00:00:01
I'm shopping at Abercrombie for
the first time since I was in high school.
00:00:05
Mildly triggering because this was like
the coolest store back in the day.
00:00:09
But I could never afford it
because my family is middle class.
00:00:12
Now that I'm here, I'm noticing
two main things.
00:00:15
One is that
everything is kind of affordable,
00:00:18
which was definitely not the case
in high school.
00:00:20
The other thing that I'm noticing is that
00:00:22
everything is just a little bit shittier
than you'd want it to be.
00:00:26
Seeing a lot of like
loose threads on things and a lot of stuff
00:00:30
that's just made out of 100% synthetic
fabrics.
00:00:32
Clothing just doesn't feel like this
nice, firm,
00:00:35
high quality
that I associate with Abercrombie.
00:00:39
Abercrombie still does
sell some high quality clothing.
00:00:42
I actually I really like this dress
and would totally buy it.
00:00:47
And I'm glad they've decided to start
using normal lighting in their stores.
00:00:51
But seeing so much cheap
and low quality stuff there made me
00:00:54
wonder, did clothing used to be better
when I was a teenager?
00:00:57
Not just at Abercrombie,
but across the board.
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So I scoured eBay, Depop and Poshmark
00:01:03
for clothes from trusted brands
of the '90's and 2000's.
00:01:07
Then I went to those same stores
and bought the 2024 version of each item.
00:01:11
Abercrombie was like legendary
for really high quality denim.
00:01:14
To compare the old and new,
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I got help from Amanda McCarty.
00:01:18
I worked as a buyer in the fashion
industry for about 20 years.
00:01:21
In the span of my career,
00:01:23
I saw how what we sell people changed.
00:01:27
The two major changes, I would say
are, one, nothing fits properly anymore.
00:01:32
It's not you. It's
nothing about your body. You're great.
00:01:34
And two, the longevity of these clothes,
even how you feel
00:01:38
when you put them
on, has degraded so much.
00:01:41
It's just not a good deal.
00:01:43
It's not just in my head.
00:01:45
It has gotten harder
to find quality clothes that last,
00:01:48
even at brands you used to like.
00:01:49
If you're wondering why, keep watching,
00:01:54
I want you to think
00:01:55
about how many new pieces of clothing
you bought last year.
00:01:58
If you're anything like
the average American, it was around 68.
00:02:01
in 1980 that number was 12.
00:02:04
But wait, it gets crazier.
00:02:06
In the '80s, Americans spent about 7%
of their annual income on clothes.
00:02:11
Today, it's just 3%.
00:02:13
We spend half as much, even though
we're buying five times more.
00:02:17
This Abercrombie ad from the '80s
helps explain why.
00:02:20
The high quality wool
was a huge selling point.
00:02:23
They even tell you exactly
where it's from.
00:02:25
And notice how they say
this is part of their fall collection?
00:02:29
Because in the '80s
and '90s, stores only had new clothes
00:02:32
a couple of times a year.
00:02:33
Usually a spring summer collection
and a fall winter collection.
00:02:37
And designers would start working
on each collection up to nine months
00:02:40
in advance because clothing production
takes a lot of work.
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They had to think of hundreds of unique
designs and whittle them down to the dozen
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or so best ones,
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send the designs to the factory,
go back and forth with them
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for months to create a prototype,
choose the best fabric,
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the right embellishments, and figure
out the proportions for different sizes.
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After all that, they place a massive order
00:03:01
with the factory
and then just pray the design would sell.
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It was kind of like a game of chance.
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You'd place two huge bets per year,
and if your styles flopped,
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you'd be stuck
with a whole bunch of clothes
00:03:12
you'd have to sell or discount
or just throw away.
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That risk is why
00:03:16
so much care and thoughtfulness
went into making each piece of clothing
00:03:20
and why you could expect quality
at every price point.
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Even at discount stores like Sears or
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J.C. Penney. Just look at the way
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J.C. Penney advertised this suit
in an ad from the '80s.
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Two piece suits
that are expertly tailored,
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classically designed
and have an elegant touch.
