Fast Fashion

In last March, Seoul Fashion Week(SFW) was held at DDP(Dongdaemun Design Plaza). DDP was built for gallery, exhibition, performance, and fair. It’s all about fashion and design. We could expect the positive effects of this project like development of fashion industry. More than a million guests visited the fair and 17 fashion designers participated in. It shows us a lot of people in Korea have more and more interests in fashion and they want to enjoy the fashion regardless of gender. Young people are following trend and we can see the newest fashion trend easily on streets. So, there are many clothing shops opened and some tourists choose Korea which they want to visit for shopping.

(SFW opening ceremony)

(Dongdaemun Design Plaza)

As same as other countries, popular fashion brands in Korea are clothing retailers like Zara, Forever21, and H&M. These are the ‘Fast Fashion’. It refers to clothing and accessories that are designed and produced quickly to reflect current trends. The word is originated from ‘Fast food’ that has common feature of speedy. Fast Fashion’s purpose is designing and manufacturing stuffs as fast as possible with cheap price. As they produce clothes in a short period with mass production method, it can be possible to maintain cheaper price. These are also called SPA brand, Specialty store retailer of Private label Apparel Brand.

(Mass production)

In 1980’s, an American brand ‘GAP’ was the first to define SPA and adopt a new system of these days. After that, Fast fashion has been growing at a rapid pace. It’s from various country, Japan(UNIQLO), Turkey(Mango), and so on. There are also lots of Korean SPA brand shops like MIXXO, 8seconds, and SPAO.

Because of a low price, most people like to buy some clothes of these brands. Recently, for retailers collaborate with other designers or luxury brands, consumers can purchase good quality things with cheap price. Also, fast fashion is sensitive with current fashion, and people can know and choose clothes following recent trend just walking around in a store. We don’t have to try to browse a fashion magazine in order to capture the trend. Retailers provide various collections of clothes even for children and consumers have a variety of choices.

However, there exist some bad points of Fast Fashion. Retailers provide clothes with cheaper materials and lower quality. That makes consumers put them away from the closet in a short time. Some designers have negative opinions that Fast Fashion doesn’t consider conceptual originality and only focuses on producing a high volume of goods. The style of dresses is being uniformity. People looks like wearing same pants, shirts, and shoes.

The Fast Fashion has a possibility of causing environmental problems. Every year, the clothing industry trashes 2 million tons of wastes, and 2.1 million tons of CO2. These statistical data have risen dramatically in recent years. The cheap price of Fast Fashion’s clothes makes customers to think easily about buying and throwing away easily. This point causes overspend of clothes and it leads to environmental problems.

But I think that Fast Fashion has been trying to solve these problems. As was stated above, there are collaborations with famous fashion designers to cope with a lack of various styles and provide good quality stuffs to customers. Also, some Fast Fashion brands have eco-friendly policies to protect environment. I expect that Fast Fashion industry is giving good effect more and more over time. The only thing I want to say is that buying Fast Fashion clothes is better in many respects, but don’t make light thing of throwing them away.

(You can get a information about which brands have eco-friendly lines.)

http://news.instyle.com/2014/04/01/5-fast-fashion-brands-with-eco-lines/

(another opinion about Fast Fashion)

http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/04/602_43668.html