By Peter Odeyemi, Junior Reporter
Societies today find themselves in a fast-paced world; a key industry that reflects this reality is the fashion industry. It is the best example of how capitalism drives overconsumption. The way the industry functions is with extremely fast trends changing all the time, encouraging consumers to buy more frequently, which leads to significant waste and exploitation. Given that the fast fashion industry is always changing, keeping up with fashion trends has proven to be a hefty task for companies. Being “trendy” is something that many young people, especially high school and college-aged girls, hold in high esteem. There will always be a cuter top, a new hairstyle or fashion statement, a colour resurrected from the dead. This puts an immense amount of pressure on companies to be up to date with fashion trends and produce clothes that will be appealing to the public, which brings us to this short article.
In recent times, we’ve seen trends of overconsumption, specifically in the Gen-Z pool. This pattern is alarming and controversial as it boosts capitalism, which is very much unhealthy for the consumers, considering the controversial viewpoint of it diminishing innovation and creativity. The biggest companies thrive in this fast-paced capitalist society, and the biggest brands will produce trendy clothing to attract consumers, but that clothing will be produced inexpensively to increase profit for the companies, which is what we know as fast fashion.
Businesses are buying into this idea of just creating trendy things and tailoring their marketing strategies to these trends, which is helpful for sales, yes - but in my opinion, this doesn’t help in the long run. This decreases innovation of businesses, as they produce and market only to make profits rather than satisfy their consumer base. With the consumer base not satisfied, these businesses may eventually fold in on themselves when they don’t meet up with trends. Capitalism prioritizes profit maximization; the fashion industry is clearly no exception.
Businesses are no longer making products or services for long-term goals or the satisfaction of their consumer base; everything is being done to appease a certain demographic and a certain trend. The funny thing is, the public always falls for these tricks. For example, Apple has been controversially known for its lack of innovation in its recent release of the iPhone models. They create new phones every year with little or no changes to the “new” models, and every single time, there is always a very high demand for them.
That makes us ask the question: why does this happen every time? The first answer would be, of course, yes, they have a very strong and devoted consumer base that is readily available to get every new product release. But I wouldn’t call it devoted; I’d call it being indoctrinated into a capitalist society and making ill-made decisions. They are getting overpriced phones which have little to no difference from each other.
Another example is H&M, one of the biggest fast fashion clothing brands in the world right now. Honestly speaking, they create really good-looking pieces of clothing, but the real question is: “Is it worth the price?” Like I said earlier, “capitalism destroys innovation,” and as we’ve seen with H&M, some of their pieces of clothing do not really last that long. Cases of wear and tear have been seen in their linen clothing line, with visible signs of lint on their sweatpants line, in recent times.
One brand I personally dislike HEAVILY is the Miu Miu brand. Their whole line is extremely overpriced and very much similar to every other regular product you see on third-party apps for way less than the price. These products are not even attractive at all, very minimalistic bags and pieces of clothing for the price of a down payment on a house in northern Ontario.
Brands like Zara, H&M, Alo, and Forever 21 raid the closets of the modern individual, whether it be male or female, young or old. These brands are the go-to, cheap, and quick options when it comes to clothing. Their position within the fashion industry is that of ‘Fast Fashion’ retailers. Evidently, this is a production method that is driven by the capitalistic incentives of producing products quickly, affordably, and adapted to the trends of global consumers.
In summation, in the rising trends of endorsing these capitalist behaviours of these big corporations and firms by patronizing their profit-only-minded products, I recommend we do away with trendy ideas and goods, and divert towards minimalistic and long-lasting options that are worth the value.