Fast Fashion and The Future of Retail

Zara, H&M, Forever 21, TopShop. Rags ripped and dangling from swinging hangers. Stampedes of the fashion flock echoing at closing time as the underpaid are left to pick up the last ripped price tag. Last month at the opening for Topshop in New York, I hear it was like pigs at the trough and in Tokyo the Forever 21 flagship attracted a line of people the night before.

Is all this lust for novelty going to just go away? Especially for the youth trendbot demo? I have my doubts.  We like to think that highly conscionable change agents make up the masses but it just ain’t the case.

But let’s just forget about sides at the moment, because this isn’t your run of the mill pendulum swing, our systems of consumption are truly broken right? And they needs fixing. But before calling for a full scale return of craft and demise of fast fashion, we have to be honest with ourselves and how we actually live our now-thrifty lives.

I became fully aware of the tons of crap I consume when I moved from New York to Miami back to New York to Paris and then Barcelona between 2004 and 2009. Now that I’ve got it down to the bare minimum of accumulation — very well made things, nostalgic keepsakes, and practical disposable goods, I am starting to see what matters most -or how to live better but since I’m not in a wealthy way these days, I do go to H&M for necessities and treat it like checking items off a grocery list. “Buy saturated orange top to work well with skirt I already own”, “need new tee shirts”,  and then once a year, “jeans falling apart, trip to Barney’s co-op”.

My clothes are my new bottle of dishwashing liquid. My bag of lemons. My six pack of chicken breasts. I replace the stained, the pilled, the misshapen by repeated washes when I need to and that’s about it. Can you blame me for being Coscoesque in my approach? I think of clothes as disposable because it seems that the 300$ + goods is just as fallible as the Forever21 tee shirts I own.

At the same time, just as I don’t have the means or inclination right now to buy a Bang and Olufsen stereo or a lampshade by Moustache lets say, the biggest design buzz from Salone del Mobile last week, I still seek objects that bring tactile pleasure, incite memory, offer balance, and celebrate aesthetic excellence because our object world relies on design to communicate and please. It’s a very important part of the human experience and one which stands totally apart from ‘it’ bags and this season’s boots.

The trick is to ask, do I want to collect this? If you do, that’s when you spend the money. If you’re going for novelty or just a clean pair of underwear, we’re going to have to learn some way to ween ourselves off fast fashion fast because it’s too late; we are no  longer willing to pay a high price for basics.

Consider the following quotes from a Core77 article entitled Selling the Future: Design and the Financial Crisis

• “Make less. Make it better. Focus on craft.”
• “Examine the thing you’re designing right now: Does it fulfill a fundamental human need?”
• “People no longer pay for durability. They will.”

Well said.

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