If you are concerned about global warming, safety for animals, or climate-changing effects, you must hear about avoiding first fashion brands. You may want to know what a fast fashion brand is and which fast fashion brands to avoid.
So, we are here to clear all your query on avoiding fast fashion brands. After reading the article, you will know why you should avoid fast fashion and a list of 9 fast fashion brands that you should ignore with the exploitation of why you should avoid these brands.
Ultimately, you will know 5 exceptional attributes to identify fast fashion brands so that you can specify which one is a fast fashion brand by yourself and also will learn how to avoid fast fashion brands.
Therefore, we will recommend you scroll down and read the entire article carefully. Then you can know about the most crucial 9 fast fashion brands to avoid and tips on identifying fast fashion brands.
What Is Fast Fashion?
The term fast fashion is used to define clothing brands that produce too many clothes within a short period for creating trends and attracting customers’ attention.
These clothes are very low priced with unique and stylish designs. Besides, the manufacturing process and shipping methods, and overall supply chains of fast fashion are very convenient. After hearing all of these, you may think, then what’s wrong with fast fashion brands?
Let us tell you the dark sides of fast fashion brands. First, we will tell you an overview of the reasons to avoid fast fashion brands. After giving the list of 9 fast fashion brands not to buy from, you will know the reason for avoiding each of these brands.
Fast Fashion Brands To Avoid
Hence, here is the list of the 9 worst fast fashion brands;
A list of most vital 9 fast fashion brands to avoid
- Ally Fashion
- Adidas
- ASOS
- Mango
- s. Oliver
- Shein
- Zara
- Forever 21
- H&M
Now, let’s check out the descriptions of each of the brands with the reason behind avoiding these brands.
1. Ally Fashion
Ally Fashion is a fast fashion brand that produces products for women. It is an Australia-based brand established in 2001. Currently, it has 156 outlets all over Australia Recently they are also very active in online business as a retail supplier.
If we rate this brand for eco-friendly material and environmental conditions, this brand will get a very poor rating. Because they use toxic chemicals and unsustainable materials to produce their products. These toxic materials are very hazardous to our environment and our health.
Moreover, they are not conscious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing their products which continuously increases global warming.
They are not good in labor rating as they do not assure fair wages for their employees. Plus they have no reasonable approach to animal rights.
Ultimately, we can tell that this fast fashion brand is not suitable for our environment as well as for the people of our planet. This brand can be considered an unethical clothing brand. So we must avoid this brand as good human beings who are aware of the environment.
2. Adidas
You might wear the Adidas brand’s jersey in this world cup. Adidas is generally a renewed sportswear fast fashion brand established in 1949 in Germany. This brand manufactures a large volume of cloth every year which attracts its customers to buy more and more clothes. This is the second-largest sportswear manufacturer in the world.
Adidas yearly produces cloth in enormous volumes but many of these garments products are not as durable as they should be. The mass production for rapid turnaround hurts the environment.
Mass production increases waste and pollutes the environment. Additionally, it emits many injurious chemicals, especially the carbon emissions that are extremely dangerous for human and animal health.
Again, to produce this vast amount of clothes, this brand consumes an extensive amount of energy, water, and raw materials like leather, etc and this is not good for the environment.
After knowing the drawbacks of the Adidas fast fashion brand, can you consider the brand as your favorite sportswear anymore? The answer should be no. Thus you should avoid this fast fashion.
3. ASOS
Being a young adult or parent of adolescents, you might hear the brand name ASOS. It is a UK-based online retailer brand founded in London in 2000. They buy clothes from wholesalers and then sell these clothes online.
ASOS is a multi-brand marketplace. Not every product that they sell falls under fast fashion. But they have too many items to sell, for example, only for men they have more than 800 items on their website. So we say, ASOS is obviously a fast fashion brand.
In rating good brands, we will rate them as “not good enough” for ASOS. An excessive amount of products sell, most of the products are brought by people who waste these after once or twice use and that’s not good for the environment.
Furthermore, they do not have proper strands for the worker’s safety, rights, and living wages, also they are not so transparent about their business strategy. They have got less than 60% score in the transparency index in the 2022 survey.
If you are a person who likes ASOS, will you feel good wearing fast fashion products of this brand after figuring out the information? We may guess your answer.
4. MANGO
MANGO is a very popular brand for men’s and women’s clothing items founded in 1984. This brand not only focuses on casual or elegant design but also on urban outfitters.
