THE FANTASIES AND LIES OF FAST FASHION
Last week I was at a gala party in the Blue Hall in Stockholm City Hall. The dress code was "cocktail", and all around me in the beautiful room, men in smart suits and women in colourful, sequined dresses socialized over champagne.
We were celebrating this year’s edition of H&M’s Global Change Award.
On Instagram, I was one fashion journalist saying that the event was sustainable fashion’s Oscars Awards, and during the evening, numerous references were made to the Nobel Price (as the Blue Hall is also the venue used for the Nobel Price-dinner party.
During the dinner that followed the prize ceremony, the people at my table – Indian entrepreneurs, American billionaires, and the head of H&M – and I talked about the societal transformation that is required if climate change is to be slowed down.
One praised Tesla as an example of sustainable cars, another said that if only more people would eat organic and locally produced food, it will automatically become cheaper.
Misconceptions, naivety, and sheer inaccuracies characterized the conversation. I wondered, is this actually the level of knowledge of the powerful elite within the sustainability-aspiring fashion industry, or are they bluffing?
Because, in all seriousness who would believe this type of nonsense?
Only a few days after the award ceremony, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published a big story on H&M that made international headlines; textiles collected by H&M are not recycled but dumped in huge quantities in poor countries.
The collection boxes found in every H&M store, where you can donate your worn-out garments, claim that the textiles you drop off will either be used by someone else or turned into new textiles.
But now Aftonbladet revealed the hoax: It was all a lie, built on the fantasy that fast fashion can ever become circular.
Our old rags are dumped into nature in a way that disrupts ecosystems, poisons the environment, and accelerates climate change.
The images in the newspaper report were shocking; enormous piles of garments in the African landscape, in the article called “a cemetery for clothes”.
But honestly, who ever thought otherwise? Anyone who has reflected on the system for more than five minutes will understand that fast fashion (as well as ultra fast fashion, like Shein) cannot possibly be a circular business. 100 billion garments are produced annually, a figure so enormous that it is virtually impossible to grasp.
Many of them are made in poor quality, drenched in so many toxic chemicals that it is generally recommended to wash clothes before first use.
Many years ago, when the recycling system was new, H&M organized trips to the sorting centre in Berlin, run by their partner I:Collect, named by Aftonbladet as complicit in the scam. I didn't go on any of these trips myself, but I met many people who had been.
The aim was to show journalists, researchers, and other influential people in the industry that the old clothes were part of H&M’s vision of “closing the loop”, but the result was instead a group of horrified fashion experts, that now first-hand saw the consequences of our over-consumption.
Fast fashion is not a tool to express yourself, or to figure out who you are (or want to become, a fun way to create variety in your wardrobe.
Fast fashion is a monster that destroys everything in its path.
Dr. Philip Warkander