We have often heard “But this! This is the latest trend, Order this!, these clothes are no more in trend, wear something trendy”. By listening to this, we keep ordering new clothes and shoes frequently, but have you ever thought about what exactly is fashion? Who exactly sets these trends? Why does fashion keep changing frequently?
Well there is no fixed definition of what is fashion but when a celebrity or a popular person wears something designer, people start buying the same kind of clothes. Then by seeing them, more people start wearing similar clothes and then it becomes a fashion or trend. Textile and apparels is a huge industry. Therefore fashion is changed frequently so that the profit of these big companies keeps increasing. Here we are wearing new trendy clothes and discarding old clothes.
According to studies, the biggest section that consumes fashion is young women. One in three women consider that wearing the same old clothes two or three times is not trendy. And due to this trend, every year we generate 91 million tons of waste whose value is more than 500 Billion Dollars. Not only this, in making these clothes from electricity to water, valuable resources are being wasted.
The more shocking thing is that the fashion industry uses 79 Billion Cubic Meter of water every year and it is happening when there is a scarcity of water for more than 2.5 billion people. Since plastic is being used in clothes as well, it generates a lot of micro plastic. According to reports, the reason for 20 to 35% of micro plastic found in oceans is the apparel industry. Due to our frequent buying of clothes, excessive amounts of waste is generated, a lot of carbon is emitted, water is polluted and wasted.
Simple steps can solve this problem to a great extent like reusing our clothes, buying clothes which are always in fashion, buying sustainable clothes, buying second hand clothes, renting one time clothes, donating our clothes. Simple steps can go a long way. Everyone needs to think twice before following fast fashion.