A Speed Limit on Fast Fashion
By Noa Ferman, Jaela Field, Kyler Gray
Problem and Solution Overview
Fast fashion is the industry of rapidly manufacturing clothes in high volumes, often at the expense of quality. Social media, specifically fashion influencers, promote fast fashion through partnerships with fast-fashion brands and the promotion of ever-changing fashion trends. In turn, this promotes increased purchasing of fast fashion in their following; this impact is detrimental because fast fashion is unsustainable. The industry accounts for 20% of the world’s water waste1. Clothing factories produce more emissions than the global plane travel and shipping industry combined (Figure 1). The largest contributing demographic to fast fashion is women aged 18–241. Therefore, our proposed solution is an app that targets this user group to redirect them from shopping based on social media. Instead, our app will focus on providing cost-benefit analysis, reviews, and sustainability impact awareness to drive our user group to make informed shopping decisions with the environment at the forefront.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants
To tackle the selected problem we first gathered information from our user group, women, aged 18–24, on shopping and social media use habits to better understand the motivations behind participating in these activities. We gathered broad information from UW students in our demographic about their shopping habits, and included a link to an op-in form where we let users self-select into our in-depth interviews. We collected 25 anonymous survey submissions. Anonymity encourages honesty which is important considering the stigma around fast fashion and is crucial for designing a solution that actually works at scale. Volume is helpful for us to see larger trends. We wanted to understand the root cause for buying fast fashion, which required diving into the social pressures and decisions of our demographic, so we can disrupt the process. Interviews appeared to be a great option for our research as they allowed us to speak in depth about specific questions and engage with follow ups, getting at the root causes. We conducted 5 interviews that were 15–20 minutes each; we followed an approximate script, but leveraged the process to engage with follow ups and attempt to understand the mindset of our interviewee. Although interviews allow for depth, they can add social pressure as participants want to conform to what will please interviewers which ties back the importance of our anonymous surveys also.
Design Research and Themes
In surveying and interviewing young women about fast fashion, and how social media has affected their understanding of it, we found a few significant themes. These themes included education on fast fashion, a hesitation to shop sustainably, and desire to maintain quality in items while shopping.
The first theme, education on fast fashion is composed of two implications. The first finding from our research is that many users of social media actually have a fairly in depth understanding of fast fashion, and its broader environmental/social impacts. Due to the prevalence of its promotion on social media, there is an increase in awareness of how harmful the practice can be. With this understanding however, came little education on how to shop more sustainably, or how to find good alternatives. Aside from the general, “thrifting is good” message, we understood a broad theme that many shoppers understood the drawbacks of fast fashion, but were presented minimal solutions or actionable steps to take to avoid it. The importance of this really shined in our design process as an opportunity to redirect positive motivations on purchasing sustainably.
In hesitating to shop sustainably, we learned that among our shoppers who were aware of more sustainable brands, there were a few factors preventing them from following through consistently. A major component for shoppers was pricing. When following more ethical labor practices and using materials and manufacturing processes that are less “turn and burn”, items must generally be priced higher. This, however, can be seen as an opportunity for education in the long term cost of purchasing higher quality longer lasting products. Although the upfront price tag is often a challenge, it can pay off in the long run as these items can last for years, instead of fast fashion articles that fall apart after a few washes.
The final major theme we gathered was the desire to maintain quality. Through our surveys, and in discussions in interviews, shoppers’ highest priority is buying quality clothing that looks nice and fits with their style. This parallels well with our goals of more sustainable shopping, as these are typically more premium products that are also higher quality. We feel that we can help direct users to incorporate their desire for quality with sustainability, and associate more enduring materials and processes with a good product.
Proposed Design
We decided to prioritize two primary actions in our solution’s design: researching and finding sustainable clothing to purchase and learning about one’s personal fashion impact, successes, and struggles. Other tasks can help improve sustainability, such as budgeting for purchases, or styling clothing, but these are general issues that can be solved by other means; the tasks we selected address the core hurdles stopping shoppers from buying more sustainably.
With current tools, attempts to find sustainable clothing fall flat. Online storefronts fail to provide digestible information about a product’s environmental and social impact. Items that are labeled as more sustainable are often also labeled with a larger price tag but no explanation when that price contributes to an increased durability and lifespan of the product. Additional research through news articles about a brand’s reputations or stray reviews can help, but there is no comprehensive guide to shopping sustainably. One view of our solution will include this guide. A source for users to search for items and see their environmental and labor impact along with comprehensive reviews on product quality and information on the expected durability of the product and an analysis of the expected cost over time of purchasing higher-end clothing vs cheap items that fall apart.
Once users actually decide to make a purchase, sustainable or not, they are lacking a tool that allows them to see how those choices play into their own environmental/social impact. Real feedback and encouragement is important when helping users stick with a goal, and we found that our interviewees often had little context on the actual numbers behind their purchasing behavior. We hope to increase understanding of personal impact through the next view of our solution: a personal impact analytics page. When users click to purchase through our site or input their own recent purchases, we will provide comprehensive analytics on their environmental impact, and periodically give easy-to-view summaries on progress in a spotify-wrapped style. This will help shoppers keep sustainability in mind while making purchases and hopefully encourage consistency.
Together, this makes a solution that increases transparency related to environmental impact in shopping and creates an interactive, information rich, somewhat gamified way for users to make more sustainable choices. Returning to the original problem space, we confirmed through our research that social media is rich with fast fashion promotion and does contribute to individuals making these purchases, but we also found positives in the social media fashion scene. Attestations to quality in products encourage users to purchase more than simply appearance does and active users of fashion heavy social media have higher environmental concern, perhaps due to fashion content that draws attention to issues in sustainability. This solution draws on these positives. It provides a space where users can easily see the quality of items, can learn more about negative impacts of their fashion choices and positive alternatives, and can do so with a product that appreciates the value of aesthetics and favoring self expression as the social media fashion world does.