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They're not selling you on the price
00:03:39
or the trendiness,
but on the craftsmanship and design.
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Even one of the cheaper suits on
the market was still pretty high quality,
00:03:46
which is probably why
if you adjust for inflation,
00:03:49
this $160 suit would cost $600 today.
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If you go to
00:03:54
J.C. Penney now, you can easily
get a two piece suit for under $200.
00:03:58
So in the '80s and '90s,
people were buying fewer clothes,
00:04:01
but they'd be well-made pieces
that would be worn for years.
00:04:05
And keeping up with all the trends?
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Well, that was something
only wealthy people could do.
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Pull the latest Brioni's
and charge them to our account.
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Yes, ma'am.
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What are Brioni's?
Six months of my car payments, plus a car.
00:04:15
Then came a little store called Zara
and everything began to change.
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The New York Times
coined the term fast fashion in this 1989
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article
about the first U.S. store of Zara.
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"The latest trend is what we're after,"
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A Zara executive told The Times.
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"It takes 15 days between a new idea
and getting it into the stores."
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Remember that took most stores
nine months.
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How did Zara do it in 15 days?
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By streamlining
this part of the production process
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with something called griege goods
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rather than manufacturing overseas.
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Zara built their own
high tech factories in Spain,
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all connected to headquarters
by an underground monorail.
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There, robots working around the clock
cut and dye fabrics to create
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unfinished, uncovered pieces
that can be turned into any garment.
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Once the design is created,
Zara can send those greige goods
00:05:08
to their network of small shops
in nearby regions where they're
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transformed
into finished dresses, trousers and tops.
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Instead of huge orders, Zara makes
a small batch of each style to start with.
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The retail stores
can then send feedback to headquarters
00:05:23
about what's selling and what's not,
and they can quickly ramp up production
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on whatever's
popular, restocking within days if needed.
00:05:31
It massively reduced the risk
that came with clothing production.
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Instead of losing money on clearance sales
or throwing away
00:05:38
unsold goods,
Zara's styles often sell out quickly.
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The designers don't have to predict
trends a year in advance.
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They can just respond to fashion trends
00:05:47
as they emerge, though
sometimes that gets a little sketchy.
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For example, here's a look
from the high fashion designer, Celine,
00:05:55
from a collection
that debuted on the Vogue runway in 2013.
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This skirt would have retailed
for at least $1,000.
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And here's a very similar looking skirt
00:06:06
selling on Zara's website for just $80.
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According to the Wayback Machine,
Zara had this skirt for sale
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by August, which would have been
just a few weeks after Celine's version
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landed in boutiques.
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These runway knockoffs
and how quickly Zara could get them into
00:06:21
stores were wildly popular.
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By August 2008, Zara's
parent company, Inditex,
00:06:27
became the world's
largest fashion retailer.
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This is also when you had the rise
of two other fast fashion
00:06:34
giants of the new millennium,
Forever 21 and H&M,
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which pioneered a new way
to bring the runway to the masses.
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They partner with luxury designers
to make exclusive lines for H&M
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at affordable prices,
starting with Karl Lagerfeld in 2004.
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"Karl is it true?"
00:06:55
"Of course, it's true."
This part of the story,
00:06:58
it seems sort of like a win for the 99%.
00:07:01
Fast fashion was making it
so that anyone could wear runway designs
00:07:04
while they were still popular.
00:07:06
That was a new thing.
Of course, encouraging lots of consumers
00:07:10
to buy low cost clothes
that would go out of style
00:07:13
quickly would shockingly
have some downsides, too.
00:07:15
But we'll come back to that.
00:07:16
Bcause we can't give the minds
behind Zara
00:07:20
and H&M all the credit
for the rise of fast fashion.
00:07:23
We also have to give some credit
to ... Bill Clinton?
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No, not because of his style.
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In 1994,
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President Clinton signed NAFTA,
the North American Free
00:07:41
Trade Agreement, which made it cheaper
to make clothes in Mexico.
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And a few years later,
he normalized trade relations with China.
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Textile factories
started moving out of the U.S.
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because now clothing retailers had access
00:07:53
to the largest pool of cheap
labor in human history.
