by saying that fast fashion is bad, right?

I'm pretty sure we've read all those articles

and watched all those videos before,

but then at the end of last year, I saw the viral TikToks

where six influencers were invited to go to Shein.

Instead of doing, I think, what Shein intended, it

really undermined the credibility

of the brand and made it look like they had something to hide.

But if so many of us understood

that this was a publicity stunt

how do we explain Shein turning a $30 billion annual profit?

Or how Temu was able to afford a Super Bowl ad?

“I’m shopping like a billionaire”

The rise and wild success

of these companies can only mean one thing.

We're still buying them. Why?

It actually is deeper than you think.

But we can do better.

There are two prices for the items we buy online:

the price you pay, and then the actual cost.

The actual cost consists of things

like material, labor,

and this.

Fashion is an industry

that generates a stunning amount of waste.

Recent estimates say that 92 million

tons of clothing end up in landfills each year.

The trouble with the actual cost

is that it's usually deliberately hidden from us.

A 2023 report from the Fashion Transparency Index

found that 45% of major fashion

brands haven't disclosed their supplier list,

and only 1% of major fashion brands disclose

the number of workers being paid a living wage.

Everything we wear was put together by human hands.

There are no clothes-sewing robots.

You cannot put a bunch of fabric into a machine,

press a button, and a shirt comes out the other end.

It was made by people.

It was made by humans sitting at a sewing machine

and putting it together.

Labor is supposed to be

the most expensive part of making something,

so that when you get it and it's $5,

the question should be, well, who ...

Who got shortchanged?

That lack of transparency is part of a system

that's rapidly developed and become normalized over the years.

Fast fashion brands like H&M and Zara

initially existed to bring you trends from runway

to rack, at affordable prices, fast.

But with the rise of e-commerce,

we have turbocharged what we mean by fast and cheap.

H&M and Zara are still problems.

They're not good guys here.

But companies like Shein and now Temu,

I believe, outpace them by orders of magnitude.

To give you a scale.

A company like Gap typically produces

around 12,000 styles annually.

The OG fast fashion brands like H&M

and Zara more than double that output.

And where is Shein on this scale?

Recent estimates put that number closer to

1.5 million new styles each year.

Styles. Not items.

So what can we do about it?

Fast fashion actively takes advantage of us in a few ways.

Let's talk about the misinformation machine.

Starting with this gear.

Companies have conditioned and confused us about

how much we should have in our closets

and how long it should stay there.

The amount of money we spend on clothing

has actually dropped quite a bit in the last decade,

and the quality has also dropped.

So not only are workers being exploited,

but the items we're buying are not lasting as long.

This sucks for everybody.

Now, it's hard to justify spending significantly

more when you're used to paying less.

But the truth is, those pricier items will last longer.

One way to go about breaking

this gear is to set strict limits on purchases.

Tell yourself okay, I'm only going to buy

two new items over the next three months.

What do I want them to be?

Does this sound impossible?

Let's look at why, by analyzing

these two other relentless gears.

This one is the consumption problem.

And that's why Temu’s tagline is “shop like a billionaire.”

We're buying more than ever.

In 2018, the average American was buying

68 new items of clothing each year,

and at that time, Shein was only valued at $2 billion.

Today, TikTok is a huge culprit for trying to convince us

that we just need more all the time.

I spent $900 on Shein.

So I kind of went crazy on Shein.

I went on Shein to buy a few things and ended up

buying 40 things.

That is a new phenomenon.

The notion of the hauler who's a regular,

everyday person, who's been watching influencers

and seeing what they buy, getting dozens of outfits

very cheaply, often, you know, for just a few dollars

with the intent

of not wearing them very long

with the intent of throwing them out.

Shein and other companies are paying influencers

to normalize buying in excess.

And what we have to remember

is that doesn't benefit the individual.

It only benefits the brand.

Why would anyone want to

to make it a goal to consume like a billionaire?

Like knowing how

it's not possible for someone to be an ethical billionaire.

Why would someone still aspire

to want to imitate that behavior?

The first step in shutting down

this year is blocking the haulers.

Curate your timeline and algorithm away

from these things that only make you want to buy.

The second step is recognizing that companies

like Shein don't care what you want to wear.

They make billions because you don't know what to wear.

You feel that there is something lacking in your wardrobe

if you don't have the latest trend?

The answer to that is to figure out what your style is

and then shop around your style.

And that way you will always have something

that you want to wear in your closet.

Impulse buys are a huge source of regret.

One study done in the UK found that 60% of consumers regretted

a clothing purchase in the past year.

We need to slow down.

Changing those two habits isn't easy,

but you can give yourself some grace and time

and when things get really difficult,

you can think about this final gear,

which is incredibly strong.

That total lack of transparency

being used to manipulate you.

We don't want to believe the choices we make are unethical.

But once you pull back that curtain,

you can stick by the conviction that the true cost

is not justifiable in any sense.

I don't fault people for not knowing.

I do fault people for knowing and then not caring.

Of course, it's not entirely on the consumer.

Legislatures in the US and Europe are trying to crack down

on some of these larger environmental issues

and labor practices.

In the meantime, you can take comfort in knowing

that our dollars do have power,

and we ultimately decide where they go.

We should think about clothing

the way people have done for millennia,

which is something to hold on to, something to treasure,

something to take care of,

something to make deliberate decisions about.

That means the next time

someone tells you to shop like a billionaire.

Ask yourself,

do you really want to?

This shouldn't be a hopeless conversation.

I want people to have clothing that they enjoy.

I want people to have a closet full of things they love.

Wanting people to make better choices

isn't about depriving them of of beauty or of things they enjoy.

It's about wanting people to be more deliberate

so that they can be surrounded by garments

that they feel are the truest expression of who they are.