Fast fashion is one of the most visible examples of capitalist overproduction — and women are simultaneously its primary consumers and its most exploited producers. This session explored the health, environmental, and social costs of how we make and buy clothes, and the limits of supposedly ethical alternatives like Vinted and second-hand markets. We asked a harder question: in a system that makes cheap clothes by externalising harm onto garment workers and the environment, what does shopping responsibly actually mean?
Materials
Main
- To start: reflect on how you shop and how that has evolved — the session opens with a personal round
- Introduction to the three pillars of the problem: health issues (synthetic fibres, microplastics, dye chemicals in garment workers and in water), environmental issues (overproduction, landfill, water consumption), social issues (poverty wages, unsafe factories, predominantly female workforce)
- Overproduction and overconsumption — the reality of how much we produce vs how much is worn
- The relationship between poverty and fast fashion — both for producers and consumers: who benefits from cheap clothes, and at whose expense?
- Inclusivity in fashion: fair fashion vs fast fashion and who can actually access either
Supplementary
- How fair is second-hand? The reality of Vinted and reselling platforms — flipping fast fashion at a markup is not the same as reducing consumption
- "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" — where does this argument go, and is it useful or paralyzing?
Session structure
- How do you shop — and how has it changed?
- Personal round: where do you buy clothes? Has that shifted in the last five years?
- What would you need to change to shop differently?
- Health issues
- Synthetic fibres and skin irritation; chemical dyes in production
- Microplastics released in washing — and their path into food chains
- Health risks for garment workers: chemical exposure, unsafe buildings (Rana Plaza)
- Environmental issues
- Fashion is one of the world's largest polluters — water consumption, CO₂, waste
- Overproduction: garments made that will never be worn
- Synthetic fabrics take hundreds of years to decompose
- Social issues
- Poverty and fast fashion — garment workers earning poverty wages, mostly women in the Global South
- Inclusivity: fair fashion is expensive — who does "ethical consumption" actually serve?
- Second-hand and the circular economy
- How fair is Vinted actually? Reselling fast fashion at profit is not circular
- Issues with reselling platforms: price inflation, gatekeeping, the disappearance of cheap second-hand
- The role of women
- Blame is placed on women for consuming too much — is that framing fair?
- Women are the majority of garment workers and the majority of fashion consumers — who is this system actually serving?
- "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" — useful provocation or excuse?
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