Why does Gen Z buy so much fast fashion if they’re so stressed about climate change?
- Fast-fashion companies like China’s Shein are getting bigger and bigger, suggesting Gen Z shoppers don’t walk the sustainability talk when it comes to clothes
- Last week, Brussels announced a new initiative whereby any clothes made or sold in the EU will have to be repairable and recyclable
In the past two decades, many of us have gone from saving up to buy clothes that we kept and treasured to consuming pieces designed to be ordered via mobile, worn a couple of times, paraded on social media once and then discarded by the end of the month.
Studies show that young women are some of the biggest culprits of fast-fashion culture – buying 50 to 60 items a year and not even wearing one in seven of them.
Already the largest online-only fashion brand in the world, Shein raised another US$1 billion or so in a funding round last week, according to reports, valuing the company at US$100 billion. By comparison, Inditex, which owns Zara, has a market cap of roughly US$68 billion.
The EU has decided enough is enough. Last week, Brussels announced plans to crack down on throwaway fashion with a new initiative whereby any clothes made or sold in the EU will have to be repairable and recyclable.
Quite what this means is still unclear – “and we don’t yet know whether there will be penalties for serial offenders, or incentives for good practice”, says Fashion Roundtable CEO Tamara Cincik. “But it is an exciting next step for circularity in the fashion industry.”
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But do Gen Z shoppers really need governments to wean them off the quick fix of a cheap dress?
“But it’s all wrong: if a piece of clothing is too cheap, then everyone along the supply chain was squeezed – the farmers, the factory owners, the workers, the shippers. No one has earned what they are worth. You are contributing to global poverty by buying that cheap shirt.”
This obsession with endlessly new, ever-more-affordable clothing is a blip in our increasingly woke world – one where Greta Thunberg is a figure of admiration among Gen Z, but where fast fashion is a forgotten black hole for the same age group.
Young people are buying more clothes – but this doesn’t yet have the social stigma of eating red meat or regularly flying long haul among this environmentally conscious generation.
That fast-fashion brands are making more money than ever shows that by highlighting the human cost, campaigners have been barking up the wrong tree.
If there is one cause Gen Z has pledged itself to, it’s climate change. Take veganism for example. Reports on animal welfare have been around since Linda McCartney, but once the impact of methane became common knowledge, the allure of the animal-free diet increased.
Can fast fashion get a similar treatment? Environmentally, it’s a disaster. Brands may not design their clothing to last, but the waste they create certainly does, and long after a glittery top gets thrown in the bin, the synthetic microfibres it took to make it will still be visible in the sea.
“Every survey we’ve done shows Gen Z cares about the environment above any other cause,” says MaryLeigh Bliss, head of content at youth consumer insights firm YPulse. “But equally, they’ve grown up in the shadow of a recession and are about to live through another one – and price is everything to them.
“The way I see it, you have two options if you want to shop for less. You buy fast fashion, or you buy second-hand. The latter has far less of an impact on the environment and I think increasingly more young people will turn to it.”
The popularity of pre-loved clothing, as it’s now called, has bloomed, leading to sharp growth for resale sites like Depop, which counted 30 million users in 2021 and was the 10th most-visited shopping site among Gen Z consumers in the US, according to reports. This has spurred on companies like H&M to create programmes that allow people to return clothing for a reward.
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“I believe things will shift – and soon,” says fashion consultant Mario Ortelli. “Gen Z will become more focused on the circular economy and will buy things they can resell – and we all know it’s impossible to resell a £5 [US$6.50] T-shirt.”
Lauren Bravo, the author of How to Break-up with Fast Fashion, agrees. “The fast-fashion bubble has to burst soon, as those Gen Z shoppers become more and more clued up about ethics and governments finally issue the sanctions and regulations on the industry that are so badly needed … and when that happens, it’ll be the brands who have built for a kinder, slower future that retain some loyalty. Or at least, I really, really hope so.”
Given the continuing rocket-like trajectory of Shein, the fight might be longer and harder than Brussels currently imagines.
