What have fast fashion, (some) beauty dupes, cheap toothpaste and bad coffee got in common? They’re all false economies.
It’s my job to watch the culture, spot patterns. I think I just noticed one.
When you were a kid did your parents or grandparents say to you something along lines of buy well, buy once? i.e. go for the best you can afford, and if you can’t justify the one you really want, wait ‘til you can - in clothing, skincare, restaurants, holidays, houses.
Mine did. I wish they’d said it a bit louder.
A report dropped on my desk(top) this morning, from Vestiaire Collective, that I think my grandfolks - maybe all of ours - would have felt beautifully validated (vindicated?) by.
It’s about fashion's financial traps
Vestiare’s study (it’s a mixed methodology study that includes a bunch of ethnography) leads with a v interesting way of thinking about the true cost of a fashion purchase.
Their headline is that preloved luxury fashion pieces are 33% more affordable in the long run than new fast fashion purchases. And pre-loved luxury bags, they found, provide ~72% lower cost-per-wear vs. a new bag from the high street.
They say pre-loved luxury pieces tend to be worn almost twice as often as the equivalent fast fashion item (e.g. comparing use of a designer coat/jeans vs e.g. Zara coat/jeans in the same person’s wardrobe), and kept for longer. And as we know, fast fashion pieces have notoriously low residual value, unlike well-cared-for high-quality luxury.
Their POV is - putting the cost to the planet aside for a moment - during an ongoing cost of living crisis, people can’t afford to buy cheap clothes. It’s a false economy.
"Buying cheap fast fashion is deceptive…pre-loved luxury items are more cost-effective over time." - Dounia Wone, Vestiaire’s Chief Impact Officer
Interesting approach, right?
This is an intelligent, timely way to persuade people to shop with sustainability in mind. A fresh attempt to break down the dreaded attitude-behaviour gap - the thing that’s plaguing the progress of more conscious consumption across fashion, beauty, shopping, travel, eating, everything. But will it? Can it?
Because logic is a surprisingly weak force here
The attitude-behaviour gap comes up, in some way, in almost every project I work on across so many parts of the fashion system and the beauty industry - consumer brands, luxury houses, retail platforms, circular fashion businesses, rental communities, department stores, sustainable fibre producers, NGOs, the lot.
It’s a huge pain for these businesses, their boards, investors, everyone.
What is the attitude-behaviour gap? People say they want to shop/dress/live ‘better’ and support ‘good’ businesses. But they don’t. Not nearly as much as they say they will. Over and over again, in study after study.
Zalando published a report on this quite recently and their numbers are eerily close to the sort of thing I see in the wild.
“Some 60% of surveyed customers say transparency is important to them, but just 20% seek out information on where or how a product is made as part of the purchasing process.
…53% believe it is important to buy from brands with ethical labor policies, but only 23% ever investigate policies themselves.
…60% say second-hand is important to them. Only 25% regularly buy second-hand.
…58% believe they should understand the product, including the materials used. However, just 38% regularly check the label for information.
"Our customers tell us that they care deeply about sustainability, but they really struggle to translate their values into actions when they go into stores or shop online. There is a gap." - Kate Heiny, Zalando’s Sustainability Director
If you prefer a graph, they did one:
I’m not judging these respondents. They were chosen by expert researchers as a representative sample of many other people who feel the same. And none of us is immune to this - I know I do it too.
As usual I’m more interested in the anthropology and this is a brilliant, frustratingly glaring reminder that what people say they’re going to do and what they actually do so often do not match up. But why?
In this case, is the temptation just too great?
It’s not hard to understand why the Zalando customer - and everyone else - finds it kind of hard to live by the future-facing values they might hold, or the positive aspirations they might have for themselves as consumers and as citizens.
It’s the air we breathe. We’re all bombarded by stuff to want, all day, every day, everywhere. It’s totally normalised for boxes and packages to arrive a few times a week. Everywhere’s a retail space. Everything is shoppable. The stores never close.
And even more than that - our consumption has become a source of huge joy, inspiration and a significant plank of our identity-formation/self-development - our biggest, most powerful social platforms’ business models have monetised human conversation and connection to such a degree that we’ve all been conditioned to bond through what we consume/buy/own/have/want, over what we think/feel/believe in.
Sure, as individuals we can all do something about this any time we like. We can all shop in ways that align with or signal whatever we want. But IMO it’s not really we that are failing. It’s the system that’s failing us. Or rather, rigged against us.
So our grandparents were right, then? We, and now the planet, are all too broke to buy cheap shit. We should probably just buy well, buy once.
But as logic is proving to be a weak force in that equation, what in the world will convince us?
Thanks for reading/see you next time.
Beth :)
This post is my contribution to Earth Day, today: 22 April 2024.
I’m not a sustainable fashion expert. I talk about consumer culture - the stuff we don’t say, but probably should. And I tend to agree with Vogue Business’ statement today that “No brand is doing enough to warrant a celebration for its impact on the planet.” So instead, I wanted to table some things I’ve seen in my work that others might find interesting. On Earth Day, or any other.
Want to go a bit deeper?
Read this: CITIZENS by Jon Alexander. A hopeful book about seeing things as they could be, rather than how they are. Through thinking as citizens, rather than as consumers. Also guys Brian Eno wrote the foreword.
The thing that drives me mad is home/cleaning influencers. They set up their home like it’s a shop. Why have 3 cushions ‘styled’ at a 45° angle on a console table in your hall???? You’ll never use them! I read somewhere a while back about fast fashion concepts leeching into homeware now. A sofa should have a longer life span than a pair of jeans 🙄
Buy cheap, buy twice was the line I was taught! I'm super curious as to what needs to change in order to close the attitude-behaviour gap, especially being a problem-solving enthusiast its like...major brain itch, you know?