Slow Fashion and Its Impact on Fashion Industry

        Slow fashion and its impact on fashion industry

Introduction:

Slow fashion has been a hot topic and movement in recent years, so this essay tries to state the development of slow fashion, how it is impacting upon the fashion industry, and discuss the challenges and opportunities it need to face and its relationship with sustainability, eco-friend, ethics and so on, in a global, historical and future context. Nowadays, the fashion industry has been a global social phenomenon and generated wide and deep influences on the environment and society, its mainstream is dependent on just-in-time and mass production where garments are transformed from the design platform to the retail stores in only a few weeks, called fast fashion, which increases seasons and offers clothing in frequency and low price. By purchasing these latest fashion trends at very low price, consumers are easily inclined to purchase more than they need, which finally cause over consumption, and it also contributes to fashion waste and works exploitation.. Additionally, at present, it is using a constant flow of natural resources to produce garments massively in time, which leading to decrease of natural resources and damage of ecosystem. Hence, the fashion industry needs to change the way it operates to erase the sustainability challenge it is contributing to, if the consumption behavior is not changed in fashion industry, its negative influences on social and ecological environment would be hard to appraise, just as Kate Fletcher (2013), said that we cannot continue on the way fashion works as before and as usual. Therefore, more and more people are asking for slow fashion, whose philosophy is to present a rational thinking after the speeding development of fast fashion and pursuit the harmony between human beings, nature and social development.

1. Fast fashion and slow fashion

• Fast fashion

The concept of fast fashion was oriented from Europe in 20th century, it evolved from the word “Mc Fashion”, which means satisfaction is provided in speedy way like Macdonald. A fast fashion system combine ability of quick response production with capability of enhanced design to develop products those catch up with latest trends in market and use most minimal times to provide products with demand (Cachon and Swinney, 2011). Its biggest traits are short updating cycle of the product, the pursuit of fashion trends and affordable price to obtain consumer’s attention. Many clothing brands, such as Zara, H&M, collect the designs all around the world and use the most fashionable design as reference to conquer market in frequently updating speed and lead to hot trend in the market.  

• Slow fashion

The concept of slow fashion is relative, which means it is not absolutely in opposite of fast fashion. It was inspired by the Slow Food movement and considered as a different way in which designer, seller and user can care more about the ethical, social and environmental issues behind product (Ecologist, 2007) Kate Fletcher was the first person that coined the term of slow fashion in 2007(ETC.Online, 2014), describing it ‘Slow fashion is not a seasonal trend that comes and goes like animal print, but a sustainable fashion movement that is gaining momentum’. Until now, the concept of slow fashion is not fixed yet and still in developing. But it can be seen as a kind of sustainable fashion that is not submerged by trend and not easily abandoned by times, featuring classic, enduring, across time and seasonal focus on quality and representing all things “ecological”, “moral” and “green” in one unified movement. From a certain of level, it can be considered as a more rational consuming philosophy, which is largely different from the blind and impulse consuming behaviors of fast fashion. It focuses on sustainability, time-less and personality to highlight unique quality rather than following trend blindly. Therefore, comparing to fast fashion, slow fashion is more connotative and more likely to reflect the individual taste and temperament. While it more emphasizes on harmonious coexistence between human beings and the natural environment now, slow fashion is a full implementation of sustainable development for fashion industry.