Clothes Are Imported Rather Than Made Locally
Image: The British Library
As of 2020, the top countries manufacturing textiles included China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and Turkey. The UK doesn’t even feature in the top 10 countries.
But it wasn't always this way.
Back in the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), the textile industry was thriving in Britain producing materials such as cotton, silk and wool. In 1912, the cotton industry reached its peak, although all of this changed after the war when other countries such as Japan started producing cotton more cheaply.
Rising costs continued to push a decline in the British textiles industry, and during the 1960s and 1970s, mills were closing at a rate of one per week.
Fast forward to today, and there are a small amount of clothing manufacturers that still exist in the UK. However, the UK currently imports £27.7bn of clothing from overseas every year.
The reason why we import most of our clothing rather than make it in the UK remains due to the increased costs for retailers.
Although the high street may be synonymous with imported clothing, our above designer Maje piece was also imported from China, showing it is an industry-wide problem, rather than only applying to fast fashion stores.
Fashion Trends Change Frequently
Speaking of fast fashion, the whole idea of trends is that they consider what’s ‘popular right now’. These are decided by fashion houses, fashion editors and pop culture. But the whole idea is to make consumers want to keep up with the latest looks because their existing clothing is no longer in style. This is how they make their money!
Buying fashion based on the idea of trends is actually super wasteful, and is a huge driver of environmental pollution including CO2 and plastic waste.
Steve Jobs famously wore the same outfit every day. While that might be a tad extreme for most people, there is definitely something to be said for sticking to statement pieces in any wardrobe.
Think about this for a second. Say if you bought a whole new wardrobe based on current fashion trends. Even in a year's time some of those pieces might be 'last season'. In 5 years? You can pretty much guarantee all of those trends would have long faded into the background.
When you free yourself from the need to keep up with trends - you inevitably reduce your personal carbon footprint.
FYI - You can still create an individual look with fashion without having to only wear new items!
Poor Quality Materials = Short Item Lifecycles
The demand to produce large volumes of clothing for the lowest possible price often means most garments aren’t made to last. The producers and retailers know this - yet they continue to produce clothing in this way, since they expect you to just keep on buying new clothes.
Some of the cheapest fabrics to produce in the fashion industry include synthetic polyester, elastane, nylon, cotton and viscose.
If you’re wondering why these fabrics are so cheap, that’s because synthetic fabrics are derived from 63% petrochemicals. Therefore, even sourcing the raw material has an environmental cost, before we even get to the quality of the finished fabric.
As cheap fabrics are used to keep up with fast fashion trends, the trade-off is garments which lose quality fast. Often the signs are notable after the first wash of the garment and can include stretching, shrinking, pilling or ripping of the material.
Unsold Products May Be Destroyed
A report by the BBC found that Burberry has burned £90 million worth of stock over the last five years. The company cited ‘not wanting its products to be sold cheaply or stolen’ as the reason.
Across the wider fashion industry, The Round Up reports 92 million tonnes of textile waste are produced every year. Only 1% of clothes get recycled into new garments.
Once again, we think of textile waste as something perhaps only associated with fast fashion brands, when in reality it is an industry-wide problem. Most consumers simply have no idea of the carbon footprint of their clothes, let alone the waste being produced by their favourite brands.
