If you want to shop only for ethical and sustainable brands, make sure you avoid these fast fashion retailers.
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It hasn’t exactly been a secret that the world’s biggest fashion brands have harmful production processes, but it wasn’t something that consumers actively thought about.
Now, buyer behaviors are changing as the numerous consequences of fast fashion are coming to light. People are seeing the large-scale effects of the fashion industry on society and the environment, and it’s inspiring a movement for more ethical and sustainable fashion.
What Is Fast Fashion & Why Is It So Bad?
Fast fashion is the “cheap and speedy production of low-quality clothing, which gets pumped quickly through stores in order to meet the latest and newest trends.”
To unsuspecting consumers, fast fashion seems incredible because it’s so cheap. However, most consumers don’t consider why clothes are so cheap in the first place, and that’s exactly where the dark side of the fashion industry lies.
Since these brands rely on speedy production and sell their clothes for next to nothing, fast fashion companies use the cheapest possible materials and labor to profit. As a result, fast fashion is responsible for enormous waste, pollution, and poor or outright abusive worker conditions.
According to Insider, the fashion industry generates 10% of the world’s carbon emissions and creates 20% of the world’s industrial water pollution. And that’s only scratching the surface of fast fashion’s environmental impact — water consumption, microplastic pollution, and textile waste are among the many other issues.
When it comes to social impact, fast fashion is just as bad. 99% of the major clothing brands do not pay their workers a living wage. In addition, many of these brands use child labor or forced labor (a euphemism for slave labor).
Okay, so it’s clear that fast fashion is bad, but how do you actually avoid it?
For a while, it felt like it was virtually impossible to avoid fast fashion. Today, there are plenty of fast fashion alternatives that offer well-made clothing that will stand the test of time. Lasting quality will always be better than cheap, trendy clothing that barely lasts a season.
But to avoid fast fashion entirely, you also need to know which brands to avoid — and it isn’t always obvious. That’s where this article comes in.
14 Fast Fashion Brands To Avoid
Sometimes, fast fashion is easy to spot. Other times, it’s obscured by appealing marketing, vague information, and greenwashing. That’s why I’ve compiled this list of 14 fast fashion brands to steer clear of.
Amazon Essentials
It probably comes as no surprise that a massive clothing brand from one of the biggest online marketplaces in the world counts as fast fashion.
What’s most damning is that some of Amazon’s suppliers for the Essentials line have been linked to slave labor in China. Because Amazon isn’t a transparent organization, it’s unclear which or how many Essentials products are implicated.
Amazon Essentials is also not a sustainable range and doesn’t provide any information about its production.
ASOS
With over 26 million customers worldwide, ASOS is one of the biggest fashion brands today.
Like most fast fashion brands, ASOS presents itself in a positive light. Its website makes lots of nice-sounding promises about “a more sustainable future” and features ambitious goals around issues like carbon emissions and human rights.
However, these promises and goals are just that. Currently, ASOS isn’t doing much to be sustainable or ethical, and ultimately, the brand still follows a fast fashion production model.
While ASOS has partnered with anti-slavery organizations, it’s unclear what impact the company is actually making. In addition, ASOS has been known for its poor treatment of warehouse employees.
Ultimately, ASOS falls under the category of fast fashion merely for its production volume alone. However, its questionable ethics and sustainability initiatives cement it even more as a brand to avoid.
Banana Republic
While Banana Republic isn’t a typical fast fashion brand, it still earns a spot on this list due to its seasonal production cycle and being owned by Gap (see below).
Banana Republic certainly isn’t as egregious as some other brands on this list, but it’s a fast fashion brand all the same. It offers hundreds of garments at a time, earning tens of billions of dollars in revenue each year.
Although the company does have some sustainability initiatives in place, it doesn’t provide clear information about its labor practices. Even though Banana Republic’s elevated marketing seems high-end, the company still qualifies as fast fashion.
BoohooMAN
BoohooMAN is the men’s offering from UK retail giant boohoo, a company that’s often described as ultra-fast fashion. Cheap, trendy clothing has always been a part of the boohoo brand, making it one of the most obvious fast fashion brands around.
What’s more, boohooMAN doesn’t even try to masquerade as an ethical or sustainable company. The brand’s sustainability page is laughably short and vague, and there’s not much greenwashing going on because there’s nothing to greenwash.
There’s also plenty of evidence that both boohoo and its suppliers treat workers poorly. In 2020, factory workers were made to work with little to no social distancing. Additionally, workers at boohoo’s suppliers were forced to deal with unsafe working conditions and payment far below the minimum wage.
Gap
Though Gap is not as trend-focused as some other brands, it’s still fast fashion.
Gap Inc. — which owns the brands Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy — is a fashion titan that earned $15.6 billion in 2022 alone. This mall brand may be a nostalgic classic, but its business practices put it squarely into the box of fast fashion.
Gap was one of the many brands implicated in benefiting from Uyghur slave labor, and it’s unclear whether the brand has taken action on the issue. The company also continues to work with factories that do not fully comply with its code of conduct, which could point to poor working conditions.
Gap is marginally better in terms of sustainability, there’s little evidence that the company is achieving (or even progressing toward) its goals.
H&M
While all fast fashion companies are harmful, H&M is especially bad. The company’s tremendous growth and expansive collections make it one of the biggest fast fashion empires in the world.
H&M produces anywhere from half a billion to three billion garments each year using underpaid labor from factories with unsafe working conditions. Even compared to similar brands, H&M stands out for its particularly damaging labor practices.
The brand has also been sued twice for greenwashing and accused of annually burning 12 metric tons of unsold clothing. Suffice it to say that H&M isn’t the sustainable company it pretends to be.
