Cheap Clothes, High Costs: Individual Choices Can’t Thread the Needle on Fast Fashion

We’re on the heels of New York Fashion Week—a display of the latest fashion trends that can travel from the runway to outlet malls in the blink of a cerulean eye. And though the dupes will be cheaper and more accessible to the average buyer, the fast fashion pipeline places substantial costs on the environment and worker dignity.

As a Saturday Night Live sketch from a few months ago captured well, knowledge of those abuses isn’t enough to slow fast fashion down. In the fake ad for “Xiemu,” a not-so-subtle combination of ultra-fast fashion giants Shein and Temu, a model in the ad asks,“How so cheap?” “Don’t worry about it,” the narrator quickly snaps. Xiemu assures prospective customers its clothing is “not made with forced labor . . . no prisoners involved,” prompting a nervously giggling Jake Gyllenhaal to ask, “Did there used to be or something?” But despite all the red flags, when the Xiemu narrator asks if the models would stop buying, they all say no.

Modern discourse, like this SNL sketch, often puts the blame for the popularity of fast fashion on the shoulders of individuals: It’s TikTok, it’s the youth, it’s influencers, all making bad choices even when they know the fashion industry is riddled with abuses. We ask shoppers, “will you stop buying it?” rather than asking corporations “will you stop producing it?” 

Even if individuals choose to stop buying fast fashion, little will change without deeper structural reforms that address the dark compromise of the industry: rapid production cycles for clothing that mimics luxury designs at low prices. The cost of that mimicry is high. Human rights abuses, modern slavery, and unsafe and unhealthy working conditions are rampant, along with substantial environmental harm and a significant decline in the overall quality of clothing. As of 2019, the garment industry accounted for 10 percent of annual global emissions, more than airlines and maritime shipping combined. 

A recent video from More Perfect Union describes the switch fast fashion giants like Zara and Abercrombie have made from high-quality linens to cheaper, less sustainable, synthetic fibers: “In the 2000s, you had four distinct buying options ranging in price and quality: high fashion or luxury brands, department stores, mall brands and fast fashion. But these days, it kind of feels like the bottom of this pyramid has collapsed and everything’s a little cheaper and shittier.”

In the last two years, Chinese brands Shein and Temu have seen a meteoric rise in popularity and become the poster children of fast fashion: In 2023, Shein accounted for nearly 40 percent of total fast fashion spending in the US, and Temu became the most downloaded Apple Store app. That same year, 40 percent of US consumers and 26 percent of UK consumers shopped at either retailer. A US House Committee report estimated that over 30 percent of all duty-free shipments of under $800 in 2022 came from just these two companies. 

But the problem can’t be blamed on China’s overproduction and dumping alone. The reality is that Shein and Temu’s business practices are simply following historic industry trends that date back decades—if not centuries—across the globe. To truly address the harms of fast fashion, we must first understand how this global industry developed in ways that evade straightforward policy fixes and make individual action less effective.

Fast fashion is a product of global industry and economy-wide trends

In the 1960s, the typical American household bought an average of 25 garments a year. Of those, over 95 percent were manufactured in the United States. Today, households buy on average 68 garments a year, only for most of them to end up in a landfill shortly thereafter. From 2000 to 2014, the number of clothing garments purchased per capita increased by 60 percent.

The shift toward fast fashion production methods began in the 1970s, as American and European companies began offshoring production to Asia, where labor costs were much lower, while keeping design and distribution domestic. This coincided with the enactment of free trade deals that rapidly expanded imports, including in textile and apparel. Between the 1970s and mid-90s, half of global apparel manufacturing capacity shifted from high-income countries to less-developed countries, such as China, Mexico, and Indonesia. The average wage for an apparel worker in Honduras, for example, was just 10 percent of a comparable worker in the US.

To cut production costs and timelines, companies slashed material quality and exploited their few remaining domestic workers. Between 1973 and 1996, domestic textile and apparel employment in the industry dropped 39 percent, nearly five times the decline across all manufacturing. In 1990, median wages in the textile industry were about $7.70 per hour, a 15 cent increase in real terms since 1961. Union density fell from more than 50 percent to 10 percent over the same period. Apparel manufacturers that kept production domestic increased offshore textile sourcing.

Over this period, the industry rapidly industrialized as new technology was implemented. Garment and textile manufacturers were able to produce much more, much faster. The term “fast fashion” was first used by the New York Times in 1989 and referred to certain companies’ emphasis on streamlining the production process, getting from design to market as quickly as possible. This approach accelerated fashion cycles; rather than following the four seasons, today’s brands can have upwards of 52 “mini-cycles” a year, or one per week. 

