Fast Fashion = Mass Impoverishment of The Planet?
Yesterday I watched 'The True Cost' documentary about the highly destructive nature of the Fast Fashion industry. This documentary was partially produced by one of my favourite authors/journalists on the subject: Lucy Siegle. It was deeply disturbing to see the juxtaposition of Western consumerism vs garment worker suffering (if the Cambodian garment worker riot footage doesn't make you emotional, you're not human). As someone who has written countless university papers on the dangerous environmental toll and human toll the industry has thus led to, this documentary brought up a few other points that I had not previously pieced together as symptomatic of the Fast Fashion industry.
That $5 T-Shirt is tricking you into thinking you can afford things. Guido Brera an investment manager interviewed in the documentary made a very evoking observation when he said that the price of clothing in the West is slowly decreasing, along with the shrinking middle class. All the things you really need are in reality getting more and more costly (education, access to nutritious food, housing, insurance etc.) while the Fast Fashion industry remains a consolation in the part of our lives because we may be able to afford that $5 t-shirt but we are losing sight of the things we actually want, therefore tricking us into thinking we're richer than we really are.
Capitalism is fundamentally based on materialism. Companies are basically operating for profit with little incentive to do anything other than to generate higher profit than their competitors. Finite resources on the planet directly clashes with the capitalistic view that holds infinite revenue growth as the basis of that economic system. Tansy Hoskins, interviewed in the documentary, says that Capitalism is the reason the industry looks the way it does today. Richard Wolff a famous economist also interviewed in the documentary, suggests our economic system is completely free of scrutiny leading to the worldwide mass inequalities. Capitalism requires us to be highly consuming. It was really cringe-worthy to see clips of beauty bloggers/fashion bloggers talking about their "hauls" and Black Friday shopping brawls while superimposed with clips of Cambodian and Bangladeshi living/working conditions. I'm still currently and forever reading Naomi Klein's 'This Changes Everything, Climate vs Capitalism' and I'm seeing so many parallels between the Fast Fashion industry and the Oil industry, albeit both very polluting industries - are in dire need of changes. Capitalism may have been relevant at a time of post-war uncertainties however, in a 21st century world where environmental disasters and inequalities are directly caused by a broken economic system, it's surely time to rethink the system.
Anyways, I give this documentary 5 organic cotton t-shirts out of 5 hehe.