The NOISE, May 2026, Issue 3

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Coined by the New York Times in 1989, the term “fast fashion” arose when Spanish clothing store, Zara, claimed to create an entire garment from ideation to on-the-rack in just 15 days. A PR stunt to outshine the fellow competition on Lexington Avenue? Perhaps. In retrospect, it seems more like a sign of the times. The people wanted more; they wanted to pay less; and they wanted it now.

The history of fast fashion began long before this namesake. The industrial revolution saw the invention of the first sewing machine (1830) and the adoption of sweatshop labour with its long hours and poor working conditions. By the 1960s, clothing was a form of personal expression and indicator of social status among the youth, who heavily influenced setting fashion ‘trends’. Clothes were no longer seen as a practical necessity but as cultural currency, and the demand for affordable, wide-ranging options increased exponentially. Soon, new factories were built in developing countries, workers were exploited for cheap labour, and low-quality clothing entered mass-production. 

A few decades later, the 1990s brought with it the internet and the noughties introduced portable smartphones. This meant retailers were now able to bring hundreds of different products directly to the consumer in their homes. In 2025, over a quarter of all fashion sales took place online, with many products available to shop, ship and deliver by the next working day. 

However, a new dawn in fast-fashion is breaking: the age of ultra-fast fashion. This is a brief review of the last 20 years in fashion, and where we’re headed next. 

The 2010s: diversity, inclusivity and sustainability

The late noughties saw an enormous increase in access to technology, and Millennials (born between 1981 – 1996) grew up alongside these advancements. The internet became a platform for education, community and connection in the form of personal blogging sites, the introduction of YouTube and the digitisation of news media, and portable smartphones only facilitated this means of sharing information (from silly anecdotes to socio-political ideas). 

With smartphones and tablets came social media – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook – and the concept of “influencers” and “content creators” was soon established. Highly visual interests, like fashion enthusiasts styling their outfits, proved increasingly popular. Suddenly, everyday people were able to monetise their interests online by collaborating with brands and sharing products with their growing audiences. 

While this democratisation of fashion (especially luxury fashion) can be seen as empowering to the general public, it also created a culture of excess which still permeates consumer behaviour today. ‘Haul’ culture (buying huge amounts of trend-based items, often regularly) became commonplace online, and creators like YouTube pioneer, Zoella, shared their many ‘bargains’ with millions of impressionable viewers.

If fashion is an expression of personal identity and extension of political beliefs, this digital-decade was raising a generation of increasingly-scrutinising consumers. 

Production timelines were shrinking year on year, but this began conflating with the modern shopper’s priorities. “Conscious consumption” was no longer a fringe movement – initiatives like ‘Veganuary’ (2014) introduced people to plant-based diets and documentaries like Blackfish (2013) and Cowspiracy (2014) highlighted the reality of animal cruelty.  

In every industry, notably fashion, what you bought wasn’t the sole cultural currency anymore, but where you sourced it from. As Janelle Okwodu surmised in Vogue, this decade saw an “audience no longer willing to accept a passive role in consumption.” The industry had to react. It had to adapt.

Established luxury brands like Gucci and Stella McCartney publicly rejected leather and fur use, offering other materials as “ethical” alternatives, and rival houses began to follow suit. Being eco-friendly and adopting a minimalist lifestyle were the new-normal, and second-hand shopping (a reduce, reuse, recycle mindset) became the forefront of shopping behaviour. 

Marketplaces like The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective and Depop allowed for more ethical consumption of used goods to new owners, while brands like Patagonia began offering repair and extended-warranty models. In 2014, hip-hop artist Macklemore released the song ‘Thrift Shop’ which encouraged shopping second-hand and mocked people who bought luxury items. It spent six weeks at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 music charts, indicating a cultural shift to greener ways of shopping.

This demand for transparency also brought attention to a lack of representation in the industry. In 2010, Givenchy broke records as model Lea T became the first “out” trans woman to feature in a high-fashion campaign. Meanwhile, Denise Bidot became the first plus-sized model to open a New York Fashion Week straight-sized show in 2014, and in 2017 Halima Aden was the first model to wear a hijab on an international catwalk. 