It’s worth noting that H&M also owns the brands Arket and COS — so make sure you stay away from those labels if you want to avoid supporting H&M.
J. Crew
Even though J. Crew is a go-to retailer for classic menswear, it also qualifies as fast fashion. Like Banana Republic, J. Crew offers hundreds of styles — often at low or sale prices — that change seasonally.
The company doesn’t provide much information about worker conditions or item traceability throughout the supply chain. In the 2020 Fashion Transparency Index, where J. Crew scored a measly 14%.
And when it comes to sustainability, J. Crew is mostly talk. The brand has sustainable material sourcing initiatives, but there are no signs that its production process as a whole is anywhere near sustainable.
Mango Man
Mango Man is another popular European fast fashion brand that’s been breaking into the US market.
Mango has a more infamously checkered past than some other brands on this list due to its implication in the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. The eight-story garment manufacturing building produced clothing for fast fashion brands, and was improperly built.
Frankly, its safety concerns were overlooked. When the building collapsed in 2013, it left a death toll of 1,134.
Aside from that incident, Mango has still consistently failed to provide transparency around its labor ethics or present evidence that it’s working to reduce its environmental footprint.
Old Navy
In many ways, this Gap-owned brand is even worse than its parent company. Old Navy proudly advertises bargain bin prices, so it’s not too shocking that the company doesn’t have the best rap sheet.
Like most of these other brands, Old Navy provides scant evidence of its labor conditions or environmental impact. It’s making some strides toward better sustainability, but its overall production remains unchanged.
SHEIN
Chinese clothing juggernaut SHEIN is arguably the worst brand on this list. While its men’s offerings are not nearly as popular as its women’s line, the brand deserves a title as one of the most harmful clothing companies in existence today.
SHEIN encourages throwaway fashion more than any other brand. From July to December 2021, the company added between 2,000 and 10,000 new styles every single day. These garments are produced mainly using virgin polyester, which results in approximately 6.3 million tons of carbon emissions per year.
To manufacture these garments and sell them at rock-bottom prices, SHEIN uses — you guessed it — underpaid labor. A Channel 4 investigation discovered that SHEIN factory workers were forced to work 18-hour days with just one day off per month. In addition, workers who made just one mistake were slammed with a fine that amounted to two-thirds of their daily wage.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, SHEIN clothing can also be deadly. Many of its garments — including items for toddlers — contain alarmingly high levels of lead.
Target
Target is one of the few companies on this list that doesn’t exclusively focus on clothing, but its apparel nonetheless falls under the label of fast fashion.
Target is an example of a company trying to be sustainable while relying on an unsustainable business model. For example, Target aims to use more sustainable cotton but still churns out thousands of styles.
UNIQLO
UNIQLO is often not thought of as fast fashion thanks to its focus on more versatile garments and wardrobe staples — and its savvy marketing — but the brand definitely qualifies.
UNIQLO’s lifestyle-driven approach sets it apart from other fast fashion companies. That said, the brand is still guilty of the typical sins of fast fashion: hundreds of lower-quality styles sold at low prices. Sure, the clothes may not fall apart, but that doesn’t mean they’re not the products of fast fashion.
UNIQLO is best described as a “diet” fast fashion brand (even if its CEO disagrees). It certainly isn’t the worst company in the world, but there are much better brands you could give your money to.
Urban Outfitters
Urban Outfitters has a particularly awful track record. Its complete lack of information about manufacturing and its severely inadequate sustainability initiatives make it one of the least transparent fashion brands.
Most of Urban’s sustainability claims center around upcycling or recycling, which are good but ultimately insufficient initiatives. True sustainability means companies are changing how they manufacture clothing, and Urban Outfitters shows no signs of changing in that regard.
The company scored just 13% on the Fashion Transparency Index, so it’s next to impossible to evaluate its labor practices. However, the brand has been linked to Uyghur forced labor and Los Angeles factories with poor working conditions.
Zara
Zara was one of the first clothing brands to embrace the fast fashion production model as we know it today. In the early 1990s, the retailer boasted that it only took 15 days for a garment to go from being designed to be sold. The store’s mission hasn’t changed over the years.
Even though other fast fashion brands have outpaced it, Zara still pumps out about 450 million garments per year. This translates to an average of 500 new designs per week, a scale that’s inherently unsustainable.
Zara was also on the list of companies said to profit from Uyghur labor, and it’s been accused of tolerating slave labor conditions in Brazil. Unsurprisingly, it’s not much better on the sustainability front — the company has vanilla initiatives but little evidence of change.
Fast Fashion FAQ
The landscape of fast fashion is complicated, so here are some quick answers to a few frequently asked questions:
What brands are trying to stop fast fashion?
The only brands actively seeking to stop fast fashion brands are slow fashion brands that prioritize responsibility, transparency, sustainability, and longevity.
What brands would be considered fast fashion?
Generally speaking, any brand that makes hundreds of items for low prices counts as fast fashion.
Who is the leading fast fashion brand?
Going off current market valuations, Zara is currently the world’s biggest fast fashion brand.
Is Nike considered fast fashion?
Nike isn’t purely fast fashion, but it’s close. The brand produces massive amounts of clothing and focuses on trends, but it doesn’t tick all the fast fashion boxes. Still, it’s probably a brand to avoid if you’re seeking to support ethical, sustainable companies.
Conclusion: Avoid Them if You Can
Even though ethics and sustainability are becoming increasingly important, fast fashion empires still reign supreme in the clothing industry.
Thankfully, avoiding fast fashion is easier than ever before. There are all kinds of alternative brands that offer higher-quality clothing while making much less of an impact on the environment.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of all fast fashion brands. So, make sure you can identify the characteristics of fast fashion companies if you want to shop more ethically and sustainably.
Questions? Comments? Leave them below!
