Introduction to Fast Fashion
Fast Fashion refers to expedited production processes within the fashion industry which aim to get new trends to the market as quickly and cheaply as possible.
This movement gathered pace from the end of the 1990s when brands began to look for new ways to increase profits. High street brands were coming under increasing pressure from supermarket chains such as Sainsbury’ s and Asda developing their own lines of low priced clothing. Most fashion labels produce two main collections a year, these are Spring / Summer and Autumn / Winter. However, high street brands needed to bring out more clothing within their stores mid-season to keep consumers interested, so the number of collections increased to drive sales. Consumers reacted positively to this trend which in turn resulted in the widespread speeding up of fashion.
The environment suffers harsh consequences in order for people to consume more clothing. The life cycles of garments being shipped and flown from the Far East to Europe are decreasing and there is more of these than ever before. " Statistics show that on average, UK consumers send 30kg of clothing and textiles per capita to landfill each year and that 1.2 million tons of clothing went to landfill in 2005 in the UK alone."( Harper, 2006) Retailers now need to respond quickly to changing fashion trends which now change in a matter of weeks. It used to take around six months for a product to get to the market, this has now been condensed down to three week cycles. But what does this mean for the high end high street sector?
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