Author(s) :

Naina Kundra .

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

Fast fashion, defined as the rapid production of inexpensive, trend-driven clothing designed to keep pace with shifting consumer preferences, has expanded access to clothing and driven down prices worldwide. Global garment production has roughly doubled since 2000, and the emergence of ultra-fast fashion retailers operating on continuous digital release cycles has accelerated this growth further. This article argues that such affordability is misleading: fast fashion’s low prices are sustained in large part because the industry externalizes substantial environmental, social, and economic costs onto garment workers, producer economies, and ecosystems—costs that are largely absent from the price consumers see. Environmentally, the industry contributes heavily to climate change, water depletion, pollution, and waste. The fashion sector produces an estimated 8–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, consumes vast freshwater resources, and generates significant textile waste and microplastics. The rise of e-commerce has intensified packaging waste, further expanding the industry’s ecological footprint. Socially, fast fashion often relies on labor systems associated with worker exploitation and inequality. Economically, its low-cost model promotes overconsumption, short product life cycles, and disposable purchasing habits, while placing pressure on local industries and independent designers. By tracing how these harms reinforce one another within a single production model, this article contends that fast fashion represents a structural case of market failure rather than a series of isolated, correctable flaws— one in which costs are shifted onto those least able to resist them, and which therefore calls for structural intervention rather than consumer-led correction.