Fast Fashion, Explained

If you’ve bought clothes in the past decade, odds are that at least one item came from a fast fashion brand. Stores like Zara and H&M, two of the largest retailers in the world, still hold a stronghold over most people’s shopping habits, even with the rise of online shopping brands. These big, brightly lit stores seemed to pop up in malls overnight sometime in the late 2000s, carrying everything from skinny jeans to work blouses to cocktail dresses, often for significantly less money than stores like Gap or Nordstrom. Still, these shopping behemoths aren’t without controversy. Their speedy supply chains rely on outsourced and often underpaid labor from factory workers overseas. The process is also environmentally damaging and resource-intensive, and to top it off, it’s hard to definitively quantify the industry’s impact. Read more at Vox.