Are the Victorians Responsible for Fast Fashion? Ft. Dress Historian Dr Serena Dyer
fashion has been speeding up for hundreds of years that is the problem the buy it the where it wants to throw it away daily new stock with Sheen is just the latest leap in centuries of fashion acceleration a good quality garment does not look like that we no longer understand what good quality clothing is and it's so heartbreaking I am very excited to be here today with Dr Serena Dyer who is a historian of dress consumption and material culture we are here today to have a conversation about the age-old question of where does fast fashion come from we both have a theory that begins in the Victorian period yes yes we tend to think that it's this really connected to online and connected to social media and connected to the really high speed in which we all live our lives today but actually it's not like it's just suddenly pops up in the last 20 years like loads of things it's got this context it's got this longer history that we can trace back much further and actually makes fast fashion far more interesting as part of a human story as part of how we approach clothing approach consumption approach shopping I think we need to look back at those past iterations of fast fashion to really get to grips with the root of that and also why did it come to exist because obviously no one's set out to create this Behemoth destructive thing called Fast fashion that was setting out to destroy society and Destroy its workers it set out with intentions of benefit to improve Society to improve convenience yes and then it became what it has become but before we get into this whole discussion about the origins of fast fashion we first have to have a word from our sponsor for today skillshare who is very kindly funding all of the research for this video thank you skillshare I am a huge fan of skillshare as you may or may not already know the plethora of classes available in skillshare's catalog from lighting to cinematography to shooting with a DSLR camera all the creative and Technical aspects of video production have helped tremendously in producing videos like this for you to watch there's also the community aspect of being able to ask questions and interact with your fellow students which makes the learning process so much more fun and engaging presumably if you have clicked on this video you are interested in the subject of fast fashion and perhaps are looking for some activities to avoid the fast fashion option within your wardrobe in which case I highly recommend Maura Max's course on sewing alterations this is a really helpful course especially if you are interested in thrifting purchasing on depop or Poshmark or in your traditional charity shop and are finding garments that you perhaps might need to adjust alter a little bit to get them to fit you really nicely the first 1000 of my viewers to click the link in the description box below will get a one month free trial of skillshare Premium membership go forth and check that out I will probably see you there and now let's return to exploring perhaps how the victorians might have had a hand in the explosive rise of fast fast fashion was an encroaching Beast swallowing up more and more of the fashion market share two years ago the Leicester Sweatshop Scandal exposed boohoo for working with factories who paid their workers a miserable three pounds 50 an hour we thought that this was a turning point after all with a huge Crackdown on green washing and the deceptive use of sustainability as a marketing Ploy surely fashion was finally going in the right direction but maybe we were all so distracted that a shiny new kid on the Block managed to sneak in the back door more Fierce and powerful than any that came before Sheen Sheehan's market share of the fast fashion industry skyrocketed and lo and behold in October 2022 journalist Aman amrani exposed the horrendous working conditions an exploitative factories which enable the Brand's business model so is it new to manufacture in sweatshops and to use atrociously compensated labor no is the use of new forms of media to persuade consumers to buy more and more and more new nope is the development of new technologies specifically to meet those capitalist needs new also no so although many of these practices can be traced even further back in time I'm going to show you specifically how the victorians were responsible for many of the same kinds of Speedy sartorial attitudes which we see in fast fashion today so I think that there are three key elements to fast fashion which we can see in both the 2020s and in the 19th century and those are speed marketing and manufacture so fast fashion is not a flash in the pan phenomenon of the 2020s it has a long history of creeping acceleration and if we're not careful it will only continue to get faster fast fashion skews how fashion consumers perceive of time in multiple ways from The Accelerated need for new items all the time to the devaluation of the time required to make new garments and anybody who sews has probably felt the effects of this although this is also the result of an increasing Reliance on ready-made garments and a decline in Home sewing fast fashion and the speeding up of the fashion cycle is also very much to blame the fashion cycle is the introduction rise Peak Decline and obsolescence of a fashion trend the cycle has been getting faster and faster for centuries so the first real fashion illustrations so this is the equivalent of Vogue or Instagram influences for the Georgians were known as fashion plates these aren't ceramic plates these were Engravings in annual Diaries called pocketbooks which were published once per year and which depicted garments that have been fashionable in the previous year we know the Diary of 59 is published in 58 with an image from 57 so you're actually two years out of date Okay cool so while there were more nuanced changes in fashion if you're part of the London ton for the 18th century fashion conscious person the cycle of fashion was annual and these images were literally captioned the dress of the year now let's fast forward a few decades to the Regency at the start of the 19th century since 1770s fashion news has really sped up newspapers report what was worn at Big London events and magazines devoted to just fashion are now available and by the time we get deeper into the 19th century consumer expectation is for monthly fashion news and monthly fashion change each new issue of magazines like the English women's domestic magazine came with a gorgeously tempting new new fashion plate every month quite a big speed up in a remarkably short period of time of course just because fashion plates were produced that fast it doesn't mean that people were buying new garments every month to keep up with that cycle for most people it wasn't even an option so one of the pro fast fashion arguments often made today is that it's the only affordable option for people on Lower incomes but all that this does is reveal deeper set economic inequalities across Society for the victorians new fashion was wildly expensive so your own needle and thread was the only way of adapting clothes to keep up with fashion change if you were outside of a privileged Elite so the key means for understanding fashion time today is through fashion Seasons This Global metronome for the fashion industry came out of the first fashion