Fast Fashion: Expectations For American Consumers

Saying it “is all about 'investment dressing' - buying one piece and loving it for a long time”. (Siegle, 8) When buying a product the shopper should not be afraid to spend a little extra cash so it won’t have to be disposed in a few months time. Making more of a relationship to care for what is in their possession. And repair the clothes they have since “just 2 per cent of the average clothing budget goes on services that repair or lengthen the lifespan of our garments and accessories”. (Siegle, 9) She goes over how the more you buy fast fashion the higher the price and the cheaper the material will be. Ending up in the garbage and repeating the cycle of devastating effects on the

This leads them to become brand conscious and focus more on the newest clothes and latest trends. To prove his argument, the author refers to David Elkind’s (a psychologist) study “The hurried child”. According to Elkind this “hurried child” is under a constant pressure to buy branded products, and is forced to act like an adult and hold a level of sophistication that is beyond its years.

In the following I explore how myth has been used to position Abercrombie and Fitch clothing in the market.

This papers purpose is to teach fashion heavy consumers on the real price of fast fashion and how buying it affects the environment. This type of audience can be anyone who partakes in the buying of well-known cheap retail stores that have a large audience of being fast and obtainable. These consumers should have the information on how fast fashion effects are environment so it could possibly alter their buying habits to be eco-friendlier but buying either less or more sustainable clothing instead of the cheap alternatives. This audience should care about this purpose because this will affect the world now and for future generations as their environment is being mistreated because of these fast

Amancio Ortega, the founder of Inditex, thought that customers would regard clothes as perishable commodities, no different from yogurt or bread to be consumed rather than stored in closets, and has gone about building a retail business that provides freshly baked clothes. Fast fashion is the evolution from the business model from the 80’s - a quick response in fashion that was applied very

Credibility statement: A university of Georgia professor gave an hour-long ted talk talking about her experiences of working and traveling to different countries seeing the fast fashion industry at first hands. She now teaches about fashion sustainability and the cycles of the fast fashion market.

Transition: Now that let’s discuss how the fast fashion impacts and how it can be solved.

“The era of the $4.99 dress is not going to last forever,” according to Elizabeth Cline, the author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. The people of America have jumped from making their own clothes by hand to shopping in huge malls filled with tons and tons of up-to-date clothing. America’s view on clothing, however, is starting to experience a change. People are starting to see the dark side of cheap fashion. The people of the United States views on clothing, fashion, and labor have changed over the past century due to the poor treatment and conditions the workers are facing.

Teri Agins, a senior writer at the Wall Street Journal, has publications in the Journal and wrote in 1999 The End of Fashion. Agins’ book gives a true overview of the fashion industry from the origin of Haute Couture to prêt-à-porter to mass-market consumption. Her focus is on marketing and uses Armani, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karen, Marshall Fields and Gap to demonstrate “(from) class to mass, (from) elitism to democratization; (from) art to commodity.” This is perfectly showed in a paragraph from Agins

The constant churn of new trends means that consumers have grown dissatisfied with what they already have. Cline herself looked at her clothing collection and found she had 354 garments in her closet. “61 tops, 60 T-shirts, 15 cardigans and hooded sweatshirts, 21 skirts and 20 pairs of shoes, most of which I never wear.” Reading this made me examine my own wardrobe. I thought surely I don't own that much. Shockingly, I have 12 jackets, 23 bottoms, 71 shirts 19 dresses and 13 pairs of shoes. That’s a lot of clothing, yet I still find myself complaining that I have nothing to wear nearly every time I go out. This is an effect of the fashion industry teaching us that we need more clothing than we actually do. One of H&M’s major selling ploys is advertising that they have new stock every day. So naturally people go into the store to check it out. Then we notice the low price. With a deal like that we can't say no and we buy it. Just like that all of us have fed billions of dollars annually to stores that encourage waste. Mass produced clothing is generally poor quality due to manufacturers cutting corners to lower cost and raise profit. As a culture we need to relearn valuing quality over quantity if we want to see a change in the garment

The trendy apparel that stores offer to the public makes a person have the ability to be fashionable since it can be adapted to our own preferences, and it also shows how companies influence people through the way they dress. Clothing companies among others create and implant images into people’s minds that insinuate that consumers should follow in order to be able to fit in the society that is shaped by the beliefs of corporations and industries. While it should be okay for fashion to be promoted since it is a way to express oneself, it is important to note the ways how companies advertise clothing and current fashions, since it reflects how our products are carefully designed to control our

Growing trends towards contemporary apparel and accessories: customers started to look for practical and wearable items in everyday life rather than expensive statement outfits.

The retail giant “Abercrombie & Fitch” (A&F) have produced their casual clothing products based towards the younger consumer base for decades. Abercrombie & Fitch originally built its business plan, “plan around what had been called the sexualized marketing of young, beautiful, and barely clothed models whose sculpted torsos and suggestive postures hinted at an anything-goes party scene” (Olson). This type of marketing consistently kept the company in hot water making the average consumer think as if they are not good enough for the A&F clothes and style.

For almost twenty years now, people have been relying on fast fashion, a fairly new notion, which

Social and cultural changes are major determinants of emerging fashions. However, they are themselves affected by the other drivers of change that include globalization of world markets and accessibility of more sophisticated communications technologies. The latter has provided people with faster and wider access to more ideas and influences from other cultures and societies, driving demand for wider choice in fashion products.