Vast productions are fabricated each year. Raw materials of these products come with huge plastic packaging. Besides, all of these products also have plastic packaging. These toxic plastics are being thrown into the seas which are dangerous for water and sea animals.
However, compared to other fast fashion brands, this brand is one of the ethical fast fashion brands and one of the main sustainable brands. MANGO brand has more eco-friendly approaches and standard code of conduct than other fast fashion brands, you may feel a lack of clear transparency reports for their garments products.
So! We will suggest you avoid MANGO for saving our seas and lives.
5. s. Oliver
If you are a fashion lover and have experience buying fashionable and high-quality products at a reasonable price, you may listen to the name of the brand s.Oliver. It is a German industry established in 1969. This fast fashion brand will provide you with a good price-quality ratio for any product you purchase from the brand.
This popular brand also became a threat for our environment. This garment factory uses unsustainable and synthetic materials. In the 2021 fashion transparency index, the s.Oliver gets only a 20% score.
Hence, you can understand that they do not take any fair steps to be a friendly industry for our planet.
In the sector of worker’s rights, the rating of this brand is also very poor. Even in the COVID-19 situation, they do not publicize any beneficial policies for their employees.
From the study we find out, S.oliver only gets 2 out of 5 in each of the categories of sustainability rating. The news is very upsetting for the people who like the S.oliver brand.
6. Shein
Recently, Shein became a fashion giant in the online shopping zone. Young girls, especially Instagram influencers, are very much attracted to the name of Shein and promote this brand.
The popular brand is a Chinese brand and retailer seller in the online fast fashion sector. Despite being established in 2008, this brand became the largest retailer in fashion for 2022. Shein focuses on casting trendy clothes and beauty products with cheap prices.
As not all glitters are not gold, Shein has a devastating effect on the environment. Every year 6.3 million tons of carbon dioxide are exhaled from the manufacturing industries of Shein.
Furthermore, huge amounts of polyester and synthetic fabrics are being used here. Do you know from which we get polyester? These polyesters are derived from fossil fuels. We should reduce the use of fossil fuels as much as we can.
You will wonder after knowing the susceptibility rating of an influencer’s favorite brand. Shein gets only 2 out of 5 in the animal safety sector. But the situation is the worst in the planet and people safety sector, only 1 out of 5. Even the garment workers suffer from sexual harassments.
We can consider Shein as one of the worst fast fashion brands that you should avoid.
7. Zara
Fashion frick people wish to wear clothes from Zara because Zara is one of the most famous fashion companies in the world. Nowadays, Zara is also a very famous brand worldwide. In 1975 Zara was established in Spain, so it is a Spanish brand but has outlets all over the world.
Already we knew some fast fashion brands, but Zara is the pioneer of fast fashion. This brand started to sell garment products at low prices but launched too many products at a single time. So to maintain the trend people have to buy more clothes than they need.
On the other hand, some people do not have money to buy a single cloth. So this crisis in the fast fashion industry is seriously very disturbing.
Zara also got a “not good enough” rating for the environmental impact. There is no evidence found that this brand takes adequate measures to control the emission of greenhouse gases.
According to the transparency index, the brand is reasonably transparent because it provides precise information about its suppliers, policies, and also remediation processes.
Yet, in labor conditions, Zara is not so good enough. We find evidence of medium-level labor abuse and unsafe working conditions of the factory workers.
8. Forever 21
For the latest trends, fashionable and unique designs, and hottest deals, people love the brand forever 21. It is also a multi-fashion brand from Los Angeles, California, US was established in 1984.
You will get budget-friendly trendy products from Forever 21 but they are not so durable and produce too much waste.
It has more than 700 stores worldwide and each year brings out thousands of products at affordable prices.
But this company fails to provide protective measures to avoid environmental negative impact. The production practice of Forever 21 is not properly disclosed, we find a lack of transparency.
In labor conditions, the situation is extremely unsatisfactory. Do you even think, how they can provide their products at this cheap rate? It is possible because they pay minimum wage to their workers and use cheap materials. They have no standard policy and safety for their workers. In the transparency index of labor conditions, Forever 21 got less than a 10% score.
Forever 21 is one of the unethical clothing brands because they promote unethical practices and labor rights violations. Do you want to wear those products which are made from the exploitation of some poor people? The choice is all yours.
