'Fast' Fashion Vs High-End Fashion

Nowadays, the fashion business has changed a lot. On the one hand, the 'fast fashion' shops are pretty famous and on the other hand, it is easy to spot the classic high-end brands that show social status, which means that fashion can be either too expensive or too cheap. But does that mean that fashion is more accessible or that price does not matter, because of its importance as a part of everyone’s life? There are many answers but this essay will discuss the two extreme situations.

The 'fast fashion' factories (also known as sweatshops) produce clothes for brands that sell cheap clothes, usually of low quality, and that have been allegedly benefited from 'slave' labour and child labour. Common examples are Zara, Forever 21, GAP, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters, Primark, Adidas and H&M – stores that have been accused by some of underpaying their workers. Also, the most famous brands that promote luxury and give great examples of wealth are not far from being “safe”. Coco Chanel, Louis Vitton, Versace and Michael Kors are examples of high-end fashion and people always defend them because they claim that fashion is a way of expressing yourself, even if it does not promote equality and it helps increase consumerism. In some countries, wearing these brands gives wearers status, creating an abyss between those who have conditions to afford them and those who don’t.

However, I believe that none of those options are reasonable. High prices shouldn’t be justified on their social importance and low prices should not exist upon someone’s struggle. Fashion should be about art and feeling good about what you wear. The best solution would be financing local markets and manufacturing workers rather than big companies, influencing the improvement of the local economics and helping to create more jobs and new, small companies that do not exploit workers and that gives fair prices to their products, based on the production process.