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Luckily, there was a law from
the '70s, The Multifiber Arrangement,
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which limited how much clothing
American and European countries
00:08:05
could import from other nations.
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Unfortunately,
the World Trade Organization let it expire
00:08:10
in 2005,
ushering the heyday of fast fashion,
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because now there was nothing
stopping companies
00:08:17
from producing everything in the countries
with the lowest wages,
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the fewest labor laws
and the laxest environmental regulations.
00:08:25
We've arrived at the fashion landscape
that I remember from my teens.
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In the 2000s,
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you had four distinct buying options
ranging in price and quality:
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high fashion or luxury brands,
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department stores, mall brands
and fast fashion.
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But these days,
it kind of feels like the bottom of this
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pyramid has collapsed and everything's
a little cheaper and shittier.
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J.Crew, Anthropologie.
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Abercrombie These didn't used
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to be considered fast fashion,
but now they arguably are.
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And that's because of two very big things
00:09:00
that changed the experience
of shopping into the hellscape of today.
00:09:04
The first is the 2008 financial crisis.
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Middle class consumers
no longer had as much money to spend,
00:09:11
so they began drifting over
to cheaper options, while
00:09:14
all of the other non fast
fashion retailers were struggling.
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Forever 21 was opening store after store
after store.
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H&M, the same thing.
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Zara is spreading into other cities.
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And so the conversation began,
"How do we compete here?"
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"What if we continue
to show the same prices on the price tags
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that we always have?
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But we know that we're going to sell
most of the units
00:09:35
of that style on sale,
and we plan for that?"
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So let's say this dress costs $40 to make
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and it retailed for $100 in 2007.
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In 2010, during the recession,
the retailer would keep the price
00:09:50
tag at $100, but expect that most pieces
will only sell once it goes on sale.
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So they'll only spend, let's say, $15
to make it so they'll still make a profit.
00:10:01
And how do you make clothes for cheap?
00:10:03
Well, by making cheaper clothes,
you add synthetic materials
00:10:07
like polyester instead of selling pure
natural fibers like cotton and wool.
00:10:11
You skimp on details like pockets,
buttons and zippers and offer less sizes.
00:10:17
I could see all these things
play out in the clothing I bought, like
00:10:20
these men's jeans from Abercrombie,
from the 2000s versus now.
00:10:24
The vintage pair weighs
a hefty 761 grams and is 100% cotton.
00:10:30
They feel substantial, long lasting,
really high quality denim.
00:10:35
They have a decent amount
of distressing on here
00:10:37
that was probably done by hand to sort of
break down areas, make them softer.
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In the fast fashion era,
00:10:43
a lot of this is skipped
00:10:44
where it's just like,
let's just spray them with acid
00:10:46
or do other things that are like actually,
like very toxic.
00:10:50
The new pair weighs less at 720 grams
and is a cotton elastane blend.
00:10:55
This is that fast fashion track of okay,
if we add a little bit of stretch,
00:10:59
it will fit more people theoretically
and they'll be less likely to return them.
00:11:04
But putting elastane in jeans shortens
the lifespan pretty significantly.
00:11:09
Those elastane fibers that are woven
in here, they're plastic and they break.
00:11:12
And the more you wash them,
the sooner they break.
00:11:15
But you get into the cycle where
you have to wash the jeans more often
00:11:18
to get them to go back to size
because they get stretched out.
00:11:21
The other main difference
between these jeans, the zippers.
00:11:25
We have a legit luxurious zipper,
long lasting 100% metal.
00:11:30
They smoothly go up and down
like these are things that you take
00:11:33
for granted until you get a bad zipper.
00:11:36
The new pair,
when you were trying to unzip these,
00:11:39
that sound, you can feel like this
zipper is going to be a problem soon.
00:11:44
This is a difference of maybe $0.50,
but it's a penny's game
00:11:47
to get the pricing
to work with the targets you're given.
00:11:50
Another area that you can really see
how quality degraded is with sweaters.
00:11:54
We compared an Anthropologie sweater
from today
00:11:57
to a vintage sweater made in the nineties.
