In comparison to 20 years ago, humans now use 400% more apparel on average. They are buying more clothes than ever before, but they are wearing a lot less of them.
This is mostly due to the rapid expansion that fast fashion has experienced over the last two decades.
Fast fashion references clothing firms that initiate vast quantities of clothing all year. Textiles are now produced at a quarter of the cost they used to be.
As a result, customers can comfortably and effortlessly refresh their wardrobes. However, this imprudent use of low-cost clothing is leading to a giant increase in clothing waste, contamination, and resource depletion.
It is bringing up societal problems that we cannot deny, like human rights breaches.
The majority of fast fashion firms offer new lines of apparel every week and make use of marketing strategies to entice consumers to procure new trends.
Such businesses are oftenly ambiguous and opaque with respect to their providers and how their products are manufactured.
They don’t provide any precise details regarding what they’re doing to decrease their environmental footprint.
Such brands also do not show that they dispense appropriate and secure working atmosphere, as well as living pay, to their employees.
Lower costs are also a satisfactory indicator of low-quality fast fashion products. It is ridiculous to create a $5 t-shirt, compensate labourers sufficiently, and use environmentally suitable production practises.
Lulus began as a retro boutique in California in 1996, but by 2008, it had transformed into a wholly digital operation.
It, like many other fast fashion firms, launches hundreds of new designs every week and uses a data-driven strategy to decide what to keep making.
For years, Lulus has kept young, professional women dressed in stylish attire from head to toe. Lulus is recognised for its beautiful gowns.
What sets them unique as a shop is their commitment to supplying their customers with affordable wedding gowns.
Does Lulus use child labor?
Lulus states on their website that all of Lulus’ direct suppliers must confirm and assure that they and their producers will follow all legal requirements, including employment standards legislation.
They must also assure that they will not use child labour, convict labour, or labour obtained via human smuggling or slavery.
However, Lulus does not routinely inspect their suppliers to ensure that they are complying with corporate standards and relevant laws.
Lulus does not presently offer specialised training courses on slavery and human trafficking, but it does ask that its contract workers uphold company standards on slavery and human trafficking.
Any supplier, production plant, or person within the supply chain that they presume is not meeting such standards is to be reported to management.
Is Lulus ethical?
At present, Lulus does not publish enough information on its website to be satisfactorily deemed an ethical brand.
Most fast fashion brands do not provide information about their ethical and sustainable practices, and this is mostly because they do not have anything good to show.
Lulus presents itself as an affordable luxury brand, however, its co-founder has stated in an interview that they have a lean business model.
This is further supported by the fact that they release 50 new styles everyday.
Is Lulus good for the environment?
Lulus fails to provide enough data as to its labor and environmental initiatives.
This brand does not disclose enough key data about how it minimizes its effect on consumers, the environment, and animals.
On their website, Lulus does not mention what materials they use in their products, how are they obtained and whether they have any certifications.
There is also no information on the internet regarding their environmental policies and whether they have any strategies in place to reduce their carbon footprint.
Lulus seems to be the poster child of what a fast fashion brand is supposed to be.
The fast fashion business and marketing model is so called because it involves swift and speedy design, manufacture, disposition, and marketing.
This allows vendors to make increasing sales of more diversified products and present consumers with more popular items and product innovation at cheaper costs.
The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of total world carbon discharge, roughly the same as the European Union.
It exhausts water supplies and contaminates streams and rivers, while 85% of all clothing items end up in landfills every year.
Per annum, 500,000 tonnes of microfibres, the same of 50 billion plastic bottles, are let go off into the seas and oceans by washing clothes.
As per the World Resources Institute, conglomerates should evolve, test, and participate in marketing strategies that refurbish clothing and increase its practical life.
To tackle the harms that are the result of fast fashion, the United Nations has set up the Alliance for Sustainable Fashion. Its ideology is to put an end to fashion’s environmentally and socially damaging practises.
It is high time consumers stopped purchasing from ecologically harmful brands like Lulus and move to more sustainable alternatives.
