Fashion trends are always changing, recycling old styles and creating new looks. The past few years have seen aspects of the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s make a comeback. As trends begin to cycle faster and the styles resurfacing are getting older, the term “vintage” in fashion gets lost in the craze of wanting to stay on trend.
Vintage is defined as anything between 20 and 100 years old but true vintage is at least 50 years old. That being said, new items of clothing can have vintage cuts and details that can make it hard to tell what is really vintage. Flared jeans, platform shoes, many trends that you wear today are inspired by older styles.
Fast fashion picks up on these trends that are popular and get low-quality, stylish clothing out to the masses. 92 million tons of textile waste is produced every year and fast fashion is one of the main causes. With all the clothing in circulation it can be a struggle to find real vintage clothing.
The term has moved from commenting about a certain style’s age to how something looks. And resellers use this to their advantage.
Reselling sites such as Ebay and Depop are known for their vintage clothing, but since the rise of fast fashion companies, they are full of lies. Jacking up prices far beyond their original: sellers use key terms like Y2K, 90s, “one of a kind” to get their products to the top of searches.
When searching for vintage on Depop’s website, fast fashion brands are polluting the true listings. Items that were once less than 20 dollars are jacked up to hundreds of dollars under the reasoning that they’re “rare” or “collector’s item”.
Now, pricing vintage isn’t easy. There’s many factors that go into the price of an item and sellers don’t follow the same rules. Many take into account the item’s quality, market rates, work done by the seller, and if applicable, important people who have worn the item.
One thing is universal, as items get older, their availability is scarce. The desirability of an item goes up if less people can have it. Sellers like to use that to their advantage
Every year older an item gets the prices go up. But if an item is labeled as vintage, not even a year old and of poor quality, there is no justification for it to be sold for $300.
The authenticity and age of the pieces can be an important factor to some, but that isn’t always the case.
For instance, these faux vintage clothing pieces are made from various non-biodegradable materials like polyester that fall apart with few wears. Clothing used to be made from natural fibers like cotton that stand the test of time, which attracts people to vintage clothing.
Wearing clothes still around from the past reduces waste. Right now, we have enough
clothing on our planet to clothe the next six generations. A big part of the vintage community is saving these pieces from landfills.
But instead of promoting sustainable practices, consumers are getting scammed, our environment is suffering, and fast fashion is profiting.
Fast fashion is the production of clothing very quickly and at an extremely low cost. Clothing brands such as Shein, H&M, Zara, Forever 21, Brandy Melville and hundreds more are considered fast fashion. Such brands get recent trends they see from runways to shelves in as quickly as two weeks.
Shein is one of the most infamous fast fashion brands. Shein’s designs take as little as 10 days to be sold. According to Yale Climate Connections, Shein uploads up to 10,000 garments to the website daily.
These mass-produced garments are devastating for the environment. Fast fashion requires a surplus of water and energy, producing millions of pounds of microplastics.
According to The UN Environmental Programme, up to 3,781 litres of water are needed to produce a single pair of jeans. The growing of cotton, manufacturing and dyeing of the jeans is to blame for this. The UN Environmental Programme revealed that textile dying is the second largest water polluter in the world. Waterless dyeing is a much better alternative; the fabric’s dye is added to the hot liquid before the fibers are spun into yarn and then knitted into the clothing.
According to a statistic from Goodwill, 2% of the world’s energy is consumed by the fast fashion industry. It requires a great amount of petroleum as well as pesticides and insecticides that are greatly damaging the environment.
99% of cotton produced in India, the largest producer of cotton in the world, is inorganically produced. The Environmental Justice Foundation says that cotton uses 6% of the world’s pesticides and 16% of its insecticides.
Pesticides and insecticides can be extremely harmful to humans. They are supposed to kill weeds and pests, but they are beginning to kill humans too. According to The Environmental Justice Foundation, numerous farmers in India die from pesticide poisoning every year.
Pesticides and insecticides aren’t the only risk to human happiness and life in the fast fashion industry. Modern slavery as well as child labor are a major concern. The majority of fast fashion is produced outside of the US. This leads to concerns of different and weaker labor laws and protections. According to The International Labour Organization, there are over 160 million children in child labor. Fast fashion is a contributor to this industry.
The UN Environmental Programme said the fast fashion industry accounts for 9% of the microplastics put into the ocean every year. Microplastics cause DNA damage in marine life, causing a higher risk for cancer in those animals. These marine animals are then eaten by humans. This may lead to health concerns for humans in the future.
There are many things you can do to avoid hurting the environment and people. Buying sustainable and durable clothing with material such as organic cotton, linen, hemp, wool and more. These materials can often be more expensive, so a great alternative is thrifting secondhand clothing.
According to Earth.Org, in the US, approximately 11.3 million tons of textile waste are put in the landfill each year. To lower this amount, you can donate, sell, or reutilize clothing you don’t want anymore.
