![]() ![]() “When I was at school,” she says, “I’d buy new things all the time and I never really considered the impact of my habits or how harmful the industry was.” What changed for Loach was watching the 2015 documentary The True Cost, which explored the environmental damage and labour violations inherent within the global garment industry. “They feel that they don’t have enough information about the products, and how they are being produced.” “If it came out that people were being mistreated or underpaid,” says Bowden, doubtfully, “it would make me think twice about buying from a brand.” This, says Overgaard, is a common response among the Gen Z members surveyed. ![]() He is not familiar with the ins and outs of fast fashion’s supply chain. “Recently, when all the stuff came out about people not being paid the minimum wage,” he says, “stuff like that makes you feel awful, if it’s true that they are getting paid that little.”īut Bowden is a regular young person, working, seeing his friends, and conforming to the pressure we all feel – young and old – to look fashionable. Bowden is aware of some of the ethical issues around purchasing fast fashion. Bowden estimates he spends around £50 a week on clothes, usually from Asos, but occasionally from the ultra-low-cost retailer Shein. “The guy who delivers to my house finds it funny how many clothes I’ve ordered,” Bowden says. Scott Bowden, 23, a delivery driver from Saltash, has online shopping delivered to his house so frequently that his dad has a running joke with the postman. “They all agreed that they thought of themselves as conscious consumers, but on the other hand, they were incentivised to buy more and consume more because of the need to stay trendy.” The fashion industry is designed to be exploitative … the lack of transparency is what allows it to exist “Young people have this feeling of complexity and ambiguity related to sustainability,” says Overgaard. In 2020, Overgaard co-authored a paper with fellow researcher Nikolas Rønholt which surveyed members of Gen Z to find out why they consumed fast fashion while professing to care about sustainability and the environment. How to explain this schism, and the fact that a generation that has given the world Greta Thunberg, the climate change activist who excoriates the fashion industry from the pages of Vogue Scandinavia, also produced Love Island runner-up Molly-Mae Hague, recently announced as the creative director of the ultra-low-cost fast-fashion brand PrettyLittleThing in a rumoured seven-figure deal? “It did seem paradoxical to us, which is why we wanted to shed some light on it,” says Malthe Overgaard, a former researcher at Aarhus Business School. And yet Mintel data also shows that Gen Z claims to care more about the environmental impact of their purchases: 70% of 16-19-year-olds agree that sustainability is an important factor when purchasing fashion items, compared with just 20% of 65- to 74-year-olds. Data from the market research firm Mintel suggests that Gen Z out-consumes older generations when it comes to fashion purchases: 64% of British 16- to 19-year-olds admit to buying clothes they have never worn, compared with 44% of all adults surveyed. Around half the young people they surveyed said that they would continue to purchase from Boohoo, even after learning that workers in Leicester factories that supplied the fast-fashion giant were paid less than £4 an hour. ‘If I buy something online, I’m not thinking, “that’s fast fashion, I shouldn’t buy it”’ … Alessia Teresko Photograph: 2020 Vogue Business survey of 105 members of Generation Z found that more than half reported buying most of their clothes from fast-fashion brands. “Only if I can’t find it secondhand,” Loach says, “will I buy something new and then make sure I’ve done rigorous research on the company.” “Honestly,” she says, “as someone with a platform, even I feel pressure to be wearing different clothes online.” She buys her clothes secondhand. In Edinburgh, 23-year-old Mikaela Loach, a student and climate justice activist, understands the pressure that Teresko is under. (Namely, the Depop account, where she resells the clothes she no longer wears.) “I can’t take another picture in it because I already posted it,” says Teresko. The post racked up 296 likes and with it, Teresko’s Zara purchase was sent to the giant wardrobe in the sky. On Instagram, she posted a photograph of herself in her new dress, with a caption that read “Besties wknd”. Which is why, last month, for a friend’s birthday, she bought a minidress: a 70s-style Zara dress in a swirling print, for which she paid £27.99. ![]() A lessia Teresko, a 21-year-old student from Nottingham, seldom wears the same outfit online twice.
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