My journey on social media has taken many forms, and one of the amazing communities I have discovered is the fashion twitter (now X) ‘subtwt'. Being in this space as well as fashion dedicated areas of Tumblr have led me to being exposed to a variety of opinions on the topic of fast fashion- and not all opinions, I have found, are made equally.
Upon reading ‘Deluxe- How Luxury Lost its Lustre’ and ‘Fashionopolis’ by Dana Thomas, I learned many facts about the inner workings of the fashion industry from the idea conception to the production of each collection and release. A lot of what Thomas finds in her investigations are illuminating, and I believe anyone remotely interested in the history of luxury even outside fashion, or are conscious of the impact their clothes have on the environment should definitely read these books as a head start.
The most popular- and justified- piece of advice given to anyone who is trying to find their personal style is to avoid SHEIN as much as possible. In response to this, people will often provide a variation of this argument to justify their purchases- “What if I cant afford to shop anywhere else? Why should poor people have to go without nice things, do they not deserve it?”, and the common response is quite simple.
Perhaps, like me, they are coming from a low-income family with little to no excess of money, but this idea of poor people being left out of something they ‘deserve’ is flawed. A major reason people are so strongly discouraged from shopping at SHEIN is because of their alleged human rights violations on multiple occasions, and amounts of heavy metals above regulations were found in their clothing upon scientific inspection. The person who feels entitled to a £2 top conveniently forgets there are people who suffer the consequences of their personal indulgence, and this is not limited to SHEIN despite the (valid) encouragement to shop absolutely anywhere else.
The other side of this argument is a comparison to an individual with an excess of money who buys as many clothes as they would like. At this point, people often point out that both people in the question should change their shopping habits. Millions of tons of textile waste washes up on the shores of countries in the global south because they are thrown away by both consumers and charity shops that cannot deal with the overwhelm of products they receive.
This is the opinion that is shared amongst many in the fashion-internet bubble, but at the end of the day, people will always disagree. I simply encourage people to think less about themselves and to follow along the line of everyone affected by the choices we make to make our lives better, and maybe your worldview might change- even slightly.
