Fast and Slow

Fast and Slow

    It’s been over ten years since we are living under the life of fast fashion, and the term of “Fast Fashion” is no longer unfamiliar to us. Almost everybody has experience shopping in the Fast Fashion brand such as Zara, H&M, and Top Shop. With more and more social issues that come out with the development of fast fashion, there are certain arguments in various aspects. Slow fashion movement has arisen in opposition to fast fashion. In this paper, I am trying to give my point of view on how fast fashion effect on our daily life and the society and how slow fashion come out as the solution.

Fast fashion is a term which refers to shortening the whole fashion system’s time frame. Originally the processing time of a fashion system circle takes 9 months for designing and production. Fast fashion retailers reduce the processing time from 9 months into 2 weeks. The main factor that makes it so fast is because it no longer takes months for the design development. On the contrary, they design the collections by the actual trends which they can easily check on the Internet resources such as Style.com. Besides, marketing team and production team works efficiently with design team. Therefore, they can manufacture it very quickly. In order to attract their costumer to visit the store more often, the fast fashion retailers tend to renew their products rapidly, providing them various new items every week. On the other hands, the mass production and cheap labors is the key component for fast fashion retailoring to cut down the production cost. With both beneficial aspects of various choices of styles and the affordable prices, customers can purchase clothes which are in trend with a relatively low price.

With the advantages which fast fashion brings, it also comes with some disadvantages. Regards to the low price, fast fashion companies largely use synthetic fabric for production and the lack of attention on the finishing process of dyeing and bleaching what leads to the pollution of the environment. In addition, the labor’s working condition, like over working hours, child labors and under payment, is often neglected by the companies with “produce more with less time” policy. Besides, the low price changes the customer’s shopping behavior that buying clothes became disposable to a general population. People stop looking for the duration value of the clothes and start craving for the new styles which follow the trends. The authentication of design is also a huge issue of fast fashion. When I go into those stores, I personally, as a fashion design student, feel resentful seeing these copies of the new designs from other brand, and it is so hard not to think about that how many hours of efforts that the design team put into the collection in order to get a original exciting idea. “Copy” and “plagiarism” is now as much as what “fast fashion” stands for.

Moreover, social media and nowadays mobility are huge factors that pushing everything behind the growth of the fast fashion companies. The challenge that fashion brands are now facing is, with the fast-paced trend and the inseparable relationship between hi-end fashion and street fashion, putting out the new products successfully onto the market. It has a lot to do with marketing strategy. What is the brand’s Internet identity, and what accessibility that the brand has through Internet? Social media such as Facebook, twitter, and Instagram became the new platform for all business to engage with its customers. Meanwhile, it is more and more important for younger generation to have a popular identity on the Internet, expressing themselves to a greater public through the social media, and it also generate the a whole new “#OOTD” culture. The expression of #OOTD is a searching tag used in Instagram as abbreviation of “outlook of the day”. To get the more-likes post requires a lot of daily picture of what you eat, what you wear, where you go and whom you go with, as a result, you might need more clothes to feed your online audiences. In that case, the qualities of the clothes are less important as long as it looks fabulous as a website image. Equally important, the conveniences that smart phone brings accelerate on all aspects information exchanging and consumption.

The concept of “slow fashion” has brought back to people’s attention as the reaction of over consumption and the mass production. Nowadays, if you don’t like what you are wearing and thinking to change your style, it is so easy to change it. You just need to simply go onto the Internet and browse some street style website or blogs, pick some looks or some dressing suggestions, and, with the online store and shopping system, you can easily shop get the style you desire. People start to rethink what is the value of the style and the clothes when “being so fashionable” became so easy. Therefore, consumers get tired of being shifting their styles from one to the other. The most significant idea of slow fashion is anti-over buying and anti-wasting. In order to do so, customer purchases the good that is unique, and sometimes, one of the kind. You will never see someone wearing the same thing that you are wearing. Trend is no longer matters, and people start to appreciate the more classic styles so that you can wear it for a longer period of time. Another feature of slow fashion is the usage of organic materials, referring to the term eco fashion and green fashion, tending to reduce the harmful impact on environment, suggesting the idea that “quality” is more important than “quantity”.

