Kourtney Kardashian Barker announced last week that she is the fast-fashion company Boohoo’s new “sustainability ambassador.” Given Boohoo’s reputation as a fast-fashion offender, this news was ill-received, to say the least, by climate advocates.
Fast fashion, as opposed to “regular” fashion, is defined as “an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers.” Boohoo, in particular, has been criticized for using cheap materials, inconsistent sizing, and an overall negative customer experience. The United Kingdom even ranked it as one of the least sustainable brands in the country. Fast fashion is problematic not just for the climate, with the textile industry representing 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but also for culture.
Our society is rooted in instant gratification, demanding products and solutions built for the moment instead of longevity. Fast fashion has been packaged as an industry for Generation Z largely because of its affordability and quick turnaround to consumers, but in reality, it has led our generation to contribute to devastating cultural harms, from using slave labor to filling countless landfills.
While Kardashian Barker is producing entirely new collections with Boohoo, she joins an ecosystem of social media influencers who earn a commission on products sold from their accounts. So-called “haul” TikToks and Instagram reels encouraging frequent, voluminous shopping sprees have only added fuel to the flames. A quick search for “Shein try on haul” yields millions of results.
Shein, a China-based company, is possibly the largest clothing manufacturer in the world. Forbes estimates that the company adds upward of 1,000 new designs a day, and at any given time, the designs on the Shein website have only been available for approximately three months. Rather than offering high-quality, versatile pieces, Shein encourages high closet turnover, increasing clothing waste. Even worse, scientists in Canada recently found that a Shein jacket made for toddlers contained more than 20 times the amount of lead deemed safe for children.
Shein has also run into trouble with supply chain reporting and labor laws, as it’s suspected that the company uses slave, or at least underpaid, labor to produce its garments. While Shein has denied allegations of using child labor, many of its practices are still unknown to the public. Similarly, an undercover investigation revealed that Boohoo pays its factory workers less than $5 per hour.
Both Shein and Boohoo manufacture at least some of their products in China, and Chinese labor practices and human rights violations have been under intense scrutiny recently with the passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The brutal and inhumane treatment of this minority population in concentration camps, accusations of international espionage through social media networking sites, and suppression of those who speak out against the state point toward the CCP’s complete disregard for human dignity. Moreover, the nation’s devastating environmental impact, particularly on our world’s oceans, puts China easily in the No. 1 spot for global polluters. The bottom line is that American manufacturing is better for the environment and for workers.
Fast fashion threatens not only the planet we call home but also our health and well-being. Rather than collaborating with a scandal-ridden fast-fashion company, Kardashian Barker should use her influence to encourage purchasing high-quality garments, or even secondhand shopping. At the very least, if she’d like to swap her influencer status for a sustainability ambassador title, she should encourage buying American-made products from companies that have legitimate sustainability practices in place and treat their workers with respect.
Danielle Butcher is the executive vice president at the American Conservation Coalition. Isabel Brown is a conservative content creator and streamer, bestselling author, and Gen Z political commentator.
