Fast fashion vs high-end fashion

By: ist06

Shopping for clothes used to something we did a few times a year every season when the season changed, when we outgrew what we had or when what we had was so used we could not use it anymore. About 20 years ago that changed, because clothes became cheaper and trend cycles was sped up. Shopping for clothes suddenly was a social entertainment.

Does fast fashion have an impact on the high-end fashion? Some of the biggest fast fashion brands are Zara, HM, Topshop and the list goes on. Unfortunately, they dominate our fashion world. People want to have the latest trends in their closet and often the economy doesn’t reach for the high-end brands that most likely started the trend they wanted. So people often settle for “rip-offs” as we can call them.

The fast fashion industry is often accused of copying the high-end brands new collection from their catwalks, such as Gucci, Valentino, Burberry. Since the fast fashion industry is fast production they often sell much more of their clothing than their competitor “high-end fashion”. But what does this mean for the value of the fashion industry?

Not only is it the value of the design that may be at risk but also the environment. For the high-end brands to keep their value on their brand up they need drastic measures. When they don´t sell all of their new design items because people already bought the cheap rip-of from Zara you may think they will sell them at a lower price on sale or something similar. But the brands don’t want to sell their design at a lower price just because some fast fashion brand stole their idea. I mean would you sell your work that you are passion about for a lower price, just because some cheap people came and took credit for your idea. Probably not. So what the High-end brands do to not lose value for their design is they burn all the items they didn´t sell just to keep their brand exclusive.

I think it´s sad to see that the brands that are passion about fashion feel the need to burn their design too keep their value. It´s not good for anyone.