Speaking of slow fashion, with the principle of waste-reducing and high artisanal qualities, the bespoke tailoring has first come to my mind and I personally have interests on the decaying industry by the fact that there are less people going to a bespoke tailor shop to order their outfit any more as well as less young people are trying to learn this profession. With experience that I got working in a bespoke tailor company, I observed that the industry now more and more women clients who can not find their suit jacket in the retailer store, and they come to bespoke store mainly for their work related purpose. Also, there is a growing amount of customers bring their jackets purchased from brands such as Zenga and Armani to the store, asking to alter the pattern, realizing that apparel jacket can not reach the satisfaction to really fit their body. However, with the variety of the apparel clothing today, the demanding also decreased through decades. Another reason of its declination is the fact that the made-to-order process and hand stitching finishing makes the price so expensive that less people can afford it.

 

Another example of slow fashion, Honest by is a company that first offers a 100 percent transparent on-line shopping experience to the world in 2012 by means of sharing all the manufacturing and material information to their customers. On their website it state its philosophy that “We believe Fashion is about beauty and that the story behind fashion can be equally beautiful. We want to give our customer the opportunity to shop with complete awareness of what they are buying. We want to produce all of our products in a life friendly way. We believe in the health of our clients skin. We want the impact of our products and activities on the environment and human health to be as small as possible”. (Honest by, “About | Honest by”) Apparently, slow fashion has a strong connection with slow food movement, as you can easily see from the website, all products are categorized with the tags like organic, vegan, and skin friendly, recycled. We can perceive the major idea of the company from the interview with Bruno Pieters, the founder and the designer of Honest by, that he stated that “We offer vegan styles for everyone who wants to wear clothes that are free of any animal involvement in the production process. This is something that I want to develop further in the upcoming Honest by Bruno Pieters collections because it’s not easy to find organic vegan clothing. We don’t demand this from the designers we work with though. However, we will never stock leather or fur products”. (Kelly, “POST LAUNCH INTERVIEW WITH BP. | News | Honest by”) With the growing concern about the environment, customers now pay more attention on details such as “Where the materials come from?”, “How does the products are made?”, and “Is the whole production process environment friendly?” That is why they are willing to pay more to support the concept.

 

By Walid is a hi-end fashion brand based in London that caught my attention because of the idea behind it is actually really much like slow fashion by means of using only antique fabrics like French cotton crochet, beautifully worn linen, silk tulle, leather and recycled furs. Every garment is unique and very exclusive. What I think the strongest point of his work is that he combines the vintage handcrafted textile with the very contemporary look that is very rear, appealing their customer with a low key but luxury image. Walid al Damirji, the designer of By Walid, said in a interview that “A sense of romance and history and each garment tells a story and you look at a garment and think, “Oh my God, this is a bodice from an 18th century dress and this is beading from a 19th century whatever it may be.” It is wonderful”. (Khalifa, “Interview: Walid Damirji of By Walid | Style.com/Arabia”) Compared with not so original garment decoration or details of fast fashion brands, the handcrafted embroideries and beadings are more attracted for the customers who are tired of fast fashion.

In conclusion, I would like to restate that slow fashion movement has been arisen due to the national wise impact of over producing and consuming that fast fashion caused, and we should pay more attention on all aspects on what we are buying, wearing, and using. We should have wider consideration of what materials are made of and what impact that it will result on the environment and the society. In addition, there is always social context behind everything we do and what we buy, as to the relationship of how Internet affects our shopping habit. As well as the companies and groups such as Honest by and By Walid, are involved in the slow movement, trying to make people think of making a more sustainable, environment friendly world. In my opinion, slow fashion now is just at its beginning to make its voice to public, I can foresee in the future that there might be a slow fashion store like Whole Food which is an example of slow food movement, and I hope it will not just be another trend and lose its original intention.

Honest by. ” About | Honest by “, Web. 4 Mar. 2014. <http://www.honestby.com/en/page/16/about.html >.

Kelly, Keira. ” POST LAUNCH INTERVIEW WITH BP. | News | Honest by ” , Web. 4 Mar. 2014. <http://www.honestby.com/en/news/5/post-launch-interview-with-bp.html.

Khalifa, Raya Al. ” Interview: Walid Damirji of By Walid | Style.com/Arabia ” Web. 4 Mar. 2014. <http://arabia.style.com/fashion/faces_of_fashion/by-walid/ >.