As of today, the online second luxury platform Vestiaire Collective will no longer be selling fast fashion brands on its site. This is part of its three-year rollout plan to ban all fast fashion items, ensuring better quality items for its shoppers.
In order to further its commitment to circular fashion, Vestiaire Collective worked with a team of nine fashion and sustainability experts to define what makes fast fashion exactly that. The experts include Eva Kruse, Chief Global Engagement Officer at Pangaia, Orsola de Castro, author and Co-founder of Fashion Revolution, and Liz Ricketts, Co-founder and Director of The Or Foundation, among other industry figures.
The fashion industry is responsible for ninety-two million tons of textile waste per year, according to the Ellen McArthur Foundation. Vestiaire Collective uses its platform to raise awareness and tackle this environmental crisis, by banning brands such as Gap, H&M, Uniqlo, Zara, and Urban Outfitters, among others.
The selective criteria that determine what is fast fashion, and in turn what drives overproduction and consumption, boils down to five requirements: the low price point, which also considers the repairability aspect of an item; the intense renewal state, which determines the amount of new collections and items per year; the wide product range size; the speed to market, dissecting the cycle time from the design phase to seeing a product in-store; and the intensity of sale promotions.
The Chief Impact Officer at Vestiaire Collective, Dounia Wone, said: “The decision to ban fast fashion was made to support Vestiaire Collective’s long-time work to promote alternatives to the dominant model of fashion.” She goes on to say, “It is our duty to act and lead the way for other industry players to join us in this movement, and together we can have an impact.”
Vestiaire Collective’s fast fashion ban is just one step in its wider goal of changing consumers’ mindsets and promoting a more conscious way of shopping. The platform has also created an educational journey for its customers, with informational messages available at every step of their shopping and listing journey, as well as an alternative guide to existing fast fashion pieces.
The wider initiative is followed by a global campaign launched by the platform, titled “Think First, Buy Second.” The campaign used AI to represent the threat enormous textile waste poses by showing consumers what landfills would look like in their own cities. This campaign comes just in time for Black Friday, where Vestiaire Collective will encourage participation in Better Friday, where only second-hand goods are purchased.
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