This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
“I have nothing to wear,” I complain to my closet every morning, despite the fact that the closet is filled with rows of stacked clothes.
Finding faults in every piece of clothing I own is a routine. Like many of my fellow Gen Zers, curating the perfectly coordinated outfit can consume hours, sometimes days, only for us to throw up our hands, arriving at the conclusion that we simply do not have enough clothes.
Not coincidentally, fast fashion brands are rising in popularity among Gen Z consumers. The industry continues to grow, fueled by our generation’s desire to stay “drippy” and trendy. “Massive Haul” videos, created by YouTube or TikTok content creators fresh off a “successful” shopping trip, celebrate this trend — they usually feature 20–50 pieces of clothing bought at once — motivating young shoppers to buy from brands that often have insanely cheap tags, but questionable ethics.
While we may think that a piece is cheap on the rack, the real price is paid elsewhere: in its contribution to the climate crisis. The fashion industry is among the most significant contributors to climate change today, fueled in large part by fast fashion. If Gen Z is serious that its biggest concern is climate change, our generation will need to rethink its enthusiastic relationship with these brands.
Fast Fashion Media Bombards Us and Swells Gen Z Closets
The term “fast fashion” emerged in the 1990s to describe bands such as ZARA and Express, which employed manufacturing and designing methods that made and put clothes up for sale in less than 15 days. Cheap tags on fast fashion attracted more buyers. The brands rely on the media, fashion trends, and the perception of exclusivity to create urgency in shopping environments; they create what is known as “artificial scarcity,” telling consumers that a piece of clothing is only available for a limited time, or is a limited edition. Buyers then scramble to buy that piece, even though they may never wear it.
Today, it’s simple economics: the supply of such clothes is increasing in part because the demand for cheap clothes is increasing, fueling a vicious cycle of overproduction and overconsumption.
While the fast fashion model has been in the U.S. for decades, social media has taken it to a whole new level. In “massive haul” videos, a content creator buys a ton of clothing at once. Often these come from fast fashion brands; influencers will spend over $300 on 30 pieces, making everything $10! They also suggest to their audience that buying dozens of clothing items in one shopping trip is normal and something we all should do.
These “massive haul” videos enforce the idea that the more you buy, the trendier you’ll be. One such popular brand that is flaunted all over the internet is Shein: viewers of these videos see quantity and price, not quality and ethics. Influencer posts have fashion brands written all over them, making it hard for viewers not to find these things attractive.
For Gen Z, this cycle is the day-to-day reality on social media — except many are not aware of the harm that one photo with a $10 fit, repeated many thousands of times over, begins to bring to the environment.
Modern-day fast fashion is a direct threat to sustainability and humanity. The UN Conference on Trade and Development has stated that the fashion industry is believed to be the second most polluting industry in the world. It produces over $500 billion in waste from underutilized and not used clothing every year, and produces 20% of total global wastewater. It produces up to 10% of global carbon emissions, according to the UN — a figure that, astoundingly, is more than maritime shipping and international air travel. (Not only is fast fashion harmful to the environment, but it also often relies on a supply chain that includes cheap and exploitative labor, found in developing countries.)
Somehow, these conversations — our reliance on fast fashion brands and our fear about our climate future — rarely overlap. I put out a call on social media for other Gen Zers who wanted to speak with me about how they deal with mainstream fast fashion and the world of “drip or drown” slogans that motivate unethical consumption.
The Dreaded Label of ‘Outfit Repeater’ and the Pursuit of Drippiness
“Pretty much everyone I know shops fast fashion, because of how accessible it is,” says Natalia Gevara, one 23-year-old shopper I connected with. A primary driver, she says, is the common taboo among younger people of “outfit repeating,” which is exactly what it sounds like: repeating the same outfit twice, often in the same month or week. However, the term is widely used when people simply re-wear a clothing item.
“Whenever I think about outfit repeating, I think of the Lizzie McGuire movie when Lizzie gets shamed by Kate at her graduation for being an ‘outfit repeater,’” Gevara continued. “I feel like repeating outfits as a taboo is something ingrained into us from a young age via media.”
While the Lizzie McGuire reference comes from an early 2000s show that was, at the time, poking fun at those who criticize others for repeating an outfit, it’s become a very real fear for Gen Zers in the era of “massive haul” videos. Even though most of us are (and should be!) outfit repeaters, the shame of doing so is increasingly the reason why younger generations have embraced fast fashion.
