Fashion Bargains

"Nothing stands still in fashion" says Paula Cocozza in the Guardians G2 section (14.06.06). Fashions change and last seasons collectable becomes this seasons castaway. Catering to the trend of throwaway, affordable catwalk fashion are a growing list of discount shops. Perhaps most famous of these is the ubiquitous H & M. No matter which European city you go to you can be guaranteed to find the Scandinavian kings of high street fashion. Other stores such as the Zara (Spanish) and Primark (UK) have followed on the success of H & M as has the Asda/Wal-Mart clothing line George. And, now a new contender has joined the race to become the cheapest and coolest brand on the British high street. Last year the must have high street catwalk copy was Primark's "Balenciaga" military jacket as modelled by England footballer Wayne Rooney's girlfriend Colleen McLoughlin. This years hot contender is a pair of suede and leather ballet flats from Peacocks, the "new" Primark.

For many clothing retailers Christmas '05 was a little flat to say the least, one company however, bucked the trend and increased their sales in the final quarter of '05. That company is Peacocks. So what's the problem? As Richard Grey, the fashion director of glossy magazine 10, puts it: "We think Peacocks is great! You can go in there and get that great summer dress and that perfect pair of pumps, and for less money. And if I'm paying £10 for a great pair of ballet pumps, who cares how long they are going to last?"

And, in that last sentence lies the problem. High street retailers and the media are encouraging cheap throwaway fashion with little regard to the long term social and environmental cost.

The British consumer now firmly believes that clothes should be cheap. For example, our experience has taught us that the average high street customer does not expect to spend more than £5 or £6 on a T-shirt. Yet, we also know that it is difficult to produce and retail a truly ethical Tee for less than £10-£12 (and that's with economies of scale).

The Perfect T-shirt project has thrown up some interesting comments in it's forum along the lines of the perfect T-Shirt must be bio-degradable in order that it can be easily thrown away. Yet this misses the point entirely. Through the extraction of natural resources (cotton, leather, etc.), we would, and indeed do, transfer soil nutrition from one part of the globe to another faster than we can replenish the ground on which the cotton has been grown or cows reared. Therefore, any throwaway culture simply denudes the earth of natural resources. That is, an overly exuberant throwaway culture can never be good.

Therefore, even if cheap high street brands are produced in ISO standard factories (which, at the price they are being sold at one has to question whether they are) and, even if they were to be made from sustainable textiles (which they're not), the throwaway mentality being fostered on the catwalks and encouraged on the high street is leading the British shopper down a very short and unsound path.

A sustainable future means that the true cost of production must be accounted for in the price of clothes offered to the consumer. In turn, consumers need to recognise that there is a cost to throwaway consumption.

One thing stands still in fashion, the consumers' love of a bargain, but are the high street bargains a step too far?

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