CHEAP STYLE IS EXPENSIVE
f it is true that the outcome of desire is oppression, then the fashion industry has a lot to answer for. It gives us tools by which we shape an idealized identity; making desirable selves by reflecting our desires. As our purchases help bring us closer to our dreams, an exhibit in UP Diliman shows how they can take away the dreams of others.
The exhibit is called Fast Fashion: The Dark Sides of Fashion. On view at the University of the Philippines’ Bulwagan ng Dangal until Nov. 25, the exhibit shows the environmental, social, and economic impact that fast fashion — as exemplified for example, by the business models of clothing giants Zara and H&M — have in our world. It was curated by Dr. Claudia Banz of the Design Museum in Hamburg, and brought here via the Goethe Institut.
The exhibit first opened in Hamburg, and after its run in the Philippines, it will then go on to Indonesia, Australia, and Switzerland.
Dr. Banz began the exhibit as a response to the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, in which more than a thousand workers died when the building collapsed in 2013. It was then found that many of the garments sewn in the factory were part of the outsourcing chain for Western clothing brands. “I want to make an exhibition which is not celebrating fashion,” said Dr. Banz, since there are already a lot of those, “I want to ask critical questions. Fashion is very close to everybody. We wear it on our bodies,” she said during an interview with Business
World at the exhibit’s opening on Oct. 10.
According to the Global Garment Industry Factsheet put together by Lina Sotz and Gillian Kane, the world’s women’s wear industry in 2014 was worth $621 billion, the men’s wear industry was worth $ 402 billion while the children’s wear industry was worth $186 billion.
BusinessWorld took a look at the annual reports and financial statements of three big clothing conglomerates. The Inditex group, which owns fast fashion brand Zara, among other brands like Pull and Bear and Bershka, posted €20.9 billion in sales for 2015. Meanwhile, another European company, H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB, the parent of clothing brand H&M, posted sales of 210 billion Swedish kronor for the same year. An Asian player in the fast fashion game, Fast Retailing Co., Ltd., the parent company of Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo, indicated net sales of ¥1.681781 trillion in 2015.
It is, by any measure, a big industry.
Fast Fashion features installations showing the complicated supply chains which dominate fashion, like a diagram showing the long travels a pair of jeans makes in the process of being made. There are also photographs of people modelling clothes, juxtaposed with horror stories of unfair labor practices in garment factories, along with the item’s price.
On the one hand, Dr. Banz argues that one of the good points of the fashion industry is how it democratizes fashion, to translate haute couture confections into normal closet staples. On the other hand, as the exhibit details, it exploits people: not just its producers, but its consumers as well. According to her, clever marketing tricks are used by the fashion industry to make buyers buy more. “We simply buy too much,” she said. Limited edition clothing and celebrity seeding are part of these tricks. “They use neuroscience, saying that, we in fact are all still collectors and hunters, even if we are living in the 21st century.
“If you create a certain scarcity, people think something is really [ going away soon],” she said. This is why we buy; this is why we line up outside stores.