Fast fashion: an industry built on exploitation — Collective Fashion Justice (2024)

Fashion means different things to different people. A way to express their individuality,culture or creativity, fashion has been used throughout history by sections of society to set themselves apart from others. By looking at what someone is wearing we can identify things about that person: their personality, their taste and their wealth or social status. Fashion can signify individual expression and has artistic merit, but, it has, since theindustrial revolution, relied on extreme exploitation of enslaved people and then wage workers. It is an industry that exploits class, race, gender and species in pursuit of never ending profits.

The arrival of the coronavirus last year resulted in a number of fashion companies being exposed for refusing to pay their workers what was owed to them. This quite rightly drew attention to the exploitative practices that the fashion industry rely on in order to thrive. The global fashion industry is worth around$1.5 trillion dollars, making it one of the most profitable industries in the world. However who is it profitable for? Garment workers are overwhelmingly people of colour, and reportedly earn as little as $94 a month in Bangladesh and China around $332 a month.This is compared to the overwhelmingly white owners. Amancio Ortega, the founder of Zara, who is estimated by Forbes to be worth around$73.4 billion, and Philip Green, the owner of the Arcadia Group, who is reportedly worth around $2.4 Billion.

Capitalism and white supremacy

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels provided the most influential critique of capitalism in history, outlining the link between capitalism and the exploitation of workers from the creation of surplus value. This results in the worker receiving only a small proportion of the product of their labour, while capitalists gain more and more wealth. Capitalism relies on the exploitation of the working class to maximise profits. The link between capitalism and white supremacy has long been recognised, from slavery to colonialism, capitalist countries have relied on the extraction of resources and exploitation of Indigenous populations in order to build their economies. According to Harvard Professor Walter Johnson“there was no such thing as capitalism without slavery.”

The exploitative fashion industry today

Engels highlighted the gendered nature of exploitation in the fashion industry along with the extremely dire working conditions while recognising that the bourgeoisie are only able to wear exquisite clothing at the expense of thehealth of factory workers. Marx also had an extremelynegative view of the fashion industry. Even in Victorian England Marx called the fashion industry’s frequently changing styles“murderous”- with the creation of machines only increasing workers hardships further. Instead of being able to sell their labour they were forced to sell their labour power for wages.

This is even more extreme today. The industry now produces over150 billion clothes each year, with Zara alone creating 12,000 designs and sales from companies like PrettyLittleThing increasing, with the online retailerBoohoo making £60 million in profits last year. Due to the ever changing idea of what is in or out of style, people are less likely to keep their items for a long period of time. By offering clothes at extremely low prices, companies like Boohoo encourage consumerism and have changed the nature of the industry.No longer are people wearing the same coat for years, some are using an item forjust one night. Clothing is often seen as disposable.

Marx may have called the fashion industries caprices‘murderous’back in Victorian England - he would have been horrified at the turnover and exploitation today. In order to keep up with their own business model, the fast fashion industry is totally reliant on underpaying mostly poor women of colour in developing economies, forcing women with little to no choice to accept dangerous working conditions in order to survive. Fashion companies outsource manufacturing to underdeveloped economies to take advantage of lower production costs. Offshore outsourcing became more and more popular from the 70s onwards, which enabled companies to avoid higher production costs in their own countries while exploiting the lack of labour laws in others. Making it more and more likely workers manufacturing clothing are subjected to dangerous working conditions. The most devastating example being the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013 that killed 1,134 workers.

Racial capitalism is the‘commodification of nonwhites for social and economic gain’. The fashion industry does just that. With80% of garment workers in the world being women of colour, the entire industry could not operate without them. And yet, the majority of fashion CEOS are white men. The inequality shown in those who benefit from this industry and those that are exploited, is reminiscent of colonial models of exploitation.

Non-human exploitation

The fashion industry also relies heavily on the exploitation and oppression of non-human animals. From the production of goods using wool, fur, leather, silk, horn, and feathers, the industry uses animal body parts to create‘products’. The process of turning non human animals into fashion items to sell is a violent, labour intensive process. This is mostly carried out by workers in developing economies, who are subjected to violence that can have an impact on their mental health, while animals are tortured and murdered on a massive scale to produce these goods.

The process that turns cow skin (or other skins from deer, lamb, ostrich and more) into leather is called‘leather tanning’. It involves a number of highly toxic chemicals that not only harm people working in the production process but also damage the environment around the manufacturing site. These chemicals can causecancer,birth defects, infertility and respiratory illnesses. Regions that carry out the majority of this work - China, India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia - have high rates of water pollution and environmental degradation around these factories. The work is extremely dangerous, asworkers are at risk of chemical burns, injury from machinery, exposure to harmful acids and chemicals, drowning and even being boiled alive. Companies rely on countries with less developed labour laws and animal welfare regulations in order to produce these goods.

Fast fashion is at odds with justice

The racism in fashion can often be seen in the headlines. From Dolce & Gabbana producing adverts depicting Chinese people in anoffensive manner, toGucci selling products “glamorising” Blackface, the fashion industry demonstrates to us time and time again that racism is at the front of the industry. And despite new breakthroughs in diversifying - the success of Fenty Savage and the appointing of Virgil Abloh as the Director of Louis Vuitton Menswear - the entire industry relies on the exploitation of women of colour and remains unethical. The inclusion of Black brands may seem like a win for racial equality, but it doesn't mean that the brands are being produced in an ethical manner. Fashion remands dependent on the mass murder of non human animals, and the oppression of people of colour throughout the world. As a‘child of capitalism’, the fashion industry as it functions under a fast fashion model, is completely at odds with racial, environmental and economic justice.

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