Fast Fashion: A Faux-Pas - Hazel Lee

What springs to mind when you hear the word fashion? A world that you are deeply invested in or one you don’t understand? Do you merely throw your clothes on in the morning without a second glance or are your outfits a carefully curated collection of Instagram-ready pieces?

Wherever you stand on fashion, it’s inescapable. Our clothes are often the first thing that people notice about us, described as an ‘instant language’ by Miuccia Prada1. Fashion shows other people who we are - our wealth, our culture, even our beliefs. Our increasingly consumer-driven society encourages us to spend our money, all the time. Adverts tell us that we’ll be happier, more attractive and more fulfilled the more we own, and the fashion industry is at the forefront of this bombardment. There’s no way that we can escape our clothes, so it’s time we educated ourselves on the truth of what we wear.

My journey with fashion

I was never particularly someone who cared about fashion until I got to secondary school, simply wearing whatever I liked. However, as I entered the body image conscious world of the teenage years, clothes began to be something that I really cared about, and weekend shopping trips with my mum or my friends became pretty common. It was even better if the clothes were cheap – after all, the most important thing was keeping up with the ever-changing trends! I began to buy from cheap online brands, returning package after package because things didn’t fit or suit me. It was like the more I had, the more I wanted; but I felt like I never had anything to wear.

When I got to uni, however, budgeting quickly became an issue. I stopped buying new clothes regularly because I couldn’t afford to, and at the same time I got increasingly interested in living more sustainably and learnt a lot about biblical social justice. I realised that if I truly cared about treating God’s world right, it wasn’t enough to recycle, eat less meat and turn off the lights - I needed to make more sustainable buying choices as well. Coupled with the amazing charity shop scene in Bristol making this possible, I began to make conscious choices about where I shopped, the clothes I bought and who had made them.

Why is the fashion industry unjust?

A few months ago, I watched a documentary with my housemates, called ‘The True Cost’. Whilst I knew that the fashion industry wasn’t particularly sustainable before, I had no idea quite how bad it was. Without wanting to bombard you with depressing fact after depressing fact (you should just watch the documentary!), the depth of suffering endured by the lowest paid workers is inhumane.

The reason that clothes from many high street brands are so cheap is because of exploitation and modern slavery in the poorest parts of the world. Garment workers are given obscenely low pay to work long hours in dangerous conditions, exemplified in the Rana Plaza disaster in Dhaka in 2013. The Rana Plaza building, containing 5 garment factories, collapsed. This killed at least 1,132 people and injured more than 2500. Even more worryingly, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 109 accidents have occurred since the Rana Plaza disaster, and the numbers don’t seem to be slowing down3. Even though garment workers have informed supervisors about the dangers of their working conditions, the huge corporations which employ them have refused to give any kind of assistance.

Garment workers are unable to form unions to pressurise their employers to change their working conditions. Their voices are supressed and ignored. They are forced to sacrifice their health, their family life and sometimes even their lives in order to make cheap clothes for people on the other side of the world who may well throw those clothes away without a second thought.

Why should Christians care?

As Christians, we know that every person was created in the image of God(Genesis 1.27). That includes garment workers in Bangladesh as much as it includes students in Bristol. If every human has inherent value to God, it is vital to treat everyone as such.

We also know that Jesus truly cared for and loved those who society ignored and even hated. When He spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4.1-26), He was speaking to someone who was probably excluded by her own community, and at the very least hated by Jewish society. He went against the boundaries of societal structure and social etiquette in order to show God’s love and compassion for the woman. If we want to live lives which emulate Jesus’ example, we have to speak up for those who cannot do so for themselves, because we know that that is what He would have done.

So what can we do?

Here’s some more practical advice on what you can do to help!

1. Education: It’s hugely important to educate ourselves. The more we understand what we wear and who made it, the more we can make better choices when we shop. As I’ve mentioned above, ‘The True Cost’ is an amazing documentary which gives a comprehensive insight into the injustices of the fashion industry. I’ve also been recently enjoying using an app called ‘Good on You’ which gives clear information about the sustainability of specific companies you buy from.

2. Buying: Learning to shop more sustainably can be super exciting and fun! Why not check out the charity shops on Gloucester Road, scroll through Depop or swap clothes with a friend? Or maybe even get crafty and customise some old tired clothes for a newer looking wardrobe.

3. Pressurising: How about writing to fast fashion companies, or calling them out on social media for their unfair practices? If you’d like some help with letter writing, myself and my housemates have been doing some recently in aid of Just Love – we’d be happy to help!