Fast Fashion Sells a Uniform With an Expiry Date

The usual case against fast fashion is waste and labour, both real. The stranger achievement is aesthetic: it industrialised the trend cycle so thoroughly that novelty became a schedule. Everyone's wardrobe refreshes on the same two-week beat, which means the "personal style" on offer is a uniform with a deadline.

And the cleverest part is the alibi. "Ethical clothing is expensive" is true, and the industry has learned to hide behind that true sentence. Meanwhile the donation bin has become the back end of the business model — secondhand shops are flooded with garments engineered to survive roughly one wearer, so the sustainable route quietly absorbs the disposable one.

I don't think the answer is shame. Shame is just another product they'd sell back to you, in organic cotton.