Uncensored Money Season Five: Ultra Fast Fashion: What it is and why it’s the tobacco of the fashion world
Melissa Browne: Ex-Accountant, Ex-Financial Advisor, Ex-Working Till I Drop, Now Serial Entrepreneur & Author, Financial Wellness Advocate, Living a Life by Design | 02/09/2024
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Show Notes
We all know that fast fashion is bad, both environmentally and ethically, but what about the latest category which encapsulates brands like Temu, Shein, and Boohoo. With faster production cycles, faster churn, faster to landfills, and clothing made with ultra plastics which will shed microfibres into waterways for years to come, this new category is like fast fashion on crack.
In this episode of Uncensored Money, Mel talks about the new fashion category, Ultra Fast Fashion – who is in it and why it could be as harmful as tobacco for your health.
Books and resources mentioned in this episode
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Transcript
Mel: Hey everyone. I'm Mel Browne. I'm an ex-accountant and ex-financial advisor, so I have the theory, but I also have the life experience. I'm now financially independent in my own right after coming back from less than nothing in my early thirties. I want this podcast to be like a chat with your girlfriends about money. My aim is to help you discover why you're behaving the way you are with money, to suggest new ways you might behave that are a better fit for you, and to increase your financial literacy and financial confidence. I hope it inspires challenges, educates and empowers you with how you do money. So let's get into it. Welcome to Uncensored Money.
Mel: Today I wanna talk to you about a new category in the fashion world because chances are, you've heard the term fast fashion. You might even be able to list some of the brands that would belong in that category.
Mel: Brands such as h&m, Zara, Abercrombie and Fitch, forever 21 and more. However, what you may not have heard of is a new category that sustainability brands have created called Ultra Fast Fashion. And the reason they have created this new category is for you to understand that those that belong in this category should be considered so much worse than fast fashion, that we absolutely want to avoid them like the plague. So what is ultra fast fashion and who belongs in that category and why is it so harmful? Well, I guess in its simplest sense, ultra fast fashion retailers take everything bad about fast fashion and speed it up. So if we already know that there's problems with fast fashion around sustainability environmentally and all of those things, well what the ultra fast fashion means is that on crack, so faster production cycles, faster trend churn faster to the landfills.
Mel: The clothing is ultra plastic with at least half of these garments made from virgin plastics that will shed microfibers into waterways in the years for years to come. And consequently, the negative impacts on workers and the environment is magnified exponentially. So who belongs in this category? Well, good on you is an app that I love and they have independent ratings where their sustainability records have listed five of the most popular ultra fast fashion brands for us to be aware of in this category. And they are Shein, Fashion Nova, Boohoo, Pretty Little Thing, Cider, it's not a fashion brand, but I wanna put Temu into this category as well. And what is perhaps both distressing and maybe unsurprising is if you go onto Good on You App, uh, the lowest scores are we avoid and not good enough for social and environmental and modern day slavery, et cetera.
Mel: And they receive those lowest scores across the board. But it's not just sustainability and the environment that they score low on the industry and fast fashion is already, I mean, let's be honest, fashion is already problematic. We've heard of the exploitation of workers inside Dior, a Luxury House. A fast fashion has got a terrible reputation, uh, for exploitation of workers. But ultras fast fashion, again, you cannot, I mean, you think about it logically. You cannot have prices that cheap and not exploit workers. And the industry's widespread exploitation of garment workers constitutes in the words of fashion, of fashion, of the Business of fashion contributor Bandana Tewari, it's considered modern day colonialism in the words, as I said, of Bandana Tewari, one of like an industry expert. So for their track records on labor in particular, these brands again receive the lowest marks. The Good On You app has found zero evidence, zero evidence that any of these brands pay a living wage.
Mel: So 100% of these brands. So Shein, Fashion Nova, Boohoo, pretty little things Cider and I wanna add Temu to that as well. 100% of these ultra fast fashion brands fail to disclose any meaningful information about forced labor and the wellbeing of their workforce. And watchdog groups have found that the situation is dire. So let's just pull out Shein for example. So with Shein suppliers, for example, uh, a 2021 report from the NGO Group, public eye revealed that workers were putting in 75 hour weeks receiving one day off per month and pay per item of clothing. So they don't receive an hourly rate, they receive their pay per item of clothing, which is all engross violation of, of labor laws.
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Mel: So that for me is if you like, uh, you know, sustainability is problematic for me, then these brands fail. If environmental issues are problematic for you, these brands fail.
Mel: If caring about workers' conditions, which let's be honest are primarily women are problematic for you, then these brands fail. Lauren Bravo who is a journalist who wrote a really great book, and I'll we'll put a link to it in the show notes, how to break up with fast fashion. She said that if fast fashion for the past few decades has been characterized by low prices, high volume and relentless pace, then the new wave of ultra fast fashion brands are pushing these three criteria to the absolute extreme at pushing millions of already impoverished garment makers to the breaking point. I guess what I wanna say is, before I keep going and before you think, well this is something for the youngins, this is something that's a problem for the 20 year olds. 'cause that's primarily who's buying them. Well, I wanna say that yes, the 20 year olds are primarily sharing their hauls on social media and that is one of the ways that this is really pushed and promoted by influencers and and brands on social media.
