France - Curbing Ultra-Fast Fashion Brands

Today, we as a class discussed this topic which Sam had found online. As an individual and as a group we thought about this topic as some people did not agree, being on the fence about this situation due to its pros and cons. I personally agree with this decision to ban advertisements and put taxes on ultra-fast fashion because while it may cost some influencers their jobs and others relating to advertisement, there are other jobs available out there, along with influencers specifically being able to continue their job but instead promote alternatively to how they have been up until this point in France. Influencers can decide to shift their focus to showing the new clothes of the week and instead focus on promoting people to collect clothes based on the individual. What clothing makes someone comfortable? What colours does someone like? How can you combine a limited wardrobe to create interesting looks? These are some questions that these people could flip to, to instead cultivate an audience who uses what they must create personal style, encourage individuality and reduce the line of trends that happen every year. They can also promote fixing clothes. There is a hole in a shirt, what fun and interesting way can someone fix the issue or make something from it? If the hole is in an interesting place, would it be interesting to incorporate the hole into the shirt and develop the item of clothing into something new? It can encourage long lasting clothing and reduce the impact fashion has on the environment through preservation and/ or repurposing. Maybe something is damaged in a way where it would be best to not use it anymore, can the materials be used to create something new? If people need new clothes, maybe they should look for charity shops, or ask around the local community in case anybody has any clothes that they don't wear. Influencers could, instead of doing a shopping haul, walk around their local charity shops and show the different things you can find.

 

While there are not many charity shops around, over time we can cultivate an environment where people can still buy from brands if they can, allowing there to be a bit more available to people with a lower income. Right now, there is a surplus amount of clothing sent to charity shops that goes unbought and sent into dumps. Instead of this, could there be a cycle where is there is anything that isn't bought within a certain time frame, it gets moved to a storage area where they can bring it back into the charity shops to see if anyone would like it and after a couple of rounds of this, if it still isn't bought, they can be sent to factories for the materials to be reused. This situation reminds me of the town in Italy, Prato, where the entire town has a strong dedication to repurposing the materials from old or unused garments and creating materials from that which can go into the cycle of creating and recycling.

 

This could significantly affect the attitude towards the clothing industry and push towards a more sustainable future where people regain the skills that allowed people to live off limited clothing options in the past.

 

With a changing attitude towards the fashion industry, there will be people who lose their jobs in factories. This is bad for them since many of these people barely own a living as is due to the exploitative environment. I believe that this law is a starting point that can branch out and develop in the future with the next likely step is the EU doing something similar because the fashion industry is such a big problem to sustainability. If the EU pick this law up and doing something similar or develop it, it can further force people to think more about what they are buying. As time goes on, I can hope that this will become a standard, to promote a healthier relationship with clothes and expecting a better standard of construction to make clothes last. It can also encourage countries to use factories in their own country to reduce travel costs and create jobs for the people. If there isn't a significant change to companies using factories, the changes that can come from this law and future laws relating to it can have the opportunity to improve the standard of living for those who work in factories and possibly lead to less damage to the environment around the factories. If the change gets large enough, there can be many beneficial factors to changing the way that the fashion industry operates which may lead to quite a few people losing their jobs, however, if we don't change, we could be losing our planet and there would be no reason to even have a job. Ideally, to improve entirely, countries that rely on the exploitation of hundreds of thousands of their people to get by would be able to develop industries of their own where they can rely on the resources and skills around them to bring their country a profit instead of their people receiving inhumane conditions and a tiny salary that they can barely live off of.

 

Synthetic fabrics are a point of discussion, and I think branching from this law, in the future of regulations on the fashion industry, there should be a limit on the number of synthetic materials made. The production of these materials is closely linked with the oil, gas and coal industry which is the biggest contributor to climate change. With a limit on the creation of these materials, it can encourage people to use the natural materials available to them as alternatives whilst keeping them available to some extent. There are benefits from these types of materials but I think the focus should be on researching possible alternatives and the production of new materials using natural substances. Though there are some caveats to this since cotton is a very unsustainable material thanks to its water usage, developing alternatives is still an option for current natural fibres with the goal of finding solutions that allow the planet to continue and for us to be able to live on it.