When The New York Times first coined the term on New Year’s Eve of 1989, fast fashion was a rising trend and sustainable clothing was absent from the public eye. Now, the Trump administration’s tariffs have turned the tables and young consumers like Aiden Pratt are worried.
“When it comes to finely made clothes that aren’t quickly made in factories and create more fossil fuels, that’s better, and the quality is also better,” senior Pratt said. “Fast fashion is made to obviously be fast, fashionably, produced, so it should be more taken into consideration of how much it’s affecting the environment.”
Fast fashion brands like Shein, Temu and Zara increased in popularity over the last decade, capturing the American public’s attention with new, trendy and cheap clothing. Recently, people have started to drift toward brands that support sustainable clothing, creating garments without the use of sweatshops and reducing factory waste. The recent introduction of the Trump administration’s tariffs, however, has changed the landscape of the clothing industry and brought along interesting effects. Trump announced that he would suspend trade tariffs for 90 days on April 9, continuing to uphold the 10% base tariffs on all countries. However, he continued to increase the tariffs on China from 34% to 125% in the following days. This is not mentioned in the government fact sheet article about the tariff suspension written on May 12.
“I have noticed that after the tariffs, a lot of people have been going to thrifting, which is great as a practice in itself but it makes thrifting kind of more hard to do because you see a lot of people buying excessive amounts,” junior Nemesi Morales said. “It makes it harder to find ethically sourced clothes and it just makes the experience hard as a result.”
The three biggest countries that supply most of the United States’ clothing and footwear are China, providing 28.7% of clothing and footwear to the U.S., Vietnam with 25.4% and Bangladesh importing 7.8%. The tariffs imposed on their imports to the U.S. stand between 37%–145%, making any shipments that go through these countries much pricier.
“I’ve noticed that it’s gotten a lot more expensive, especially shipping of clothing,” sophomore Nadia Buer said. “If you are somebody that uses TikTok Shop, you’ll find that items that usually, on their own, would cost $20 are now around $60 because shipping adds $40.”
Some students, however, have noticed little to no change in prices since the tariffs were imposed. Senior Zion Waddell focuses more on whether a piece of clothing looks better than where it comes from.
“To be honest, clothes are always expensive, before and after Trump,” he said. “It doesn’t matter the brand, it matters the quality of the piece, how it looks on you and what you think of it.”
Clothing brands that associate themselves with sustainable clothing like People Tree, Veja, Patagonia and even luxury designers like Stella McCartney are innovators in the industry, sourcing their materials ethically and reducing carbon emissions. On Patagonia’s website, a quote from their CEO, Ryan Gellert, is displayed: “If we don’t clean up our mess, we’ll be history. We must use all the tools at our disposal to secure a safer, more just future.”
Brands may be advocating and acting toward a clean and ethical future, but the biggest pioneering forces are influencers. The message sustainable clothing influencers, or “un-fluencers” as some call themselves, send to their followers walks a fine line, as they must use commercialism to spread a concept that is inherently distasteful of it.
“I don’t think that just because you’ve seen it on me or somebody you like, you should buy it, even though that is literally my job,” said Lydia Okello, a 32-year-old fashion content creator in a New York Times article.
The future of fashion is uncertain, as many fashion designers and clothing companies know. According to a 2024 Los Angeles Times article, Shein produces more than 75 times more styles of clothing than the first generation of fast fashion brands like Zara and H&M per year. Between all of these brands, fast fashion controls approximately 88% of the clothing industry in America, reaching over $150 billion in global market value and growing at a rate of around 10.7% every year. Still, the sustainable clothing market is increasing every year at a rate of 22.9%, valued at $7.8 billion in 2023.
“I honestly, unfortunately, see fast fashion growing in the future,” Pratt said. “If they made better materials and clothes, then they would lose money and fast fashion is obviously faster to make and easier to produce. Whatever makes businesses have more money.”