9. H&M
H&M refers to Hennes & Mauritz group a Sweden-based clothing company founded in 1947.
Among all the fast fashion brands, we can say H&M is also one of the ethical fast fashion brands. This brand took much more protective approaches to reduce environmental pollution, animal threats by using sustainable fabrics, organic cotton and recycled materials.
Similarly it tries hard to provide labor safety by ensuring safe working conditions and proper ethical practices.
But, despite these activities, we don’t consider H&M as an innocent lame. You can find more than 4800 H & M stores all over the world. They manufacture large volumes of clothes per collection and bring out two collections each winter and summer.
Particularly, they follow the “buy new & buy now” method which produces too many waste products from packaging as well as in used clothing that people do not wear one item twice.
Henceforth, we should avoid the H&M fast fashion brand. If H&M decreases its production and also keeps the eco-friendly approaches, we can declare H&M is the most ethical fast fashion brand.
Why Avoid Fast Fashion Brands?
After knowing what fast fashion is, it sounds harsh to avoid it. But the truth is harsher. Fast fashion is not sustainable fashion. It has negative effects on the environment and human beings for the production of fast fashion products and so for the disposal system. Here I will show some of the reasons.
- Consume high level of non-renewable energy
Production of clothing in fast fashion needs a high level of non-renewable energy sources. As these brands produce elevated amounts of cloth per year, these industries use large amounts of energy and resources. But, we should reduce the use of non-renewable energy.
- Produce a significant amount of Waste
In manufacturing fast fashion clothes, they produce tons of waste each year. From studies, we waste from plastic waste each year. These wastes pollute the soil, water, air, and overall environment.
- Fast fashion is harmful to animals
Fast fashion industries use leather for many animals like reptiles, bears, sheep, ostriches, wild cats, and kangaroos. So, they kill a vast number of animals every year. As per experts’ information, about 100 million animals are killed to provide raw materials for fast fashion.
- Fast fashion industries are not sensible for employee rights
Most of the fast fashion industries don’t treat their employees right. For producing huge amounts of clothes within a short time, they force the employees to do overtime with cheap labor and poor working conditions. Additionally, they promote child labor by hiring children and women as employees for low salaries.
We hope, after knowing these factors, now you know how important it is to avoid these fast fashion brands.
5 Special Tips To Identify Fast Fashion Brands
We purchase products from famous brands but we do not know which brand is a fast fashion brand. It takes a lot of time to find out. So, we are here to give you 5 attributes of a brand. If any brand has these characteristics, you can be sure that the brand is a fast fashion brand.
- Produce too many items with a large volume within a short time.
- The price setup is competitive with other brands- try to lower prices than other fast fashion brands.
- The quality is in the medium range, not providing high-quality products.
- Use toxic and hazardous chemicals for profit without considering environmental effects.
- Promote child labor for high profit.
How To Avoid Fast Fashion Brands?
Brand loyalty is a psychological matter. Sometimes, we know that the brand is not good for our planet, but we can’t resist buying products of the brands.
In the last section, we are providing you with some magical tips to avoid fast fashion brands.
- Try to change your habit by controlling going to these fast fashion outlets or websites.
- Try to shop at the local market.
- Organize all your clothes and reuse them again and again to reduce waste. This will reduce the feeling of buying clothes.
- Try to buy products from brands that use sustainable materials and product durability is good.
- You can buy second-hand clothes.
- Before buying from fast fashion brands think about the labors of the brands and their environmental impact.
Final Words
At the end, after knowing the most crucial 9 fast fashion brands, we will consider the s.oliver first in the avoiding list, and then Forever 21 in second, and Shein in third place.
On the other hand, H&M and MANGO have shown some signs of being ethical fast fashion brands.
Across the board, we should avoid all of the fast fashion brands to save our environment, and animals, and also to stop the exploitation of poor labor.
Try to use sustainable fashion brands who avoid inhumane working conditions, using animal products and promoting ethical practices.
Mahedi Hasan is a Textile Engineer, as well as a Top Rated content writer at Upwork, a Level 02 Seller at Fiverr, Level 02 Publisher at Ezoic. A passionate textile and fashion content writer, fashion SEO expert, and fashion web designer. Having a B.Sc. in Textile Engineering Degree from Textile Engineering College, Noakhali (TECN). The department is Apparel Engineering. Highly Experienced fashion writer for the last 3+ years. Have extensive 7 years of experience in the wholesale clothing business.