Photo by Lailah Tolbert

Fall is a season so distinct that just the smell of a pumpkin spice latte is enough to let you know the first leaf has dropped on the ground and that awkward Thanksgiving dinner with relatives that you hardly talk to is right around the corner.

I am sure you are wondering what you should wear to that dinner. What’s trendy this fall season? So you open up social media and see a content creator, not just any content creator but a creator whose niche is fashion, talking about what’s trendy for this fall. Great!

However, the creator says the most cliche things. Darker colors, jackets, and boots in fall!? Wow, I would’ve never guessed that people would wear sweaters in the fall. This is such shocking news! Said no one ever. In the infamous words of Maryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Florals in spring? Groundbreaking.” Except fall is predictable with leaves changing, winds blowing, and harvest season near.

The world of fashion and what’s trendy isn’t as simple. While some things are forever trendy such as coats and scarves, we expect some change. From the style, the cut, and the pattern, predictable clothing can change. The seasons of the year have started to last longer than our fashion trends, which are changing at a rapid pace due to social media and fast fashion.

But what is fast fashion exactly? Fast fashion is simply low-cost, poorly made clothing meant to replicate currently trendy fashion items. A good example of this is the infamous strawberry dress made by Lirika Matoshi that was trendy on social media during the pandemic. The dress ended up inspiring many cheap knockoffs.

Fast fashion itself isn’t exactly a new thing. As our clothing became more personalized, fast fashion arrived. As counter-culture movements of the 60s and onwards arrived, fashion became more than just putting clothes on. Fashion became a way for one to express their thoughts, beliefs, and who they are as a person.  The term fast fashion took off when fashion retailer ZARA moved into creating garments at a faster rate. This allowed styles and trends go from couture to everyday consumers.

This leads us to our current fashion landscape where everything is trendy and you can’t escape it. You can spend 5 minutes on TikTok and you’ll see advertisements for stores like SHEIN or TEMU or even Amazon. Even Pinterest, a site meant to help you find inspiration, has leaned into the market of advertising clothing from online stores. 

All this advertising can be overwhelming, making it hard for anyone to figure out what to buy to stay on trend. Especially since trends are changing every week. Something that may have been considered fashionable not too long ago can suddenly be considered cringe or outdated.

Not being able to keep up with trends isn’t the only downside of fast fashion. Because the clothes are made so cheaply and quickly they are often poor quality and don’t last very long. This leads to consumers getting stuck in a constant cycle of buying and replacing clothing. Fast fashion was not always poorly made. Fast fashion garments made in Forever 21, for example, used to be made out of materials like cotton. However, as the trend cycle speeds up, fast fashion retailers switched to making clothing out of cheaper fabricated materials such as polyester. 

 Fast fashion is also bad for the environment. Due to the poor make of clothes from fast fashion brands, many people end up giving the clothing away to secondhand stores or just throwing the clothes away. Clothing that gets thrown out ends up in a landfill and feeds the already growing pollution problem.

According to an article by Earth Day, an organization dedicated to bettering the planet, the fashion industry produces 100 billion garments a year, and 87 percent (40 billion tons to be exact) ends up smoldering or polluting our planet. Earth Day also points out that the average person buys 60 percent more clothing today than they might have 15 years ago but they only keep them for half as long. This means people are buying clothing from fast fashion retailers but hardly re-wearing them. 

Now you may be thinking, ‘If fast fashion is so terrible why do people continue to buy it?’ While there are many different reasons, I have narrowed it down to three. The first is dopamine. An article on Psychology Today combines the results from multiple experiments and surveys that prove our brains release dopamine in anticipation. So when we click buy, our brains let out a feeling of joy even though we haven’t received anything yet. Combine this with fast fashion being right at our fingertips with our phones, we may seek out that dopamine response by buying something cheap from the comfort of our living room.

The second reason I think many buy fast fashion is because the fashion industry does a disservice to bigger body types, leaving people who are plus size to seek out fast fashion retailers in the hope of finding stylish clothes that fit. The third and last reason is people’s lower incomes since fast fashion is often cheap. People with lower incomes may just find it easier to buy clothing from a fast fashion retailer for a new outfit rather than going somewhere that may be ethical but more expensive. 

So what exactly is trending this fall? And how do we stay on trend without fast fashion? I have started to see trends on TikTok of “underconsumption core.” Undercomsumption core is when people start to buy sustainable or second-hand clothing. This is opposed to the overconsumption that has been trending online for the past couple of years. You may have seen it when people were posting $500 SHEIN hauls for example. This is a good way to get us thinking about longevity instead of relevancy in our clothes.

As for the solution to our fast fashion environmental problem, that’s trickier but I have a few suggestions. My first idea is to start shopping more mindfully. We need to start realistically thinking about what we will wear in our everyday lives. Another solution is to advocate for more sustainable clothing by protesting. This can mean shopping less from fast fashion retailers or brands. Maybe if their sales drop enough, they will start to look towards more sustainable clothing options. For my last solution, I suggest people shop at thrift stores or from secondhand online retailers such as Depop, Vinted, Mercari, and many more. 

For fall fashion this year, the most trendy thing you can do is shop sustainably to protect future fall seasons.