Thoughts on "Cheap" clothes and fast fashion
What's y'alls ethical consensus on fast fashion? I was recommended to make this a thread here.
I'm in France and I've been wearing clothes from various brands you'd call cheap that also happen to manufacture their products in Asia. Clothes that actually last more than one season and are made well enough but probably by underpaid workers. For example, the brands of the group "Jules".
I kinda feel bad about it but at the same I can't afford stuff made in Europe (or at least to have my whole wardrobe be like that) and thrift shops in my area have stupid high prices for what they sell so that's somewhat out of the equation. Wondering how many of y'all are/have been in the same situation and if you might have any tips. thanks 🙂
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I wish they made something like a "verified not slave labor" tag on clothes checked by a third party organization haha
obviously everything made in China isn't made in bad conditions, it's just so so difficult to know
Ethics in fashion is a bit of a meme topic around here. Ultimately my thoughts come down to I buy mostly used, and I buy what I think I'm going to wear.
I avoid the obvious offenders (shein, AliExpress, etc.) but at a certain point it's not worth the mental strain to me to audit every brand I buy a t shirt from
i have no qualms abt buying uniqlo mrsp but i also basically do all my other shopping second hand
Articles of Interest - Inside the Factory episode is a good look at what some of the challenges are with third party certifications
i dont think about the ethics as much as i probably should. that being said, i generally avoid most fast fashion and 'cheap' clothes if i can help it (the exception is if i really just need something at the last minute). most things that i get bored of are either donated or sold, so i guess at least im not just throwing stuff away? i will say that moving away from fast fashion and trying to make less impulse purchases has been helpful since the clothes i do end up buying are things that last a while and i actually wear them more than once or twice before getting rid of them
I think it depends on your usage case, right?
I think for the average person it’s about just trying to make more considered purchases.
Do you need this item? Are you going to make use of it lots?
Not everyone can afford expensive clothes, but everyone does actually need clothes - so it’s about being more mindful of what you purchase and how you use it.
Regardless of whether you buy from a fast fashion brand or a more…slow brand, if you’re buying 50 pieces a month then it doesn’t really matter all that much because you’re still consuming a ton of stuff, and at some point it does come down to how you as an individual make use of it
I think a big step in "being into clothes" is knowing when you're buying cheaply vs buying because it's cheap.
I grew up broke, and still largely shop like I am. If local thrift stores are overpriced, there's mountains fo stuff online, and buying second hand will almost always get you better clothes for less money.
I'd also advice learning some really basic stitching so you can patch up things that went on a huge discount because they have a small, easy to fix tear or the like..
There are actually some decent sellers making quality clothing and other stuff on Ali Express, just takes a bit of homework.
shopping secondhand honestly gets easier and easier the more into designer & high end you are since it's essentially the only way to get things affordably
so it was easy for me to just shop secondhand for non designer items as well
my mom grew up buying secondhand clothing for me (i didn't realize it but she put me into some banger fits) and for a few years when i was young i didn't like wearing used stuff but i quickly came back around on it and thrifted a lot, as did my siblings
my brother wears thirfted stuff for like 80% of his wardrobe and mine is a mix between secondhand designer and thrifted
we are both very common sizes though so it's easier for us than most ppl
I 'm french as well and I can't in good conscience call Jules "made well enough". It's in the exact same ballpark as Zara and H&M.
tbf I haven't seen a single piece from them age poorly
it's very much a shitty soulless corporate brand but it's not like their clothes are awful quality
I read somewhere recently that in France the second hand market is not good, since the norm is to pay for quality and wear it until it wears out. I don't know for certain that's true, and it's a very broad generalization.
I feel like second hand in the US is really good, and a lot of fun, but maybe that isn't a good option for you.
When I was shopping in France, it seemed to me that the everyday brands were better than what you get in the US, but I may have been romanticizing.
I think one ethical stance that is easy to achieve is: buy clothes you like, and wear them. Don't buy things just because they are cheap, wear them a few times, and throw them away.
I like theidea of paying for quality, but that is a choice and a privilege. It also presupposes you know what you want and make good choices, and I know that's not true for me because fashion is a new interest, and I'm still learning.
There's been a big Vinted second-hand market in France developing for a few years now, but it's extremely women-dominated, the guys haven't really caught up that much yet.
But yeah the in-person thrifting game is not there yet as well
BUT if you leave the big french cities and go to countryside thrift/goodwill/red cross/etc stores, there's some hidden gold there
Like everyone else has said secondhand is the way to go. Fashion supply chains are notoriously hard to follow, so any brand that claims to be transparent or green you just have to take their word for it. It's also never going to be sustainable making enough clothes for everyone on the planet. At the same time there's an insane amount of waste, mountains of clothes go into the dump every year.
is vinted in france really that women focused? german vinted has gotten so much better over the last couple years and plenty guys are selling their clothes as well.
whenever I have a look at french vinted it looks quite good
In 2019 it was 90/10% in favor of women
but obv male users are increasing rapidly
right now it might be 70/30
One consignment store here has 15 so racks for women's and 1 rack for all the men's clothes together 😆
I like stores that play the game fully and just put everything together
and let the customer do the sorting by themselves
much more interesting that way
i like stores that mix the two because lots of ppl end up finding women's pieces they like and that fit and vice versa
to do that effectively u gotta sort by measurements tho which can be a pain
there's this initiative called Vinokilo, it'sz a travelling thriftstore that visits different european cities with their stock
you buy clothes by weight rather than individual pricings
it's so cool
oh wow that's wild
you can even bring back your old clothes and "sell them" (also by weight) to gain a coupon to use in
(they don't take fast fashion back)
Now you mention it my Swiss relatives go to that
I'd like the opposite, clothes sorted to obsessive levels like some vintage in Tokyo: US university shirt section arranged by color
like a kilo of clothes will cost you around 40€, but if you bring back a kilo of clothes you get an 8€ coupon
That I dig a lot
but either complete chaos or obsessive sorting
the in-between is clearly the less interesting option imho
shopping in TK/TJ Maxx is fucking chaotic enough
Nothing original but might as well add some thoughts I've seen here, from my neighbors, on Style & Direction, etc, to add to what jfarrel said:
- buy as many clothes as you can to last as long as possible, like actually think of things you'll want to still have in 20, 30 or more years when you're that much older, at least for some categories
- it's not like clothing used to always be better, but clothes that have survived for several decades already have proven themselves and may last for decades more to come
- sometimes old clothes actually were longer lasting by being more heavy duty than we're used to etc, if you can put up with that go for it
uhhhhh what's that phenomenon called
survivorship bias
re: survivorship bias; usually people think of high-quality clothes as made out natural materials but so many of 70s/80s/90s synthetic clothes have survived to this day.
Yep
Survivorship bias is your friend 
That's why BIFL doesn't make sense for clothes, shitty plastic is still gonna outlive you
They have a place. There are people who have very low disposible income, and they want to try out different kinds of clothes to see what they like/dont like before they invest into better quality pieces.
But past a point, if you disposible income, you care about fashion and you already have the basics, quality >>> quantity.
that polyester jacker from the 90's is gonna shed microplastics in the environment longer than the average lifespan at birth 🤔
tbh as someone who cares about fashion and already has the basics, I don't care about either quality or quantity. I just buy shit i like very slowly, 1-2 pieces a month
buying for quality, no matter how much cash you have, is an extremely boring approach to fashion imo