High-street stores get dressing down for glut of trends
A new book, To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World? is laying bare the effects of ‘fast fashion’ on our wardrobes, wallets and the world. With a wardrobe bulging with “mistakes, good buys, bad buys, comfort buys, drunk buys,” author Lucy Siegle reveals how the high street has made it possible for women to be stylish on a shoestring — but impossible to stay that way as it churns out new trends.
My wardrobe is a testament to her theory. A hodge-podge of high-street hits and misses amassed over 15 years, it’s bursting at the seams — yet I always seem to have ‘nothing to wear’.
I’ve had mixed success keeping up with micro-trends, so some of my best and most embarrassing high-street ensembles are from the same store.
The good? A cute, €20 floral-tea dress I’ve worn dozens of times. The bad and ugly? A tacky, orange, one-sleeved top (€15) and wet-look leggings (€15) that were out of fashion by the time I got back to the car — both outfits from Penneys.
“Over the past decade and a half, not only have we bought more at increasing speed, but our tastes have become increasingly homogenised,” says Siegle. “We now demand four times the number of clothes we would have in 1980 and spend at least €705 a year on clothes — and that’s just the average. In one year, we accumulate in the region of 28kg of clothing.
“The old way of buying clothes — in harmony with your income and the seasons — has nothing in common with the way we now consume. It’s become cool to trot about in worthless, disposable fashion,” she says of today’s cut-cost catwalk copies, which are as likely to be binned as repaired.
“We’ve swapped two wardrobe seasons a year for up to 20. You can change outfits four times a day, live the wardrobe life of a WAG, pretend you’re Lindsay Lohan if you so desire,” she says.
Slashing their ‘time to market’ — how long it takes to get an item from factory floor to shop floor, high-street giants like Topshop and Penneys fuelled the ‘fast fashion’ phenomenon.
By producing garments in smaller batches at dizzying rates, the industry’s ‘quick response’ has made it impossible to remain on-trend — yet made fashionistas more determined to be so.
“It’s the ultimate fashion question: ‘Am I on-trend?’,” says fashion blogger Lorna Claire Weightman of Styleisle.ie. “Producing as much clothes as quickly as their chain of supply will allow, high-street chains are making it very hard to keep up.
“But equally, with an insatiable appetite for the latest, hottest trends, shoppers are only feeding this vicious cycle. I have a personal style rule not to conform to everything on the high street,” she says. “My advice is to pick and choose the trends you like and which you can work into your current wardrobe.
“Don’t invest in trends that are likely to go out of fashion by the time you leave the shop. Instead, focus on key staples like a good pair of jeans or nice fitted blazer.”
But a wardrobe bulging with dodgy trends and storage issues is the least of the repercussions of ‘fast fashion’ says Siegle.
‘Big fashion’ is beleaguered by questions of how it keeps costs so low and production so fast — including the thorny issue of Asian sweat shops. Swamped by vast orders but slender deadlines from western companies, it’s alleged that garment workers face gruelling 15-hour shifts for as little as €1.12 a day — sometimes locked into the factory.
“Fashion’s engine is powered by a ‘cut, make and trim’ (CMT) army of around 40 million garment workers,” says Siegle. “Another estimated 30 million homeworkers — mostly women — bead, embroider and sew sequins on to garments. In luxury [fashion] the handworker is celebrated; in ‘big fashion’ she is an inconvenient truth.”
Retailers have come out fighting against any suggestion their practices are less than squeaky clean. Cheap-clothes leader Primark (branded Penneys in Ireland) declared a small victory when Panorama footage showing children sewing sequins on to Primark-branded clothing in Bangalore was found to be “more likely than not ... not authentic” by the BBC Trust. Do Irish women care about fairness in the production of fashion? “Unfortunately, fashion will always come first and ethics second — but Irish women are definitely warming to the idea of sustainable fashion,” says Kellie Dalton of Re-dress Better Fashion Week 2011, an ethical fashion event held in Dublin last month.
“In the current economic climate especially, even women who never shopped on the high street have developed a bargain mentality. The high street dominates the fashion industry here and it’s very hard for small designers to compete. If women are investing in a new dress or bag in the middle of a recession, they also want to be sure it’s going to last. Our pop-up shop with ethical Irish labels such as Una Burke and Natalie B Coleman was really popular and demand for our ongoing ‘upcycling’ classes is growing all the time. It’s a slow burn,” Dalton says of the sustainable fashion movement.
“But we’ve all got a part to play by buying Irish where we can and challenging the high street about where their product comes from and how it was made.”
* To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World? by Lucy Siegle is out now €14.99
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
