What’s Fast Fashion’s role in Sustainable Fashion?

If you’re like me, your first answer would be absolutely nothing. However-

Last month I was able to attend the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen. I was hesitant to go at first seeing that the speaker list included representatives from fast fashion moguls such as ASOS, H&M, and Nike. But I felt persuaded to go when I saw that some climate activists and peers that have similar values of mine would be attending and speaking as well, such as Aditi Mayer, Xiye Bastida, Sophia Li, and a few more.

I was able to document my time at the conference and highlight some amazing speakers over on my youtube channel, That Curly Top, but I wanted to make space to process: what role does fast fashion have in the sustainable fashion movement?

Liz Rickets, co-founder of The Or Foundation

During day one of the sessions, the founder of The OR foundation, Liz Rickets, shares how her organization’s goal is to catalyze a Justice-Led Circular Economy and bring awareness to how our overconsumption in the Global North directly affects the livelihood of the Ghanian people she works with. In a tearful speech, she explains how this dumping of secondhand clothing affects their local economies, environment, and most notably the women who work in the Kantamanto market known as the Kayayei.

The Kayayei women, often with babies wrapped around their backs, will carry 100-200lb bales to sell in the market. They make little to know money, suffer serious to fatal injuries from the weight of the bales, and risk losing the life of their children as well. 

With this bleak description of the challenges The Or Foundation is trying to tackle, Rickets goes on to announce that the organization will be accepting a $15 million donation from Shein to address the clothing waste problem and pay for the medical treatments the Kayayei women desperately need.

When this announcement was dropped you could hear an audible gasp across the room.

I’m not going to lie, I was taken back a bit as we know that Shein produces 300,000 new styles to its website in the US every day. However it had me begging the question, isn’t something better than nothing?

Image via Global Fashion Summit

This became a repetitive theme for my time at the conference. I was certainly uncomfortable for most of the trip and would frequently forget I was attending a fashion focused conference as white-cis male executives preached one after the other about the sustainability commitments their large fashion companies were going to do. And as uncomfortable as it was I realized that it was actually necessary for me to feel this way.

It gave me a fly-on-the-wall POV on how these people, who essentially control the industry, think and the rhetoric they believe in.

And on the other hand, they were made to feel uncomfortable by the people I would consider to be in my echo chamber and those executives were forced to hear a new perspective as well from Bangladeshi manufacturers to trans climate storytellers. I mean, when else would we all be gathered in the same room together and try to figure out how to further the sustainable fashion movement?

And as with the mission of this site, I always try to celebrate imperfect sustainability. Though when it comes to corporations, my celebrations tend to lean more towards hesitancy as I usually see sustainable commitments as greenwashing rather than actual steps forward.

But maybe I’m wrong and need to change that.

The reality is, we only have less than 8 years to avoid climate disaster. Is it more realistic to expect these corporations to all be completely abolished during this time or to use our energy steering and encouraging them to a more sustainable future? This is not to say that my stance against fast fashion has changed, nor will I personally promote fast fashion on my platforms. The entire model of fast fashion is unsustainable and I truly wish that with a snap of my fingers that the entire industry would disappear. But I don’t see these power and money hungry corps willing to relinquish their companies. 

With all ethical issues we face in life, nothing is black and white. Most of the answers and solutions we need lie in the areas of gray, the areas of nuance.

Fast fashion will never be 100% in the sustainable fashion movement however, us sustainable advocates cannot afford to sit on our moral high horses and ignore them. Let’s use this time between now and the next 8 years to hold these corporations accountable, to push them in the right direction, and be open to have dialogue and support the brands wanting to make change.