The EU and Paris-based fashion resale site are taking a stand against fast fashion with their latest initiatives.
Global second-hand fashion site Vestiaire Collective announced a ban on 30 fast fashion industry giants from its resale site including H&M, Zara, Urban Outfitters, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Gap last month, placing an emphasis on valued goods and eco-consciousness rather than profits. This is the second of three phases of the Paris-based company’s anti fast fashion campaign. In 2022, the company banned a number of popular fast fashion brands like Shein, Topshop, Fashion Nova, and Forever 21. This latest initiative makes a total of 63 brands banned from Vestiaire’s site.
In a similar effort to battle fast fashion, the European Union (EU) plans to make the textile industry greener by 2028 with regulations instating tougher measures that will combat excessive production and consumption of textiles, the production of long-lasting textile products, circular and sustainable clothing and footwear, and a ban on the destruction of unsold and returned textile goods.
These initiatives come at no better time, as The State of Climate Action 2023 recently stated that the global progress in limiting the Earth’s warming to 1.5°C are “woefully inadequate”.
The fashion industry is the third most polluting sector. The equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned every second. This industry is responsible for 10% of our annual global carbon emissions and half a million tons of plastic microfibers dumped into the ocean each year. That’s almost 50 billion plastic bottles. Not to mention, microfibers can’t be extracted from water and thus end up in our food and ultimately our bodies.
Fast fashion giants have heard the demands to make the fashion industry more ethical and are trying to jump in on the conversation by taking steps towards a more sustainable future with Zara’s cotton pledge, H&M’s garment collecting program, and Shein’s donation of $15 million in June 2022 to support textile waste workers in Ghana. And while these initiatives are applaudable, Vestiaire Collective isn’t buying it (literally). Zara is still putting out new stock twice a week and Shein releases 6,000 new items daily.
Collections are no longer seasonal, but rather trend-driven with a quick turnover. Vestiaire Collective kicked these fast fashion giants to the curb hoping to battle the instant gratification that consumers are looking for today. Instead, they’re encouraging their customers to invest in pieces that they’re going to keep and that will last.
To ensure the survival of our planet, fashion needs to become what it once was. We need to see the fast taken out of fast fashion. Let fashion be fashion —slow, sustainable, and durable. And let it live forever.
