Dounia Woone, chief impact officer at The Vestiaire Collective, on a visit to Stung Meanchey Municipal … [+]
The Vestiaire Collective, a luxury marketplace, which claims to have “the best selection of designer clothing on the Internet,” is taking the radical move of banning all fast fashion from its platform. According to the second-hand online retailer, the decision is in line with the brand’s philosophy of slow growth and winning in the market, as well as underlining its ethical beliefs.
For first time in recent memory, a marketplace has taken a stand on a social issue, although many businesses chimed in on the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the historic legislation that granted women the right to an abortion. Vestiaire said it would have been hypocritical to continue offering fast fashion on the platform when it’s no secret that the global fashion industry is one of the world’s biggest polluters, while denying workers a living wage.
Alais Diop is the global PR manager at Vestiaire Collective. He said that all its members support this initiative. So where will fast fashion go once it’s discarded, and now that it can’t have a second life on The Vestiaire Collective? The obvious answer is where it’s been going all along – landfills.
Earth.org estimates that 92,000,000 tons of fashion trash is generated each year out of 100 billion garments. To put that in perspective, it’s the equivalent of a garbage-truck full of clothes emptying its haul in a landfill every second.
Last year, slow fashion brand Archive said it will limit customers’ shopping visits on the platform to 12 times per year, or once a month, in order to do its part towards effecting sustainability and saving the planet. It’s not clear how consumers will react to being told how and when they can shop.
Vestiaire said it couldn’t, in good conscience, continue to offer fast fashion when there’s no solution for society’s castoff garments. Vestiaire wants customers to be aware that clothing is made by people from all walks of the globe. Vestiaire said it would cease sourcing products from brands such as H&M and Shein, where items such as dresses and skirts sell for as little as $9, respectively.
The Vestiaire Collective’s ad demonstrates how involved its members in fashion.
Carol Spieckerman is a retail analyst and president of Spieckerman Retail. She has followed marketplaces from their beginnings around five years ago. The concept of a marketplace isn’t new, she said. Every society since the beginning of time has had bazars and business hubs where the city’s residents would go to barter with tradesmen over the price of their worn clothing, household goods and toys.
Spieckerman said the members of any society don’t want to be told what to do, even if it’s for the greater good. H&M has introduced a sustainable collection every year since 2015, and Shein often runs special sales of gently worn apparel that its members resell on its retail platform.
However, experts said a token sustainable collection isn’t scratching the surface of the amount of pollution the fashion industry unleashes, when the other 90% of a brand’s inventory is made in Third World countries where workers are exploited, antiquated factories are unsafe and a barrage of pollution is unleashed, contributing to the global climate change crisis.
Sales in the second-hand fast fashion market have been brisk, H&M said, noting that items in the sustainable capsules usually sell out within hours of going on sale. H&M said when consumers feel good about the products they’re buying and are confident in the knowledge that their purchase isn’t harming the environment, they buy more. Consumers, whose taste favors rock star-inspired fashion, have a lot to choose from at H&M.
The fast fashion industry has been in trouble for years since environmentalists highlighted the problems of vertical manufacturing and their contribution to the climate crisis. Retailers don’t want to take on the problems of the world nor police suppliers and factories. However, when influencers and celebrities began to call out the environmental effects of fast fashion, retailers and consumers started to pay attention.
Initiatives to chronicle the problems of the industry and fast fashion have been an important driver. Yet, it’s safe to say that no industry in today’s world has entirely clean hands. The environment is being harmed by oil rigs, transAtlantic pipes, and gas.
Archive Projects, London College of Economics, launched an initiative called Change that highlighted the pollution and environmental costs of fashion.
Sandro is a French fashion label that joined Archive as a Digital Resale as an Service company to present its secondhand program. SaaS is becoming more popular among retailers to provide recycling options to their customers, earning them store credit or cash while they remain consumers on the online site.
There’s no magic pill to stop the fashion industry from making robust profits on the backs of poor, and often, uneducated workers, when the reality is that cash speaks louder than equality.