Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers.
Oil industry executives knew about the correlation between their companies’ activities and climate change by the late 1950s. Their scientists had evidence to support a causal relationship between burning fossil fuels and anthropogenic climate change — and, while they swept this knowledge under the rug for decades, by the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the truth began to emerge.
By 2004, oil companies felt the hot breath of culpability breathing down their pockets. So, the next logical solution was to find a way to rebrand: to simultaneously shift both blame and responsibility for ameliorating climate effects by rendering individuals the scapegoat. I present to you, BP’s individual carbon footprint!
In much the same way, the ethos of the commercial fashion industry seems to be building a Trojan scapehorse when faced with responsibility for environmental devastation akin to that of Big Oil, including pollution, water overuse and excessive carbon emissions. In fact, the fashion industry accounts for the second-biggest drain on worldwide water consumption.
However, the onus falls on the consumers, not the producers, of fast fashion.
Instead, brands like H&M and Zara spend the big bucks on greenwashing — marketing to mislead the public into believing a company’s more environmentally-friendly than it is — as a flashy, chic blindfold for shoppers. For example, H&M’s "Conscious" collection offers shoppers the veneer of sustainability with “green” marketing and language, when, in reality, this line contains 10% more synthetic fibers than before. before.
The scapegoat is green branding, but when your Trojan Horse arrives in the mail, you’ll be wearing worse-quality items for more money. And while the internet sometimes engages in social shaming for Shein hauls, social media trends more often reaffirm the revolving door of what’s hot as these companies continually produce newer items faster; it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Cheaply made textiles are harmful to the environment long after being irresponsibly produced by fast fashion brands. A 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature “estimated that 35% of all microplastics — tiny pieces of non-biodegradable plastic — found in the ocean come from the laundering of synthetic textiles like polyester,” according to Rashmila Maiti for Earth.org.
But as clothing costs continue to rise far above what many wages allow (even thrift stores can’t resist hiking prices), fast fashion purchases are an affordable and attractive choice. Especially when American culture values dress — including clothing, hairstyle, makeup and accessories — so highly in determining personal perception. In fact, researchers in 2023 determined that perceivers draw inferences about social categories, cognitive states, status and aesthetic all from how we’re dressed.
And, in the pursuit of constructing your perception, you wouldn’t be remiss in thinking that paying for a so-called greener, more expensive product will signal perceivers to make the right inferences about you. However, you’d be demonstrating the gaps in the bigger picture by thinking the same consumption habits would solve the problem. Buying higher-end clothing that should last longer is a fine idea, but one that attempts to mitigate the symptoms of a parasitic system, ignoring socioeconomic status, instead of dismantling it by directing your dollar elsewhere.
Fashion is an undeniably exploitative business, but what most people overlook — and what companies pay to hide — is that the fast fashion business model isn't just an environmental problem; it's also one of human rights violations, gender inequality and, like most capitalist systems, neocolonialism.
Sweatshops take advantage of the supply chain iceberg; the farther down you go, the deeper, denser and more opaque are the goings-on. Retailers outsource factories overseas and sub-contract these factories restricted by fewer and fewer regulations, and these murky supply chains make it nearly impossible to oversee workers and their conditions. This allows exploitation to flourish across the industry, including forced labor, little or no pay, extortion to keep employment, long hours sometimes locked in-building and either a lack of or inadequate contracts, workers’ rights, healthcare and sick pay.
The work is not only inhumane but also dangerous because of these long economic chains that eschew responsibility for these compounding violations against the laborers.
In 2013, for example, a building containing factories producing clothing for Global North consumers collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 134 people and injuring almost half of the 2,500 workers — all because the owners of the garment factories ignored structural faults and illegally built upper their four floors.
This extreme exploitation turns to modern slavery — with substantial evidence of forced and child labor in China, India, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — from the tip to the bottom of the iceberg, at every stage of the production process. This is especially true for fast fashion brands like Zara, Shein and H&M, but also for luxury brands like Dior and Armani, as documented in the 2007 documentary “Luxury Slaves.”
According to the human rights organization Anti-Slavery International, “almost 20% of the world’s cotton production is linked to China’s forced labor of Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim groups.”
This demand for quantity and speed coupled with lack of workers’ protections creates the perfect storm for the U.S. to flex its passion for neocolonialism, its companies exploiting and enslaving people of less-developed countries while dumping our textile waste in the Global South. Can you stand up with a boot on your neck?
Just two decades ago, oil companies shifted the blame by moving focus onto the individual’s emissions, although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that merely 100 companies emit 71% of worldwide, climate-damaging carbon dioxide.
In the same way, commercial fashion has been getting away with removing the laborers and their labor from visibility and publicity. The perfectly uniform hemlines and blank backgrounds behind online stores’ products all project the idea of industrial machines mass-producing these items. However, remember that all clothing is handmade, whether or not those hands are getting paid or being seen.
While each individual cannot control how Big Fashion operates or how branding traffics your money back to the industry by forcing you to rhetorically shoulder the blame, the consumer still holds their buying power in the palm of their hands.
The biggest bargaining chip under capitalist systems is money, so the sustainability under your control comes down to how, where and with what frequency you spend your dollars; it’s whether you choose to be scapegoated in your consumption of fast fashion or to become intentional and mindful with your shopping and start caring about those invisible hands. The simplest solution is to buy better — which websites like Fashion Checker or apps like Good On You can help with — and less.
Odessa Lyon (she/her) graduated last spring. While at Indiana University, she studied biology and English and pursued a minor in European studies.