Mel: So they're called hauls and as the name suggests, because the items are so cheap, we don't just show here's one or two or three items that we've bought. We are showing a haul of items because I mean, when something's three bucks, why wouldn't I buy multiple items? And then again, it's about that ultra consumerism. So whilst and if, if, you know, if we look at the, the hashtag haul to date that has had more than $15 million views, as on TikTok alone, cumulative views, which is just, sorry, <laugh>, $15 billion views on TikTok alone and climbing. But if I looked at Shein, I wanna look at the stats on Shein and the demographic of who's purchasing on Shein. So 78% are women I think for, that's probably unsurprising, but they're biggest demographic isn't 20 year olds or even, the low thirties, it's 35 to 49 year olds. So that's the biggest demographic of who is purchasing on Shein.
Mel: So 28% of 35 to 49 year olds are active on Shein. The next is 25%, which is 25 to 34 year olds. So if you are someone that's thinking this is a young person's problem, yes it is. And no it's not because I think it can be really easy to go, oh, but no, I've only ever bought off at once. So really I'm not really contributing to the problem, but once is contributing to the problem. And I really want us to understand that today from this conversation. And I hope you can hear how passionately I talk about this because if I need to move you to only fast fashion for a start, I'd rather do that than you be looking at ultra fast fashion and thinking that this is okay. And my problem with ultra fuss fashion as well is that it's being lent legitimacy by designers that are choosing to work with them.
Mel: So Kim Kardashian has worked with ultra fast fashion. Karl Lagerfeld has, and most recently Alice McCall, the Australian designer who closed uh, the door to her own fashion brand in 2023, has just done a collaboration with Shein. And she's talked about how the, whilst the items are incredibly cheap, they're very well made. So therefore they're investment pieces and how she's not scared of the word fast fashion and can I just say she may not be scared of the word fast fashion, but unwilling to bet she hasn't stepped inside an ultra fast fashions factory and eyeballed the workers that are making them. Because as Claire Press, who as an author and and is very much an advocate in the sustainability space, the whole concept is an oxymoron. You know, the idea of fast fashion is rapid turnover both in trends and physical comments. So if she's saying that this is a high quality investment piece, it's just disingenuous.
Mel: And so to be aware that ultra fast fashion is using people like Alice McCall, Carl Lager Field and others to kind of to end lend that legitimacy to it and really to look at that and say, no, I'm not gonna buy into that. And I guess the thing for us is as consumers, we're the ones that decide we're the brands like ultra fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu eventually thrive because we can vote with our wallets. And if you were someone that cared about Australian fashion brands, then you again shouldn't be shopping with places like Shein because they can't compete. You know, if you are wanting to pay your, your workers properly, if you cared about sustainability practices, then you're not going to behave in this manner. So therefore you're not gonna be able to price the same. So I guess if you understand that this is problematic, if you understand there's failures with a sustainability, environmental and modern slavery, I guess the question is, well what can you do about it?
Mel: If we know that, that this is a problem, if we understand it, how can we make sure that this is something that we succumb to? Well, one is to make sure that they're not taking over your feed because what Lauren Bravo has said is that people are no longer shopping for clothes, they're shopping for content. And so it's being aware that if you are susceptible to these hauls, then you start to unfollow people that are doing them that you simply unsubscribe, that you unfollow, so there, so you start to realize that disposable culture is not the norm. The other thing that I would suggest that you do is add in people and brands and apps into your feed to really showcase that it's not the norms. So apps like good on you, you can follow who will educate you. Influencers like Venetia La Manna will actually go on and tell you, these are all the problems that we have with these brands and this is why.
Mel: So it's putting people into your feed that will actually, that are focused on more sustainable fashion. Another example is Lily Fang, who runs the really popular imperfect idealist, which I just love her name captures it. She understands she's imperfect, but she's wanting to showcase, hey, this is how you can shop more sustainably. Because again, if over, uh, is ultra fast fashion's aesthetic is really adding to that over consumption itch. It's stopping us from itching, it's stopping us from being itchy by choosing what's going to be in our feed because ultimately it's up to us to buy into this or not. And it can really be helpful by not seeing it. How we, how we break an ultra fast fashion addiction is to make sure that we are the ones in control of our feeds. We are the ones in control of how we purchase. We are the ones in control of our inbox.
Mel: And simply by breaking up and unfollowing and unsubscribing, we can really to change that if you're being served ads because you're in the demographic, it might, it's every time an ads, it's, it's choosing to block and actually choosing not to be shown any more of those ads. So deleting the apps, unfollowing influencers who cause you to partake in that whole culture unsubscribing from brands where the with marketing messages, because ultimately it's understanding that these brands are responsible for their massive exploitation of garment at workers. They are creating massive profits for only a handful of billionaires and being ultra problematic environmentally to the planet, but added together. We still have significant power to hold these companies accountable. Now there are some things that are being done so you can follow places like the fashion sustainability and Social Accountability Act, which is being considered in New York. It's following things like the apps that I talked about. And it's being aware that you have choice and not to allow people like Alice McCall who are doing collabs to add that legitimacy to it, to understand that ultra fast fashion is a whole different beast and it's not a beast that you are going to allow into your household.
Speaker 3: If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it if you subscribed and give us a review, then make sure you come and play with me on Insta. I'm at @melbrowne.money Remember there's an E on the end of Browne. I'm one of those fancy Browne's, and don't forget to check out the show notes for even more ways you can work with me to transform your finances.
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