I smoked my first cigarette on Terschelling, twenty summers ago. I had a teenage brain, but a child’s body. Everything that looked cool and smelled like adulthood attracted me. And so I wanted to give it a try when a fellow traveler produced a pack of cigarettes on the beach. Out of sight of the summer camp supervisors, I did my best not to cough; I had to look like I knew exactly what I was doing as a fourteen-year-old. I kept up that act for the rest of the week. Once home, I hardly looked at cigarettes anymore. There were no new girlfriends to impress and I didn’t like them either. Moreover, smoking was already seen as undesirable behavior back then. There were government campaigns that encouraged people not to start smoking or to stop, there was a lot of media attention for the harmful effects of ‘passive smoking’ and a few years later it was no longer allowed to light cigarettes in the catering industry.
It was at that same summer camp that I first came into contact with fast fashion. The term wasn’t used back then, but by looking at my friend Anna’s enviable boho skirts and mini dresses, I learned that ‘from H&M’ meant that clothes were super fashionable and affordable. With my clothing allowance of sixty euros a month, I could buy not one or two shirts, but half a wardrobe, my holiday companions advised me. And I loved it. It allowed me to experiment and discover my own style for the first time.
Disposable clothes
I wasn’t the only one with such an aha moment at the time. The rise of fast fashion was lightning fast. In the same year that I discovered that trendy chain, Western countries agreed restrictions road where companies clothing were allowed to make.
By producing in low-wage countries like China and Indonesia, fashion companies were able to offer more and more clothing for less and less money. Since then, things have gotten out of hand.
On average, Dutch people buy 46 new items of clothing per yearaccording to research by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, more than ever before. And the government calculated that in fifteen years the number of times a piece of clothing is worn has decreased by 36 percent. Read: we buy fast and we’re done with it pretty quickly. The evidence is everywhere once you see it: a London cleaner’s viral TikTok video of the boas, cowboy hats and designer shoes (!) left behind after a Harry Styles concert, or the thirty thousand disused garments of Kim Kardashian about which designer Ronald van der Kemp made a short film. All that produce and consume has meant that, according to The British Fashion Council, there are now enough clothes on Earth to last the next six generations.
Our urge to buy causes quite a few problems. From inhumane working conditions in garment factories worldwide to heavily polluted rivers in Bangladesh and a mountain of textile waste in the Chilean Atacama Desert, so large it can be seen from space. To get over the CO2 emissions not to mention the fashion industry – which, according to various sources, is larger than the emissions from aviation and shipping combined.
Therefore you could argue that buying fast fashion is at least as undesirable as smoking. But unlike smoking, the negative effects of it not directly visible in our own environment. The people who get respiratory complaints and skin diseases from textile paint and chemicals in air, soil and water are not our housemates, friends or colleagues. They are people whose names we do not know in
countries whose capital we have to google.
License to shop
Due to the impact of fast fashion on the health textile workers, residents and all flora and fauna in the vicinity of clothing factories are calling for it production and consumption behavior to change. Some scientists and politicians believe that measures should be taken to ensure that we buy less new clothes, and that the clothes we do buy are produced more responsibly and of better quality. For example, last year behavioural scientists advised then-Minister Rob Jetten for Climate and Energy to ban ‘fossil advertising’, just as tobacco advertising has been banned for years. They specifically referred to promotions for airline tickets and fast fashion. They believed that these undermine the government’s climate policy.
‘If there is a standard set anywhere about what makes us happy as people, about what is normal or ‘in’, it is in advertising. Advertising sets the standard,’ says Reint Jan Renesbehavioral scientist at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and one of the authors of the advice to Jetten. ‘Even people who discomfort feel when buying fast fashion get whispered to you by advertisements that it is okay. It is a license to shop. If you want to see a different standard emerge around clothing, then you’re fighting a losing battle if you continue to allow advertising that tells us that we’ll be happy with lots of clothes.’
In the advice, Renes and his colleagues write that in advertisements of fast fashion companies in addition there is a risk of greenwashingwhere misleading claims are made about sustainability. And that the advertisements place the responsibility for making more sustainable choices primarily with the consumer and not with the companies themselves. The recommended ban would apply to all forms of advertising: posters in bus shelters, commercials on television and advertisements on Instagram and TikTok. The consumer should be better protected, especially online, according to behavioral scientists. Let’s be honest: we often still make a purchase when we see that one beautiful dress in our feed for the sixteenth time.