Other cultural moments welcomed a diverse range of bodies; Ashley Graham’s 2016 Sports Illustrated cover brought curvier bodies into the mainstream, and Tyra Banks’ America’s Next Top Model TV show invited diversity into the modelling arena. Meanwhile, major fashion houses Balmain and Louis Vuitton appointed POC Creative Directors Olivier Rousteing and Virgil Abloh, respectively, and institutions like British Vogue saw the magazine’s first black Editor in Chief, Edward Enniful, in 2017.

The 2020s: more, more, more

In recent years, due to being a huge facet of the UK economy, lawmakers have attempted to crack down on the moral, ethical and environmental issues associated with the fashion industry. Such policy is needed to hold brands accountable, especially as existing problems are only being exacerbated by new, more extreme consumption models. Key stakeholders in the ‘ultra-fast fashion’ market include brands like Shein, Temu, Amazon and TikTok Shop.

In 2024, the UK government introduced a policy to protect consumers from ‘greenwashing’, reducing the risk of brands making inflated sustainability claims. Meanwhile, the Modern Slavery Act (2015) has been cited by campaigners attempting to block Shein from listing on the London Stock Exchange, and the company has failed to produce evidence to British MPs that their production lines do not involve forced labour. 

These are not the first claims to come against Shein (pronounced “She-in”). A Channel 4 documentary claims workers clocked-in over 16 hour days, had minimal time off and were paid three pence per item. Meanwhile, an investigation by the BBC claims the brand violated Chinese labour laws with employees working 75-hour-weeks.

The Shein brand was founded in 2008 by entrepreneur and SEO expert, Chris Xu, and has seen popularity due to its highly competitive price point (in 2024, the average cost of clothing from Shein was just £7.90 per item). Over a decade later, sales have grown from $10 billion in 2020 to $100 billion in 2022 and orders are shipped to over 150 countries worldwide.

But over-consumption is a bi-product of choice, and at one time, around 2,000 – 10,000 different styles were being uploaded to the Shein app every single day. Their model is similar to Amazon’s – an online marketplace of 6,000 factories which harness live-time performance data to boost visibility of popular items. This breadth of supply and demand is producing an unprecedented scale of waste. 

Time Magazine reported that Molly Miao, Shein’s CEO, said that only small quantities of items are initially produced, and if it proves popular, they enter mass-production. Despite this claim, the brand’s use of virgin polyester and excessive energy consumption is creating an enormous carbon footprint. A report found that it mirrored the output of 180 coal-powered power plants, producing 6.3 million tons of CO2 per year.

Recently in the UK, Shein has seen an increase in sales by a third, rising to an estimated £2 billion. Profits have increased by 56% to £38.2 million (pre-corporation tax), indicating an appetite from the British consumer for cheap clothing and a variation of styles – despite the controversy over poor working conditions in its factories. In fact, Shein has overtaken Manchester-based Boohoo in sales, and continues to gain ground on ASOS for the coveted top spot.  

However, a rejection to this modern mass-production epidemic is definitively emerging. SpendMapper reported that Vinted, the secondhand marketplace, now has 17 million customers in the UK, making it the third most-popular retailer behind Next and Primark. Shein was left in the dust in fifth place. Influenced by the cost-of-living crisis, consumers are looking to greener ways to find clothes in their affordability bracket.

Furthermore, technology that strives to reinvent fashion, by reducing waste but maintaining creativity, is continuously evolving. In recent years, Adobe released their colour changing digital dress, Project Primrose, whereby 1,182 hand-sewn sequin-like petals transform one outfit into a kaleidoscope of others styles and variations.

Products like this, though seemingly futuristic, showcase the hunger to create a more sustainable fashion industry without compromising on expression, and resist the urge to regress to “easier” but socially and environmentally-damaging practices. A new epoch is being led by scientists who are taking the concept of “2-in-1”, “reversible” and “customisation” and implementing it firmly in our future. 

Read The Expert to find out how an academic from The University of Manchester is harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to create digital patterns, offer size recommendations and speed up automated processes to create bespoke-fitting jeans that celebrate diversity, inclusivity and sustainability.

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