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 Planned and Perceived Obsolescence in the Fast Fashion Industry

By: Anya Niven

The fast fashion industry is one of the quickest growing industries and has been for many years. It is growing to be one of the most polluting industries in the world. Fast fashion is defined by The Urban Garden Initiative organization as, “Cheap, stylish clothing that samples trends from the runway or celebrity culture to turn them into articles of clothing sold in popular street stores at breakneck speed to meet shopper requests”. In fast fashion, the consumer controls production. Styles of clothing items that are seen on runways or in celebrity wardrobes and more frequently, on social media influencers, and receive a large amount of traction from this market, can often be found in fast fashion stores/online shops within the week. Fast fashion relies heavily on two strategies that have devastating effects on the environment, perceived obsolescence and planned obsolescence.

 

Perceived obsolescence occurs when there is a mass social movement against, in this case, a specific style/design/item that renders the design no longer fashionable or desirable. Today, this “mass movement” is not often a breaking news story, but may rather be the rejection of the style by certain influencers/media personalities for another style, or even a small group of people deeming the style “uncool”. The important part of this strategy is that the perceived obsolescence of the product reaches a big enough segment of the target market for fast fashion companies to halt production and look for a new design that appeals in the same way. In terms of the environment, the extremely fast turnaround rate required to keep up with the implementation of new trends as well as the exile of the old is the main issue. In the United States, fast fashion brands like H&M, Forever 21, and Zara, “put out anywhere between 12-24 collections every year, at least twice the industry standard”. Collection releases are also not the only clothes that a brand may add to their stores in a year. Many fast fashion brands now have 52 “micro-seasons” in a year, one for each week. Since clothes become out of style so quickly, many clothes are thrown away or donated shortly after they are purchased, both actions that contribute to garment waste and pollution. Approximately 85% of unsustainably produced textiles end up in landfills every year. 

 

Planned obsolescence is a function of perceived obsolescence in that fast fashion companies rely on the fact that the design they create will quickly go out of style, so they do not have to create the product to be durable or long-lasting. This often results in poorly made garments, however, the turnaround rate is so fast that there is little consideration by the consumer for the broken product when they can get another piece of clothing in two weeks that is new and in style, and importantly, cheap. This adds to the “throwaway” culture that is created by perceived obsolescence through defective products that break quickly have an even shorter lifecycle than clothes that go out of style and are then donated or resold. Although fast fashion companies plan for obsolescence in production they do not always plan for the failure of a product. While it is sometimes successful for these companies to mass-produce and assume that their clothing will receive enough attention/sales to not have wasted material and time, clothes that are unpopular or do not sell before the next micro-season, are thrown away, contributing to garment waste and pollution. Additional waste is produced during the production of clothes. “One survey reports this waste to be as high as 25%, with a Bangladeshi factory producing up to 300 tons of textile waste in one month alone.” Production is stopped due to fast market changes and the waste created from mass production in garment factories alone contributes a significant amount of waste and adds to pollution statistics. Perceived and planned obsolescence are two powerful factors that rule the current fashion industry and are damaging the environment severely.

 

https://www.theurbangardeninitiative.org/blog/the-history-of-fast-fashion

https://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/perceived-obsolescence.html

https://www.jumpstartmag.com/planned-obsolescence-fast-fashion/#:~:text=Planned%20obsolescence%2C%20or%20what%20was,their%20products%20to%20become%20obsolete.&text=Another%20way%20that%20fashion%20companies,by%20producing%20poor%20quality%20items.

 

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