He summarized his own position on what labour should be thusly:

"It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should he done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious."

He urged his middle class audience to reject consumerism (the lecture was for a very much middle class atheist society):

"For I say again that in buying these things: 'Tis the lives of men you buy! Will you from mere folly and thoughtlessness make yourselves partakers of the guilt of those who compel their fellow men to labour uselessly?"

I think it's glaringly obvious H&M and fast fashion in general is what he would consider luxury. Rags of fashion that are just churned out and discarded without thought and produced by compelling people to labour uselessly. It's not popular art that's made by workers and craftsmen, who are able to express themselves through it. There's no agency for the abused workers in H&M's sweatshops, they are not expressing their joy of creation, they are simply labouring uselessly.

Morris didn't shame workers for buying affortable things even if they weren't Art with big A, because that's the problem he despised the whole economic system for, for taking away the popular Art from people, making it inaccessible, and selling back mass produced products with very little practical or aesthetic value. So I don't think he would have problem with people who can only afford fast fashion today. They are the victims of capitalism too, because Art has been taken away from them. But the idea that some of these think pieces had that perhaps the H&M's Morris collection can be good actually if you squint, that H&M has the capacity to bring the art and beauty Morris advocated for for the people, is level of stupidity that's hard to express in words.

Morris didn't believe anything made with exploited labour could be truly beautiful, truly art. In his 1879 lecture "The Art of the People" he put it like this:

"That thing which I understand by real art is the expression by man of his pleasure in labour."

The way I understand this, is that art is communication. Through it we communicate feelings, ideas and thoughts, that is it's purpose. So for that communication to work, for it to be imbued with message, the person making it needs to feel passion and love for it's creation. How can there be love and passion if the hands making the garment belong to a tired exploited worker who has no agency what so ever in their work and can only think about survival to the next day?

Beyond the fundamental exploitativeness of H&M and fast fashion, this collection would still get zero points on aesthetic values from Morris even with his own designs. Because the work itself was such an important part of art for Morris, good design was nothing without good craftsmanship. Good design in his mind was always relative and dependent on it's purpose.

"For everything made by man’s hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent." (The Lesser Arts, 1877)

Here when he says nature, he means the nature of the thing that is made - basically it's purpose and function - and the nature of the materials it's made from. Basically, the design must always be made to bring out the function of the art and the qualities of the material it's made from, not fight against them. This is because he believed handicrafts were uniquely suitable for expressing the love of creation, therefore superior labour, and to really bring out the qualities of the craftsmanship and enjoy the creative process, the design should be suitable for that craft. The other side, which was the joy of using and experiencing art, required the craft to be selected for the suitable purpose. Using poorly functioning furniture for example is not very enjoyable, nor is using clothing that's made from materials that are not suitable for the climactic conditions it's supposed to be used in.

H&M of course utterly fails in this. They use Morris' designs in fully unsuitable ways. They print patterns made for example for wall papers on poor quality fabrics with synthetics dyes they weren't made for. This line from one blog post I came across really got me: "Therefore, without cheapening the artistic value of Morris’ designs, H&M’s collection offers an unparalleled potential for accessibility to them." No. Fuck no. They do in fact cheapen Morris' designs in every single way possible. Literally this is atrocious.

Despite the popular depiction, Morris wasn't in fact against industrial machinery or industrial art even, or at least he wasn't once his views on art and politics matured. He did think technology was useful, but he thought the people should use industrial methods for the benefit of all, not be enslaved by the industrial machine.

"I have spoken of machinery being used freely for releasing people from the more mechanical and repulsive part of necessary labour; and I know that to some cultivated people, people of the artistic turn of mind, machinery is particularly distasteful, and they will be apt to say you will never get your surroundings pleasant so long as you are surrounded by machinery. I don't quite admit that; it is the allowing machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays. In other words, it is the token of the terrible crime we have fallen into of using our control of the powers of Nature for the purpose of enslaving people, we care less meantime of how much happiness we rob their lives of." ("How we live and how we might live", 1887)

However, he thought that the designer should approach it the way they approached any craft, by designing for the strengths of the machine work.

