Week 5

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/forever-21-facing-challenges-to-business-2015-10

Annika R. Uyenco
ASA 141
Week 5

I am a member of a religious student organization here at Davis and some friends and I will be performing a cultural dance this coming Saturday as a tribute to our Filipino roots. For this performance, the ladies had to purchase a red skirt and a white top. This was a necessity so I did not feel guilty when I ordered my skirt on Amazon. This week, I decided to stroll into Forever 21 to window shop as a break and was almost tempted to buy the clothing there. I have not been inside the Forever 21 in Davis since my freshman year and it was overwhelming to see all the apparel inside. After watching all the videos in class about fast fashion, I couldn't help but feel a little guilty when I saw something I thought was cute but then knowing there was a high chance that whoever made it probably wasn't being compensated enough for his/her hard work.

I looked at some of my clothing now and I remembered when I first got them I was ecstatic about wearing them. But now that some time has passed, I don't get the same excitement I used to. When I went to Forever 21 this week, I thought the clothes looked a lot better than the ones already in my closet. In my Textile World Trade class last quarter, we learned about "perceived and planned obsolescence," strategies used in fast fashion on convince consumers to buy more consistently. Abrahamson, from one of our assigned articles, explains it best

               ..limited functional life design and options for repair, design aesthetics that eventually lead                   to reduced satisfaction, design for transient fashion, and design for func-tional enhancement                 that requires adding new product features. Fashion, more than any other industry in the                         world, embraces obsolescence as a primary goal; fast fashion simply raises the stakes                           (Abrahamson, 2011)

Planned obsolescence is when companies engineer their products to only last a certain amount of time in order to motivate the consumer to buy the upgraded and newer version. In fast fashion, clothes are made with low quality so they break easily and compels the shopper to shop more. Perceived obsolescence is when products are deemed obsolescent because of the trends. The products may still be working just fine but shoppers are pressured into buying new products to stay in style. Either type of obsolescence is harmful and we already see the effects. Today, "... rivers and waterways around the world are being poisoned by the textile industry. (Lateline)

Lateline. “The Price of Fast Fashion: Rivers Turn Blue and 500,000 Tonnes in Landfill.” ABC News, ABC, 28 Mar. 2017, www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-28/the-price-of-fast-fashion-rivers-turn-blue-tonnes-in-landfill/8389156.

Joy, Annamma. "Fast Fashion, Sustainability, and the Ethical Appealof Luxury Brands." Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, 21 April 2015. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2752/175174112X13340749707123