Fast fashion

Now that I'm retired, I don't really need many clothes, but the days will be getting cooler soon, and I just wanted a couple of casual long-sleeved shirts to tide me over until sweatshirt season. Sounds pretty mundane, certainly not worth mentioning in a blogpost, until you remember that this is a senior woman talking about shopping for clothes.

Every senior woman knows all about the double whammy. First of all, nobody wants to sell us clothes. Most of us would like comfortable, classic items that are made to last. We don't have a lot of disposable income either. So from a marketer's point of view, we're bad news. Tabi's went under, Northern Reflections got kicked out of Scarborough Town Centre because the mall wants to go upscale, TanJay's quality is tanking. Our options keep shrinking.

What happens if we try out some ordinary mid-range stores? Well, then we run into the second part of the whammy: fast fashion. Cheap, flimsy, tight-fitting, unstructured, poorly made clothes in this week's styles and colours. They're meant for young, skinny, flat-chested women who live in warm climates and who will wear them a couple of times before the seams unravel or the buttons fall off or the garments don't survive the first wash. Then they'll throw them out and go back for more.

Fast fashion began in the 1990s, when brands began competing with each other for market share by coming out with more product lines per year at lower cost. Globalization gave manufacturers the ability to shift production to countries with lower labour and overhead costs. The business model is low quality / high volume. There used to be two fashion seasons a year, fall / winter and spring / summer. Now, with new trends coming out every week, the goal is to get consumers to feel untrendy quickly and keep buying. The lead time from design to manufacture is very brief; garment workers are pressured to work faster and cut corners. Plenty of social and environmental issues here: exploited workers, child labour, hazardous chemicals in the material, and all that synthetic, petroleum-based fabric ending up in landfill where it will take decades to decompose.

What are our alternatives? We could try to sew our own clothes. But most of the quality fabric stores have disappeared along with our local garment industry. No more Dressmakers' Supply, Stitsky's or Archie Fine. Walk into Fabricland and it's row upon row of flimsy synthetics in garish colours and cheesy designs, on bolts full of flaws and even mold. Why go to all the trouble of making something that's going to look like you bought it at Walmart?

How about shopping at thrift stores? That's where so many well-made classic garments end up. They're the ones that have stood the test of time, after many washings and wearings. The quality is there if you take the time to look for it.

But the real revelation comes when we're shopping in those mid-range stores and take a little detour over to men's wear. Classic styles, substantial fabrics, grown-up colours, tags that say "long-wearing" and "keeps you warm when it's cold". That's where I got my long-sleeved shirt: a men's small, in a sturdy, wrinkle-free cotton and polyester knit, with flat-felled seams and ribbed cuffs. At least in mid-range clothing, men are not subjected to fast fashion. They are treated like people with busy, active lives, who need clothes to provide them with warmth, protection, and freedom of movement. Women, supposedly, don't need any of this. We're meant to think of our clothing as if it were gift wrap, strictly for decoration, use it once and throw it out. The clothing industry treats women like fools. And you know what? Apparently we are.