00:11:59
This sweater is Liz Claiborne, which is
like Anthropologie before Anthropologie.
00:12:04
The vintage sweater is 100% wool.
00:12:06
The one made today is 100% polyester.
00:12:09
The vintage sweater has metal buttons.
00:12:11
The other one has no buttons at all.
00:12:13
The vintage sweater is a size medium.
00:12:15
The one made today is one size.
00:12:18
When I see "one size" in something like,
oh, it's because they couldn't
00:12:21
afford to buy it in sizes
to meet the margin targets.
00:12:24
Even with all these cost cutting measures,
traditional retailers were struggling.
00:12:29
And that's around the time private
equity firms started buying them up,
00:12:32
saddling them with debt
and letting all the business decisions
00:12:36
be made by finance bros,
00:12:37
whose idea of fashion is that
00:12:39
Patagonia vest over a gingham shirt.
00:12:42
And on top of all that, there's still that
other huge change that I mentioned.
00:12:46
The final death knell in quality clothing,
the Internet.
00:12:50
Social media and fast
fashion are a match made in heaven.
00:12:54
Social media helped shorten our attention
spans, which extends to fashion
00:12:57
trends too,
which cycled through faster and faster.
00:13:00
That makes fast
fashion indispensable to influencers
00:13:04
who rely on a steady stream of new clothes
for their content.
00:13:07
This puts pressure on all of us
to wear a totally unique, never
00:13:11
before seen outfit every single day,
which is pretty hard.
00:13:17
Lizzie McGuire.
you are an outfit repeater.
00:13:20
I guess now it's time to talk about
Shein,
00:13:24
Zara's more chaotic little sister,
00:13:26
the logical conclusion of fast fashion.
00:13:29
Shein is a company that focuses on selling
as much hyper trendy,
00:13:32
super low quality clothing.
00:13:34
They can for mind blowingly cheap prices.
00:13:37
Shein raked in close to $10 billion
in 2020.
00:13:41
It's currently the biggest clothing
00:13:43
retailer in the world,
even beating out Amazon in the U.S.
00:13:46
Shein is not just fast
fashion, it's instant fashion.
00:13:51
Zara can get products
from drawing board to store in 15 days.
00:13:55
Shein can do it in three.
00:13:56
Zara can release
35,000 new items of clothes per year.
00:14:01
Shein will release that many in
just a couple weeks.
00:14:04
So how do they do it?
00:14:06
Rather than functioning as a cohesive
clothing manufacturer
00:14:09
with its own factories like Zara, Shein
is more like Amazon, a huge marketplace
00:14:15
selling clothes from thousands
of independent Chinese factories.
00:14:19
And it treats those factories
sort of like Uber treats its drivers.
00:14:22
The factories are hooked up to Shein's
software that collects real time
00:14:25
feedback about which items are selling
well and which aren't.
00:14:28
The software
00:14:29
then sends alerts to the factory owners
phones to ramp up or slow down production.
00:14:33
It's Zara's
small batch production on steroids.
00:14:37
And just like other billionaires,
Shein finds creative ways to avoid U.S.
00:14:42
taxes.
00:14:43
See, when you buy something from Shein,
your clothes are shipped to
00:14:46
you directly from the factory in China.
00:14:48
There's
no big Amazon style warehouses in the U.S.
00:14:51
full of Shein dresses.
00:14:53
And since packages valued at under $800
can enter the U.S.
00:14:57
duty free
00:14:58
Shein merchandise is pretty much
always exempt from consumer goods tariffs.
00:15:02
That exemption, it's called de
minimis, was originally created
00:15:05
so you could buy a rug or a lamp
while you're on vacation
00:15:08
and ship it back to yourself
without having to pay tariffs,
00:15:11
not for big clothing retailers.
00:15:14
50 years of fast fashion and ultra fast
00:15:17
fashion has completely changed
our relationship with clothes.
00:15:21
Instead of being something
to cherish and care for, they're now
00:15:24
just another cheap and disposable
plastic consumer good. Thanks to fast
00:15:29
fashion, clothing retailer is in a
race to the bottom death spiral.