"But if you have to design for machine-work, at least let your design show clearly what it is. Make it mechanical with a vengeance, at the same time as simple at possible. Don't try, for instance, to make a printed plate look like a hand-painted one: make it something which no one would try to do if he were painting by hand..." ("Art and the Beauty of the Earth", 1881)

He did use some machinery for fabric and wall paper printing, but he was very intentional about their use. Still his designs weren't made for the type of methods these modern H&M machinery uses and he did for example use natural dyes. Particularly insulting is that some of the H&M clothes are made from viscose, rayon made with viscose method. Viscose method is extremely toxic and is known to cause long term health consequences for the workers and the people in surrounding areas. This has been well proven knowledge for ages. William Morris' wall paper factory in the beginning used the typical method used at the time which involved arsenic, but once he learned this could pose risks for the workers, he changed the method. Many of the new synthetic dyes were toxic at the time, which is the major reason he so favoured natural dyes, known to not cause health issues for workers or pollute the environment.

The question many of these think pieces about the H&M Morris collection posed was, would Morris disapprove and should we care? The first part of that is very easy to answer. Yes. Of course Morris would disapprove. He is currently powering the whole of British Isles with purely the kinetic energy his grave-spinning produces. Should we care though? If you care about Morris' art, if you want to see more of that kind of art in this world, you should care. Morris' art is not about the superficial qualities. Copying his designs and aesthetics and styles, will only lead to hollow imitations, that are exactly what he described the rags of fashion to be; as the shininess of novelty wears off they will reveal themselves to be soulless, useless and utterly empty. This collection is just that. To see more of the kind of art that makes you feel like his art makes you feel, not just something that reminds you of that feeling, you should focus more on the way the art is made and less on the specific aesthetics. If his vision of labour and art was realised, all art produced of course wouldn't be loved by every person, but all of it would be loved by someone, even if that someone was just the maker. And that would be more worthwhile than every single rag of fast fashion.

I will stop William-Morris-posting now and return to my thesis.

The full texts I quoted here:

Art and Socialism The Art of the People The Lesser Arts How We Live and How We Might Live Art and the Beauty of the Earth

[cozylittleartblog]

yeah like having to deal with the obnoxious middle aged women who thrift to resell wasn't bad enough, now we got the braindead fast fashion bozos cluttering things up too.

its ok shirt, i will love you like somebody else apparently couldn't even if you shed microplastics into the water supply and will fall apart after 7 wears. and then i'll sew you back together like anyone with two braincells to rub together Should

[deeply-winter]

the one upside to the quality of clothing taking a nosedive is that my homemade clothes don’t look glaringly homemade anymore.

my handknit cardigan (my first) is miles above the cardigans I saw in my last trip to the mall. It feels deliciously heavy. It’s cozy and soft and so warm. Above all, it fits me perfectly.

anyways, I’m thinking of sewing some pants in the new year, fully inspired by the crooked crotch seam I saw in Abercrombie.

[syi666]

every new yorker needs to know about jury nullification. EVERY NEW YORKER. tell your nona, tell the bus driver, scream it near news reporters. this guy doesn't have to go to jail if you don't want him to.

[aardvaark]

"clothes i regret buying from my [insert subculture] phase" "best products to achieve that clean girl aesthetic" "i support trans rights but neopronouns…. cmon, im not calling you that" "how i did my makeup when i was emo (ew)" "filming the weird kid in secret cause wtfff guys" "you only need these 10 makeup products for this quick look" "sometimes i even go out only wearing concealer, lipgloss, eyeliner and mascara" "glad i stopped being alt lol" "fine you win with ya gay stuff" "those people that never grew out of their [insert subculture] phase smh" "how do these people get bfs and gfs but i dont??" "we should bring back bullying" "mean girl check" "i’m sorry but can we agree that this is cringe" "my bi phase" "my nonbinary phase" "what you need in your wardrobe for 2023" "which [insert disability] influencers are faking" "why you need a BBL" "why you need a buccal fat reduction" "neurodivergent ppl are sooo cute uwu" "filming weird self diagnosed autistic people at my college" ………….. i hate fast fashion i hate cringe culture i hate how people dehumanise anyone they see as "weird" i hate meaningless quick trends that cause damage i hate how quickly people turn on disabled & neurodivergent & queer ppl & POC when some stupid trend is over!!

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Crochet is all over fashion again this spring. Reminder that crochet cannot be done by machine, so someone had to make it by hand. There is literally no fast fashion brand that is paying a fair wage to the artisans who are doing that work, even taking local wages in other countries into account. And you can tell that by the pricing. I crochet faster than most people I know, and a jacket always takes me at least 20 hours. And dresses take 30-50. The smaller the yarn, the more hours it'll take to make something.

There are tons of crocheters on Etsy setting their own prices. Check there before you shop Target or Express or any other place selling on a rack.