Could the age of fast fashion be drawing to a close?
Before ASOS posted its most recent series of profit warnings, I interviewed Nick Beighton – the charismatic CEO of the go-to online fashion e-tailer for the under-25s – on several occasions.
Fast fashion, which is what ASOS sells, has come under scrutiny for its contribution to damaging the environment. And ASOS’s shares have plunged accordingly: it issued its second profit warning in seven months this week.
Fashion is the second most polluting industry after oil and gas, with textiles creating more CO2 emissions than international flights and maritime shipping. One truck a second dumps clothes in a landfill site, and we are buying 60 per cent more than we were in 2000 when ASOS was founded.
The short fashion cycle is a far cry from when Christian Dior launched his New Look in 1947. Then there were two collections a year – Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter. Today there is a constant turnover, and consumers graze for new items as more lines come out every few weeks.
In this era of climate change, ASOS’s young customer and staff demographic not only demand meaningful work, but also want to work for a company that has meaning. While that might not always be the case, Beighton predicts that companies need to change or ” they could find they are less relevant. Mass consumerism will have to stand for something different or the next generation might not want to buy. At some point, someone is going to say if a dress costs £6, it’s too cheap and there’s a reason you’re paying too little.”
With our insatiable demand for more and more and more quickly, comes more waste. We buy approximately twenty new garments per person a year and can, because clothing costs have risen slowly, making each item more affordable. By some estimates, this combination of factors is expected to result in a tripling of resource consumption by 2050.
Stella McCartney, “the queen of sustainability”, suggested people wash their clothes less frequently. She has pioneered using re-engineered cashmere, organic cotton and other recycled materials. The resale market is expected to outpace fast fashion within ten years, according to the Business of Fashion’s 2019 report on The State of Fashion. A recent report from the Ellen Macarthur Foundation “advocates for a shift to a circular economy, where the value of products and materials is maintained for as long as possible, and waste and resource use is.”
People are thinking differently about why things happen and how we consume the world’s resources, and customers, according to Beighton, are “the most powerful change agent on the planet”. “Consumers will realise they have a voice, and it’s greater than anything else, and they channel it through social media.”
Plastics in the oceans is a vital issue and, in 2018, ASOS banned plastic bottles for its 4000 employees. A small drop in the ocean, so to speak.
Last year ASOS received 49 million orders, all delivered in plastic bags. “I’ve got an inbuilt issue I have to deal with and, I’m looking at how I can change that. At the moment, 35 per cent of those bags are recycled, and I need to increase that or change the bags somehow.” One option is a take-back scheme. They tried that with denim as well.
There is also a push in some quarters to return to slow fashion, with higher-quality garments and a longer lifespan. On the opposite end of the fast fashion scale, clothes at couture houses like Chanel, get exponentially more expensive. On the runways and in the shops, models don’t just wear one handbag but are festooned with two at eye-watering costs, We wait to see if the age of less is more is on the horizon.