00:15:33
Everything is fast fashion now.
00:15:34
And the thing is, all this overproduction,
it doesn't just affect clothing quality.
00:15:39
When private equity and fast
fashion companies greedily
00:15:42
maximize their profits,
no matter what the cost,
00:15:45
that hurts workers
across the entire textile supply chain.
00:15:49
Now, mass
producing clothing has always relied
00:15:53
on extremely exploitative labor
and dangerous working conditions.
00:15:57
But as the industry gets bigger,
the casualties and abuses do keep growing.
00:16:02
Like when a garment factory
collapsed in Bangladesh
00:16:05
in 2013, killing over a thousand workers.
00:16:08
But the fast fashion companies
00:16:10
that produce clothes,
they're hardly faced any accountability.
00:16:13
So it's no surprise that nearly ten years
later,
00:16:16
a 2021 investigation by Public Eye,
a Swiss human rights group
00:16:20
showed that factories
that supply Shein are crowded and unsafe
00:16:24
with blocked emergency exits and people
regularly working over 75 hours a week.
00:16:30
Slavery is still an issue, too.
00:16:32
According to recent investigations,
anywhere between
00:16:35
20 and 30% of clothes
being sold in the U.S.
00:16:38
contain cotton from Xinjiang,
a region in China with cotton farms
00:16:42
that rely on forced labor from weavers
and other Muslim minorities.
00:16:46
The prices
that we are offered on these clothes
00:16:50
that are the prices we're willing to pay
are not based in a reality
00:16:54
where everybody involved is paid a living
wage and works under good conditions.
00:16:59
I mean, they're built off
of cutting corners and exploitation.
00:17:03
Now, I want you to once again think of all
those new clothes you bought last year.
00:17:06
How many of them will you still be wearing
next year... the year after?
00:17:11
The average American
gets rid of 81 pounds of clothes per year.
00:17:15
And that's nothing compared
to the hundreds of billions of pounds
00:17:18
of unsold clothing and returns that
manufacturers and retailers throw away.
00:17:23
No one actually knows
how much exactly it is,
00:17:26
but we do know that you can see
the world's textile waste from space.
00:17:30
This mountain of discarded clothes
in Chile's Atacama Desert
00:17:34
grows by 39,000 tons per year.
00:17:37
The polyester
that's in almost all clothing these days
00:17:40
will take centuries to decompose.
00:17:43
None of this bad PR is slowing down
textile production at all.
00:17:46
Shein is on the verge of an IPO
on the London Stock
00:17:49
Exchange with a $64 billion valuation.
00:17:53
That kind of stuff makes the fast
fashion industry seem unstoppable.
00:17:57
But there are people fighting back.
00:17:59
First,
there's that de minimis tax exemption
00:18:01
we talked about that allowed
Shein to evade tariffs.
00:18:04
A bipartisan group of lawmakers
are trying to close that loophole.
00:18:08
Meanwhile, New York lawmakers
00:18:10
have introduced legislation
to create for the first time
00:18:13
legally binding environmental
and labor standards for the industry.
00:18:18
And dozens of brands
have been investigated for using cotton
00:18:21
from Xinjiang, including H&M, Nike,
Uniqlo, Burberry and Shein.
00:18:26
But there's still a lot to be done,
00:18:27
and the industry is going to fight
every step of the way.
00:18:30
Remember
when I said Shein's IPO is in London?
00:18:33
The reason
they're not doing it in New York
00:18:35
is because they didn't want to comply
with U.S.
00:18:37
regulations that would force them
to make disclosures about forced labor
00:18:41
in their supply chain.
They haven't given up, though.
00:18:44
They're lawyering up
and lobbying against those regulations.
00:18:47
Fast fashion is the story of unchecked
corporate
00:18:50
greed in a bargain for lower prices for.
00:18:53
well, you. Though, as we've shown, that
hasn't actually worked out for consumers.
00:18:59
We need lawmakers to continue
cracking down on corporations like Shein
00:19:03
because we all deserve clothes
that look and feel good but don't require
00:19:08
exploiting workers and destroying the
planet just to be affordable.
