Fashion's Environmental Impact: A Solution

As an aspiring fashion designer, I follow industry trends that are especially relevant to modern fashion as many young fashion brands are absolutely booming in today's market. Fast fashion is something that is completely taken over the fashion industry with the rising demand of consumers for runway styles made cheap, quick, and affordable. Opposite this, thrifting second-hand clothing has also become exceedingly popular. Thrifting significantly helps slow down the negative effects fast fashion has on the environment. By recycling clothing consumers are taking part in a process that is continuous and leaves a lessened footprint. However, even thrift stores have waste. Inventory that thrift stores are not able to sell either goes to other stores or ends up in landfills. Gen Z is the generation that is all about sustainability and giving back to the planet. This generation supports brick-and-mortar thrift stores like Goodwill and Savers and online thrift stores including Depop, Poshmark, and Mercari. This group of people sees thrifting as trendy and everyone wants to do it now. Because of this, the age demographic for thrift stores has largely changed to include a younger audience that can be categorized as "treasure shoppers." These are people that enjoy the thrill of shopping and finding unique items. I believe that the best way to reduce fashion's impact on the environment would be to simply wear what we own longer and to only buy clothing that we really need. Most people spend more money than necessary on clothing and don't end up even wearing all of it. If our society started to only buy clothing that is high quality and long-lasting, we could truly slow down the strain we put on environmental resources and ecological footprint we produce.