Prior to Shein’s meteoric rise, Fashion Nova, Forever 21, Zara, H&M, and Asos—all American and European brands—enjoyed a fair share of popularity in the US fashion market by employing the same techniques. These companies all operate with the same methods: offshore or underpay labor and minimize production costs at every step of the process to increase production speed, all at the expense of quality and workers’ dignity. In the last two decades, numerous American companies have been cited on multiple occasions for labor violations and environmental harms perpetrated at home and abroad. 

That last part is key: Labor and environmental harms from fast fashion are not just a result of offshoring manufacturing to Asia. Though some have suggested onshoring manufacturing back to the US would be more sustainable for the environment and better for workers, there’s plenty of evidence that these days US companies will make exploitative choices even when products are made in the US.  

For instance, JCPenney and Victoria’s Secret have exploited US prison labor to produce their clothing—a practice that pays incarcerated workers as little as 23 cents an hour. A case study by scholars at the University of Minnesota also found that while leggings manufactured in the US were more environmentally sustainable compared to leggings manufactured in Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan factories were more economically sustainable, because Sri Lankan workers made middle-class wages.   

Meanwhile, Fashion Nova, like many other fast fashion companies, does not produce its own clothing. Instead, the company relies on external manufacturers or suppliers, which allows consumer-facing brands to reap the benefits of exploitative labor practices while evading the liability. In 2019, the Labor Department found that Fashion Nova contracted manufacturers whose workers produced clothing for wages as little as $2.77 per hour—not abroad, but in Los Angeles, California.  

The structure of the industry has globalized low-road business practices abroad and on our own shores. Fashion corporations have purposefully developed a business model of spreading operations across multiple manufacturers, suppliers, and nation-states, in ways that evade easy policy solutions. Structural reforms to the industry thus must combine domestic and international policy, as well as requiring corporations to adopt high-road practices wherever they manufacture their clothes. 

A thorny problem without an easy fix

Despite what SNL may have you believe, consumers and textile workers in the US and abroad would like to quit fast fashion. Nearly 80 percent of young consumers say they are willing to pay more for sustainable products. Much like in the fight against climate change, individual choices can help—but they’ll never be enough to solve the problems of a global industry. We need to seriously consider the role that corporations play in maintaining unsustainable and harmful practices in the fashion industry.  Government policies that address the core issues could help move us closer to a solution.

Subsidizing domestic, sustainable textile manufacturing and production, and strengthening unions and labor protection laws can begin to rein in the unscrupulous corporate practices in the industry. In 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Garment Worker Protection Act to enforce an hourly minimum wage and raise standards for workers in California. At the federal level, several proposals to address the industry’s issues have been put forward. First, the Fashioning Accountability and Building Real Institutional Change Act (FABRIC Act) seeks to mandate domestic minimum wage standards, enhance factory worker protections, and revitalize incentives targeted at domestic manufacturing. The bipartisan Americas Act would establish textile recycling programs and build regional trade partnerships to incentivize circular manufacturing on this side of the Pacific. Recently, Congress has formed the “Slow Fashion Caucus” to promote a domestic sustainable fashion industry.  

Broader trade policy reforms, such as eliminating de minimis exemptions, have bipartisan support in Congress. Currently, the de minimis value for imports from China is $800, meaning any import under that threshold is not subject to duties. While removing this loophole and increasing tariffs on apparel imports from China might weaken Shein and Temu’s foothold in the US, the impacts would be limited, since companies are likely to continue shifting manufacturing locations across Asia to new countries with similarly low-cost labor. Policies that focus solely on China ultimately fail to grapple with the global scale of this industry’s issues. 

In 2005, the WTO completed its 10 year phase-out of Multifiber Arrangements (MFA)—a system of quotas that attempted to limit fabric imports from developing countries, specifically Japan. These quotas were undercut by the exact loopholes described above. Production moved from countries targeted by the MFA, such as Japan, to those not targeted, like Thailand and Indonesia. Second, firms based in targeted countries began production in developing countries not targeted by the MFA. Country-specific quotas and tariffs have been tried in the past, and have failed to address the underlying issues of the industry.

Fully addressing the various issues of fast fashion would involve fundamentally changing the power structures in place that make exploitation and environmental degradation lucrative. Policies that incentivize a more circular economy, curtail anticompetitive practices, and increase transparency across the supply chain are positive steps that begin to address fast fashion’s root causes. 

Renewed interest in thrifting, mending, and sustainability suggest there is appetite among American consumers to support a more sustainable and ethical fashion industry. But until corporations feel pressure to rethink their business practices from the bottom up—prioritizing sustainability and worker dignity around the world—these fashion behemoths are unlikely to change their ways any time soon.