From the archive: the True Cost

Annabelle Perez Donate
Jul 28
4 min read

Note: This short paper was written for the class: Introduction to the Fashion and Garment industry back in 2022 and has been translated by me from Dutch to English.

No AI was used in the translating or writing of this text.

Clothing seems to be getting cheaper all the time, and trends seem to change by the minute.

Why is this? And where does this clothing come from?

The documentary The True Cost investigates these and other questions. This film attempts to expose the health and economic risks in the fashion industry. Particularly in the fast-fashion sector, some issues are not isolated but have become standard practice to meet growing market demand.

Fast Fashion

Fast fashion is a design, production, and marketing method aimed at quickly producing large quantities of clothing. The mass production of fast fashion utilizes trend replication and low-quality materials to bring cheap styles to the end consumer.

Nowadays, fast-fashion brands create approximately 52 micro-seasons per year, roughly one new "collection" per week.

Thanks to various factors such as the internet and other technological advancements, brands can replicate the latest fashion trends and produce and sell them as quickly as possible. In this way, these companies can create new, desirable styles weekly, if not daily. As a result, brands have enormous quantities of clothing and can ensure that customers never tire of the stock.

Unfortunately, this speed significantly shortens the time required, for example, by a seamstress to produce a garment, which means that quality deteriorates, enormously shortening the lifespan of a garment compared to a few years ago.

Conversely, the benefits of fast fashion are affordable prices and immediate gratification for consumers, increased profits for companies, and the democratization of stylish clothing.

Consequences

Worker Safety

One of the causes for global awareness regarding the practices of the fast fashion industry is the Rana Plaza incident.

The collapse of the Rana Plaza factory was a structural failure that occurred on April 24, 2013, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where an eight-story commercial building named Rana Plaza collapsed. The search for the dead ended on May 13, 2013. Approximately 2,500 injured people were rescued from the building, but 1,134 people died.

For some of the lowest wages in the world, millions of people, most of them girls and women, are exposed every day to an unsafe working environment with a high number of work-related accidents and deaths, as well as occupational diseases.

Most factories do not meet the requirements of building and construction legislation. As a result, many deaths occur due to fire incidents and building collapses.

Environment

The environmental impact of fast fashion includes the depletion of non-renewable resources, the emission of greenhouse gases, and the use of enormous amounts of water and energy. The fashion industry is the second-largest water consumer industry and requires approximately 2,500 liters to produce one cotton T-shirt and 7,000 liters of water to produce a pair of jeans.

Furthermore, brands use synthetic fibers such as polyester, nylon, and acrylic, which take hundreds of years to biodegrade. Moreover, cotton, which is found in a large number of fast fashion products, is also not environmentally friendly to produce. Pesticides deemed necessary for cotton growth pose health risks to farmers.

Health

In addition to the impact on the environment, fast fashion also has consequences for the health of consumers and garment workers. Harmful chemicals such as benzothiazole have been found in clothing currently on the market. Since our skin is our largest organ, wearing such a garment can be a major danger.

This danger only increases in the factories and neighboring towns and villages where fast fashion is produced. For example, conventional textile dyeing often releases heavy metals and other toxic substances that then end up in local water systems.

The documentary The True Cost (2015) mentions that people living around clothing factories also suffer from a long list of diseases, such as cancer, jaundice, and liver cancer.

Approximately 70 to 80 percent of the children in every village are also born mentally and physically disabled.

The film gives a human face to how the 40 million garment workers in the world feel the pressure because developing countries, desperately seeking the economic opportunities that companies can offer, fail to comply with wage and labor laws, while major fashion brands keep their hands clean.

It succeeds in raising consumer awareness, as well as inviting manufacturers and governments to become more sensitive to these issues.

The goal was to make viewers of all kinds ask themselves why it is necessary to operate under such conditions to achieve the industry's objectives? Why do we assume this?