Ever since Shein and Temu grew in popularity, I’ve seen fast fashion take over almost every store I walk into. If you’re not familiar with fast fashion, it’s clothing that mimics new styles using cheap quality material to be sold at cheap prices. It sounds appealing when you hear it, but the clothing doesn’t last long. After a few washes, the material starts to wear out quickly or the seams come apart after you’ve only worn it a few times.
Before you know it, it’s clear what you really paid for.
Fast fashion is often called the “throwaway culture” because of how quickly these pieces are produced, worn, and then thrown away. According to the United Nations
Environment Programme, more than 92 million tons of unwanted clothing end up in waste every year globally. That also includes stores that throw away clothes from previous collections to add their newest ones in. I’ve bought clothes from stores just for them to last me less than a year or so. That’s when the realization kicks in that fast fashion means clothes need to be replaced constantly.
If you’re a student like me on a budget, you know that you want to get good quality for as little as possible. Spending $12 on a piece of clothing may seem smart at first, but the material just doesn’t last long. Meanwhile, investing $30 in one piece of clothing seems expensive upfront, but will last you longer. The truth is, we think we’re saving money this way, but we keep falling into this cycle of replacing poorly made clothes all the time.
When I started noticing these types of clothes in stores, I never expected it to get worse over time. Stores are now filled with mass-produced and trend-based clothing. It’s getting harder to find durable and long-lasting clothing because retailers want to compete with Shein and Temu. Instead of focusing on quality, they’ve prioritized quick and cheap clothing that could fall apart in your hands. You walk into a store and all you see are racks of clothes that are meant to be sold fast and replaced soon. Sometimes I walk out of stores upset because I can’t find one piece that’s worth spending my money on, and I can’t be the only one who feels this way.
But let’s be honest for a minute. With trends changing constantly, we also feel like we always need something new to wear. We buy things because they’re “in” right now, only to wear them a few times and then toss it into our closets when the trend dies.
These days, thrift stores feel like the smarter option because why spend money on decent quality clothing when you can spend on better quality at the same price? You can find tons of high-quality clothing that were sold in the past by high-quality stores.
Plus, it’s reusing clothing instead of contributing to a landfill where most of us eventually throw away our unnecessary clothes.
Now I’m not saying you can’t treat yourself to something trendy occasionally. I believe we can all have fun buying the latest clothes to express ourselves, but I am starting to think twice if something I want is worth it for the price, the durability, and if I’ll ever wear it again a year from now. If the answer is simply no, then I leave it. At the end of the day, what you buy should be worth every penny.
