Why I'm Quitting Fast Fashion

For the past year or so, I’ve been thinking more deeply about the problem of fast fashion and the labour exploitation and ecological horror that ensue. It was spurred, in part, by the planned obsolescence built-into most of the clothing I've ever bought in my own lifetime. I have a few precious hand-me downs from my parents and grandparents from the 70s and 80s that are still in pretty good condition. But almost all of the clothes I’ve bought in the last decade? Completely falling apart — often less than a year after purchase. Clothes that come out of fast fashion factories (through no fault of the skilled workers who make them) are particularly difficult to keep in good repair by design.

The more I thought about this, the more I started thinking about my role in the global industrial fast fashion system. The more I read, the more I realised I was going to have to learn more about where I'm sourcing the textiles I wear, how ecologically sound the production methods are, how recyclable they are, and what the working conditions are like for the skilled workers or labourers making them. On top of that, if I was really serious about maintaining clothes for a long time, I was going to need to learn how to repair clothes properly, which is difficult, skilled work — at least to me. Not to mention that the garments made for fast fashion are absolutely not made with maintenance in mind.^[1] This is a massive international economic system that relies on every participant being cajoled and coerced into it. I’m tired of feeling like I have no choice but to participate in the exploitation of textile workers across the globe and the environmental degradation of our oceans and wildlife kin.

The more I thought about it, the more I knew this was going to mean a significant lifestyle change. So let’s break it down:

So that’s the rundown of my personal commitment to quit fast fashion. Before I sign off on this blog post, however, I want to make one thing perfectly clear and I hope you’ll hang out with me a little longer.

There is no such thing as ethical consumption in this current world order, that is to say, capitalism. I’m not doing this because I need the comfort of the thought that I’m doing something ethically or morally good. Even if I do all of this flawlessly, it will not make me good. Focusing one’s time and energy on one’s personal environmental impact, instead of collectively fighting corporations and governments, is actually arguably pretty selfish. Not to mention that to divest from fast fashion in a meaningful way means I am relying on class and economic privilege. Just a couple examples off the top of my head: I am not a parent, so I don’t need to figure out how to dress my growing children affordably. I am not an office worker, so I can get away with having one and a half sets of presentable business attire. And those are only two factors in play, there are many more!

The above is emphasized particularly because I do not want to invoke shame. In this case, I hope that this choice feels constructive and wondering of another way of being, rather than puritanically punitive, restrictive, or self-congratulatory. As I've written about before, I want to learn skills and craftsmanship that were tragically not passed down to me directly. One of my great-grandmothers (who passed away in 2018) left Colombia and worked as a seamstress in New York City for decades, my Italian great-grandmother (who passed away several decades ago) was an excellent embroiderer — her work is actually the image featured at the top of this text — and her son, my grandfather (who passed away in 2016) was an apprentice tailor when he left Italy after the war and came to Montréal, back when it was still the major industrial textile center of the continent. Understanding aspects of their craft and of their world just a little more, allows me to better understand them.