“Haul videos on social media are the most obvious way influencers push fast fashion, but there are also subtler ways,” says Clare Ashcraft, a 19-year-old I spoke with. “For example, there’s a trend about how to dress for your body type right now that is encouraging people to change their whole wardrobes.”
The concept of “drippiness” favors micro internet trends, and since they are micro, their hype eventually fades, and so does the appeal of the product. (“Drip,” coined in hip hop, is now used by younger generations to say that a clothing item has a trendy cool appearance. If a person has a good outfit, you might say, for example, “you got drip.”)
“Our view of good style is predicated on what new micro trend is going around,” says Gevara. Micro trends, she continues, “have been one of the worst things to come from social media, every week there is a new fashion trend, inevitably everyone buys it.”
For some Gen Zers, enthusiasm for fast fashion may not be ignorance so much as resignation: They don’t think it makes much of a difference whether they buy from fast fashion brands. “I think a lot of people are at least somewhat aware of the impacts of fast fashion but are under the impression that abstaining from shopping from there will have little impact in the long run,” says Gevara.
Recognizing that the issue is one thing; taking personal and systemic steps to address it is another. That’s true of fast fashion, but also any number of other conversations on climate change: Ensuring that we all take ownership will be the only way we can combat this.
A Call for Sustainable Fashion
There’s a term for alternatives to fast fashion: “slow fashion,” which proposes ethically sourced and made clothing, that will change the fast-paced environment of fashion today. Of course, it could take years, maybe even decades to fully fix the problem we’ve started. But there are personal steps consumers can take to address and combat unethical fashion.
First, probably the most obvious, is not shopping from these brands. (Trust me, I know it seems hard when everyone has jumped on the bandwagon! But doing this one person at a time will help reduce the overproduction by these companies.)
Secondly, if you already own something from a fast fashion brand, don’t throw it away. In fact, never throw away your clothes. Donating items to a thrift store or charity will allow for a product to have more use, thus decreasing overconsumption. If you regularly buy from these companies look to thrift stores to find similar styles at cheaper tags.
Changing the narrative on outfit repeating will need to be done through social media; making versatile styles acceptable will slowly change the way we think. There is so much that we can do to hold ourselves and those around us accountable, but all of us, not just Gen Z, will need to start asking more questions. Questioning where these products are made, who makes them, and what is in them is key to changing the direction we are headed.
I know I’m out of touch … I never was involved with “fashion” myself, being built wrong and insufficiently wealthy. Is it still predominantly a female preoccupation? And, if so, is there any way to reach the willing participants? How about reducing the profitability for the perps by adding taxes that make this cheap stuff too expensive?
I would like to see the workers paid properly!
The popular item for males who are fashionistas (fashionistos?) are the designer shoes. Those are really expensive (for the purchaser). But I guess the production is still based on cheap labor.
I have learned a new word today, “drippy.” And I have learned that I’m an outfit repeater.
There’s an ellipse here, which is mention that fast fashion is nothing new, which makes the whole piece seem breathlessly somewhat inward looking and irrelevant.
Fast fashion has long been with us, esp. for women’s clothing. Numerous chains sold cheap knock-offs of popular fashions that lasted as long as the fashions themselves. This peaked during the boomer era because teens and young women represented such a huge market for this stuff and malls were filled with stores that sold it. Once these young women got older they wanted something else—things that were better quality, less about rapidly changing styles. They also were entering the workforce and needed to dress a little better. Chains like Petries (which owned a ton of these cheap fashion stores under various names) went into decline and more expensive stores with better quality replaced them. Styles also became more conservative—clothing you could wear to work. Jeans stores, often selling cheap knockoffs also prospered in this era until people had all then jeans they wanted—Gap, which now struggles, was the one survivor of that era. Traditional menswear was somewhat different—white collar workers needed a jacket and tie if not a suit and there were lots of stores like Richman Brothers that sold cheap suits–as workplace dress codes changes, these places vanished. So, fast forward to the boomers’ kids—lots of them grew-up at the same time and needed cheap stylish clothes–so we got H&M and all the rest. And now, these people are getting older and recognizing they need something different and the whole fast fashion thing is cratering, again. Nothing new here. The only real difference is that malls have died and many of the places to get better clothes are online. Also, there is a whole ecosystem of off-price retail that gets some of the better stuff (or cheaper versions as in Nordstrom Rack and there has been a resurgence of interest in second hand stores. The smart money would have known that when fast fashion was surging, it was time to think about what happens when its customers get older and it crashes.