The attractiveness of the platform fast fashion does it reveal the contradictions of Generation Z torn between ecological awareness and hyper-consumption?
Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier. Sociology works little with these categories of generation “Y” or “Z”. But what is certain is that young people are the recipients of injunctions to consume a lot, to renew their clothes, to be fashionable. These injunctions are carried both by the market system and by the social norms that make status struggles work. On the other hand, they are also summoned to mobilize for the environmental cause. However, being sensitive to the environmental cause means renouncing the values of a society that gives a central place to consumption. It is not so easy for a young person to get out of these processes in which identities are also constructed through consumption.
The sequel after the ad
Shein, the Chinese fast fashion giant and mirror of our ambiguities, is once again creating a buzz
Is the call for a boycott (which was one of the responses to the opening of Shein’s Parisian pop store) a really effective way of raising awareness and fighting?
With the boycott, the reflex is to make everyone bear the responsibility of making the right choices, ignoring the commercial and statutory logics in which each individual is caught. Because the fast fashion at low prices has also become a means for certain social categories to participate in the consumer society, to be able to buy clothes more often. My intention is not to say that this is a good thing, but to emphasize that ignoring these more structural dimensions, linked to social inequalities, places a heavy burden on individuals and poses, in a way, real problems of social justice.
The degradation of the environment is very largely backed by structures of inequality, in particular consumption. If we ignore them, then we do not see that they can be aggravated by solutions which consist in allowing only a few to access consumption, those who could buy “ethical” clothing. It is clear that the solutions are less to be found on the side of individuals than public decisions or the responsibility of economic actors to regulate production practices and market systems.
Shein, the Chinese fast fashion giant and mirror of our ambiguities, is once again creating a buzz
What other way of fighting can we imagine against these fashion brands with disastrous carbon footprint?
The sequel after the ad
The system of fast fashion finally illustrates the abuses of an economic system that makes a whole series of costs invisible: the damage done to nature, but also the human costs, and those in terms of health. It is also based on the fact that transport prices do not include much of the environmental component: products can thus be transported across the planet at very low cost. Finally, it does not take into account the costs related to the massive production of waste resulting from this poor quality production, since textile scrap accumulates in different regions of the countries of the Global South.
In short, breaking with this system requires a very profound overhaul of the regulation of economic systems in order to make the damage done to nature visible and costly. If these costs were to be taken into account, a product resulting from fast fashion would simply have… a prohibitive price! Naturally, the regulation of the economy is complex and even more on a global scale. But somehow the fast fashion makes it possible to show the need to count differently.
BIO EXPRESS
Sociologist, research director at the CNRS, Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier directs the Center for the Sociology of Organizations at Sciences-Po. She is also a member of the High Council for the Climate. His work focuses on how economic behavior is shaped by the interventions of companies, social movements and the state. She is the author of “Committed Consumption” published in 2018 by the Presses de Sciences-Po.
