As you appreciate the fine work of these makers, take a moment to note how each creation offers the viewer and the wearer a slow and timeless experience of wearing and living with textiles.​​

“Fast Fashion” is a worldwide problem.

“Fast fashion” creates huge amounts of waste, pollution, and unsatisfactory conditions for workers and communities around the world. Fast fashion retailers thrive by producing large quantities of clothing at low prices, creating a constant turnover of styles, and pressuring consumers to always wear something new. The result is over-consumption and waste. Consumers’ closets are overflowing with cheaply made garments that will not break down in a landfill, and have been produced by processes that pollute the air and water in the communities where companies set up shop and look for workers. Governments are reluctant to or incapable of forcing companies to take responsibility for the waste they create, either at the beginning on the manufacturing side or at the end of life in the trash heap.

“Fast fashion” pollutes our water.

On the manufacturing end, producing new textiles, even natural fibers, requires a lot of water. Dyeing and finishing processes cause 20% of global clean water pollution. Washing synthetic clothing releases microplastic fibers that end up in our food chain, in our bodies and even in our brains. Dyes, salts, machine oil, bleach, detergents, and oxidizers end up in waterways, degrading the water supply, and destroying habitat.

“Fast fashion” makes our air toxic.

Textile production releases CO2 emissions that contribute to climate change. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), including ethers, detergent, combustion gases, reactive components, benzine-derived carcinogens, and volatile molecules, create unlivable neighborhoods, smog, and haze that pose serious health threats.

“Fast fashion” relies on slave labor.

We could not have fast fashion without cheap labor working in unregulated conditions. The profits driving the 52 “micro-seasons” a year are created by cost-cutting, low wages, hazardous conditions, and exploitation. Less than 2% of the 75 million people employed in the fast fashion industry earn a living wage. Brands operate through subsidiaries to avoid oversight, and consumers turn a blind eye to unethical labor practices.

“Fast fashion” ends up in a giant desert dumping ground.

Chile’s Atacama Desert is host to a dump of fast fashion visible from Space, thanks to waste from fashion retailers including Nautica, Adidas, Wrangler, Old Navy, H&M, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Forever 21, Zara, and Banana Republic. Exporting countries avoid dumping these leftovers on their own land because of the environmental and economic burdens they cause. Exporting companies often tout “circular economy” initiatives that disguise the true costs, and leave importing countries host to the large percentage of unusable discards that accompany the usable secondhand and new garments. While there is a thriving trade in used garments in the Global South, there are too many “donated" clothes for host countries to handle safely, and the quality of the textiles is low.

Fast fashion manufacturers and retailers are not required to take responsibility for the waste and harmful impacts their businesses produce. Consumers in the Global North do not bear the burden of adverse effects and instead, shift the burden to poorer countries and poorer people.