‘As a user, you are barely aware of the online arena you are in. And as soon as you enter somewhere without thinking, you are the ideal consumer’, Renes explains. ‘Buying is very conditioned. From a young age, you are encouraged from all sides to buy things and you learn that a purchase gives you a good feeling for a while. That is why you often long for something new, even if you think you do not need anything new.’
He compares the constant stream of social media ads for the very products we like to a night at the pub. ‘If you go in and say you don’t want alcohol, but everyone encourages you to have your favorite wine, chances are you’ll have that wine anyway.’ Companies and their marketers know this is how it works. By offering us the right products at the right time, they play on our desires and impulses. So do hired influencers. Their recommendations of fashion brands, or of a specific bag or top, can persuade us to buy something because we want to wear the same thing as our role models.
Consuming less is cool
Behavioral scientists aren’t the only ones advocating for the removal of advertising stimuli. British journalist Rachel Arthur works on behalf of the United Nations Environment Program to create a more sustainable fashion industry and wrote The Sustainable Fashion Communication Playbooka guide that teaches fashion brands how their communications can help achieve climate goals.
In it, she does not try to determine in a frantic manner what is or is not fast fashion – which would be a challenge when instituting such an advertising ban – but instead names what no longer belongs in advertising for fashion brands. For example, this concerns extreme discounts and short-term promotions (like Black Friday), free returns, pay later and hauls on social media.
‘Advertising and communication should help consumers see the value of things that have a longer lifespan and encourage them to use circular services more often: repairs, buying second-hand and renting,’ said Arthur in an interview with journalism platform Follow the Money last June.
Good examples of responsible communication can be found, for example, at the Danish label Ganni and outdoor brand Patagonia; both brands have already called for people not to buy their stuff. ‘Fashion has such an enormous reach when it comes to what we find beautiful and hip. That should be used to show that consuming less is cool’, says model and activist Kiki Boreelappointed Climate Ambassador of the Future by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate.
‘What Patagonia does is of course also marketing, successful marketing even. But it can inspire people to buy less.’ The brands also support their message with an above-average sustainability policy. This is how Ganni helps in the development of innovative sustainable materials and since 2017, Patagonia has been selling second-hand items and has a repair service in its own stores and through a network of repairers.
Fast fashion tax
The disappearance of the current advertising can help society think differently about clothing. But more is needed to actually change consumer behavior, scientists warn. Research into smoking it turned out that a combination of measures leads to behavioral change. For example, in addition to an extensive advertising ban for tobacco, a smoking ban was also introduced in many buildings and outdoor areas, excise duties on tobacco were increased and the number of points of sale decreased. The percentage of smokers in the Netherlands fell from 38 percent to 19 percent between 1994 and 2023.
It can also pay to make non-sustainable clothing more expensive through taxes. fast fashion tax so, as a variation of excise duty on cigarettes. More sustainable items should actually become more affordable. The French parliament recently passed a bill to do just that. Fast fashion is getting a ‘fine‘ of a maximum of ten euros per piece of clothing. The money that the government collects with this is invested in sustainable clothing companies in France itself. The French also opt for a total advertising ban for fast fashion companies. That ban will go into effect next year. Influencers will also no longer be allowed to collaborate with brands that sell fast fashion.
Boreel also sees the advertising ban in the Netherlands as a good thing. ‘The first step is that fast fashion is no longer promoted as something cool and fantastic. The second step is that the consequences of fast fashion are made more visible. As far as I’m concerned, there is no need for nasty pictures on clothing labels – like black lungs on cigarette packets – but the government can make the negative impact visible in public spaces with campaigns.’
Extra tax on fast fashion is also a good idea, she says, provided that consumers are given the right information about how and by whom a garment was made. ‘We need to be able to make a well-considered choice in the store. Is a garment of good quality? And what is the climate impact of all the clothing that a particular brand produces in a year? That information is not available now.’
Renes states that discouragement policy the government should also focus on where clothing may come from and on true pricingto give consumers insight into what a fair price is. With all these measures, people should in theory become more critical of fast fashion. Such a change of mindset does take time.
‘It starts with a small minority that no longer buys fast fashion. Research shows that there is a tipping point when that minority has grown to 20 to 25 percent of the population. How quickly we reach that tipping point depends on how much attention the subject receives and how many people with a role model say that fast fashion is actually no longer acceptable.’
