The world’s leading fashion brand Zara and other brands affiliated with its owner Inditex are enjoying flourishing sales for the time being. Its consumers stayed with the brand even when the prices were rising. Its close rival Shein also continued to challenge other fashion retailers.
While Zara continues to expand its stores to meet post-pandemic demand, particularly in the US. Shien on the other hand leads fashion brands in online retail. Inditex is expected to report healthy first-half results, with a rosy outlook for the holiday season. But tightening of regulation indicates that the future is not so rosy even though fast fashion is still dear to consumers. The future beyond that is murkier.
However, the regulators have cheap clothes in their sights. The European Commission declared fast fashion “highly unsustainable. Some 16 legislations at the draft stage force retailers to assume financial and legal responsibility for the environmental footprint of the clothes they produce. In the United States tougher eco-regulations for the industry in the offing. The fashion brands are responding to these regulations. For instance, Inditex invested €3.5 million ($3.75 million) in Moda Re, a Spanish company that processes used clothes for resale or recycling. This is not going to solve the issue as the invested amount is equivalent to the sales that Inditex generates in an hour. Shein and H&M also hope to decouple growth from its environmental impact by investing in secondhand fashion and other projects.
But if we look at the deadline set by the regulators these efforts are too little. No one even knows what the cost of these measures would be. Another problem is that many fashion giants are not easily recyclable and the retailers have limited capability to absorb secondhand merchandise. Currently developing countries are the main recipients of used fast fashion that are mostly thrown away.
Upcycling, resale, and recycling initiatives are still in the experimental stage, aimed more at buying time and ensuring fast-fashion retailers are part of the sustainability conversation, rather than simply a punching bag. If retailers are serious about their intentions to curb fashion waste, a scalable solution is needed soon, before the clothes flying off the racks at Zara are regulated out of existence.
Fast fashion flourishing now but has smoky future
