University of Denver Spring/Summer 2023

The Atacama Desert in Chile stretches more than 600 miles along the Pacific Coast. It’s the driest place on Earth. Stretches of the desert are so inhospitable that NASA uses it to train for missions to Mars. And now, tragically, the Atacama is the backdrop for an environmental nightmare. Every year, on this remote but hauntingly beautiful plateau, roughly 40,000 tons of textile waste from around the globe are dumped and left to rot. The party dresses, cropped sweaters and jogging shorts accumulate in dunes that stretch for miles. Much of the clothing has never been worn. The price tags still cling to collars and waistbands. A continent away, the beaches of Accra, Ghana’s capital city, are unlike any you’ve seen before. Where sand once marked the transition from land to sea, never-ending piles of T-shirts, jeans and other textile waste form an unsightly landmark along the shoreline. Home to the Kantamanto Market—the largest second hand clothing market in West Africa—Accra receives more than 15 million used garments on a weekly basis. Nearly half of them end up as waste. This is the unsightly underside of fast fashion—an indus try valued at nearly $100 billion annually. The rapid rise of fast fashion While the fashion industry has always produced waste and pollution, recent decades have seen the brisk growth of fast fashion—hyper-trendy clothing made as cheaply and quickly as possible—and an acceleration of the envi ronmental damage that apparel production causes. Rising to prominence in the early 2000s, the fast fashion industry turned the four traditional clothing seasons—spring, summer, fall and winter—into 52 micro-seasons. Globally, more than 100 billion pieces of clothing are produced each year—more than double the industry’s output in 2000. With companies such as H&M, Shein and ASOS collectively bringing thousands of low-cost garments to market each week, consumers have nearly endless options to buy. And buy, we do. On average, Americans spend more than $100 per month on clothing and apparel. Ali Besharat, associate professor of marketing in the Daniels College of Business and co-director of the Consumer Insights and Business Innovation Center (CiBiC), says low prices and consumer convenience are the primary drivers of fast fashion’s explosive growth. “With the emergence of fast fashion, there’s a tempta tion: With $15 you can get a new sweater or a pair of jeans,” he says. “So, what’s the point of getting a pair of jeans that will last four years but is going to cost $100 versus getting a $15 pair that you only wear twice and then you can move on?” For younger shoppers who tend to have less disposable income, the temptation grows even stronger. Brick-and-mortar stores filled with an ever-changing lineup of ultra-low-cost apparel are designed to encourage impulsive purchases through what Besharat calls “incidental exposure to a product.” While online shopping can offer consumers a chance to plan, research and compare items before buying, he says retailers frequently send reminders about impending discounts or limited-edition runs to

There’s more behind fast fashion consumption than a persistent cycle of new, cheap outfits to wear. Meet the social media influencers. motivate customers to spend. “If there’s a matter of urgency or scarcity, consumers are going to act in the same way that they do in a retail store,” he says. Melissa Akaka, co-director of CiBiC and director of DU’s master of science in marketing program, says a push for trends over styles also shapes purchasing decisions. “Trends are much quicker cycles of popular, desirable styles. Styles can be much longer lasting than trends like bell-bottoms or crop tops. Fashion trends move more and more quickly because of the ability of the clothing to reach mass markets in shorter amounts of time,” she says. But there’s more behind fast fashion consumption than a persistent cycle of new, cheap outfits to wear. Meet the social media influencers. They’ve emerged as fashion brands have confronted an ever-growing challenge. Typically, brands engage in costly advertising to bridge the gap from the factory to the con sumer. But these days, advertising falls on unreceptive ears. “Broadly speaking, advertising has not been consumers’ favorite form of entertainment or information,” Akaka says. In fact, many consumers install ad-blocking software, pay premiums for ad-free services or take other steps to avoid traditional advertisements. And, Besharat adds, younger consumers trust brands less than they used to. “Nowadays, peer-to-peer trust is a much stronger, more reliable and trustworthy channel that people use,” he says.

SPRING/SUMMER 2023 • UNIVERSITY of DENVER MAGAZINE | 19