shows initially private exclusive and informal events for elite clients by the Edwardian era fashion shows were a staple of the fashion calendar for designers like Paul poire and Lucille by 1918 a twice yearly Spring Summer and Autumn winter fashion show had become the norm Paving the way for the fashion weeks that we know today and as ready to wear garments took off in the 19th and 20th centuries it was this seasonal structure that dominated High Street fashion it's almost like it's not even Seasons because the victorians were doing things almost by season I mean today with Tick Tock it's like every week There's a new trend like we can go season by season to an extent we can't go week to week like this is just ridiculous at this point so Sheen have new items going up on their website every single day I think when we're then looking back at the 19th century and saying well there's fast fashion roots in the 19th century considering the resources that are available to those people the intent to make it as fast as possible is there if they had had access to Modern social media and to Modern kind of manufacturing techniques I'm sure that they would have been trying to speed it up to match where we're at today it's interesting that you do bring up the desensitization to Quality because I absolutely find that everything made kind of post the 90s really is just such disappointing quality and you can see it on the models on the mannequins on whoever is modeling the thing you read it in the description everything is polyester and acetate and whatever and the Blazers all look like sad and wrinkly and limp and you know they're not so a good quality garment it does not look like that it's like we've become so used to the quality of fast fashion that we no longer understand many of us what good quality clothing is and it's so heartbreaking yeah well and she in themselves have essentially produced fashion which is disposable single-use fashion yes and yeah it's not meant to last that's it and I think it's consumers are perfectly happy with the fact that they might buy a dress for three or four pounds wear it for one day never wear it again goes into landfill somewhere and that's the problem too and like that needs to be clarified that is the problem it is the buy it the where it wants to throw it away the buy a new thing next week because it's trendy wear it once and throw it away the problem is not people needing to buy a High Street blouse once or twice or three times a year because that is what they can afford yeah like that does not play into the system of fast fashion if someone's behaving like you know buying clothing in a normal way throughout the year that does not fuel the system that they need to be able to produce clothing at that scale so in all areas of fashion from magazines to High Street collection actions fashion has been speeding up getting faster and faster for hundreds of years I mean we got through that section okay yeah it was actually it's the one I'm passionate about now we're going all businessy so fashion seasons have sped up exponentially since the start of the 19th century but why have consumers bought into this constant need for more both 19th century consumers flicking through their monthly magazines and 20th Century consumers scrolling Tick Tock it would be 21st century scrolling through tick tock yes it worked I love that 1950s Tech talk both 19th century consumers and 21st century consumers are manipulated by marketing into believing that they need to buy more and more and more if we get a bit more academic for a moment there are linguistic social and economic reasons for this if we look at the language in early fashion magazines we see words like novelty and newness being really frequently used everything is the latest fashion it becomes less and less important what that fashion is or whether it suits you as an individual or more about its momentary uniqueness as the middle class emerges in the 19th century fashion becomes a key way that they can differentiate from working people and from the elites to create a sartorial class identity ensuring that there is constantly something new that must be worn to signify membership of that class is a basic way of maintaining visual distinction alongside this class-based stratification was also the fabrication of aspirational fashion figures influencers may seem like a product of the social media age even some of the earliest 18th century fashion plates connected new fashions with the celebrities of the day and there are more direct forms of marketing too not least the birth of Brands Jaeger was founded in 1884 in Britain and used strategic marketing campaigns supported by scientific theories to create a sense of brand identity the growing wealth of fashion magazines also increasingly included advertisement Pages flooding the consumer Consciousness with more and more arguments to buy new Innovations these strategies are not that dissimilar to The Game Plan used by Xi'an today the constant introduction of new must-have buys the pressure of time limited offers and the Loyalty manufactured by the construction of a highly recognizable brand all keep consumers coming back for more of course some of the most significant issues around fast fashion today Center on the appalling conditions in which it is manufactured and its impact on the environment Iman amrani's expose on Xi'an revealed that workers were being paid three Pence per garment and that they were expected to make 500 items per day just to earn their basic salary this really is inhumane exploitation but very sadly it is not new Victorian dressmakers also worked in appalling conditions these worsening conditions were felt against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution over the course of the 19th century the landscape of Britain became dominated by smoke puffing factories which employed workers in truly horrific conditions as more and more clothes were produced ready-made manufacturers compromised their workers rights and health in order to turn a bigger profit in the 1850s the plight of the dressmaker became a central theme of Reform novels like gwm Reynolds the seamstress of 1853 in which the heroine works all hours for a pittance in order to make the extravagant dresses worn by the ladies of the aristocracy yet she can barely afford food for herself these novels were critiques of capitalism but they also reflected the real conditions of the army of extremely poor garment workers who plied the needle behind the extravagant Victorian Fashions admired by so many and we must always remember that the Fabrics themselves were often the product of enslaved labor overseas throughout the 19th century long after slavery was abolished in Britain in 1807. I mean obviously there's no such thing as complete ethical production I don't think I look around at some brilliant small businesses who sell clothes and who do their best to Source second-hand Fabrics or who you know do manufacture in manufacturing facilities that do pay their workers living wages and even though it is mass produced it is ready to wear clothing it's not fast fashion so like where is the line between something like Xi'an and something like Emmy design who a lot of us in historical costuming are very into you know they're they're a very small brand and you know even though nothing can be 100 ethically produced I don't think you know there's no way to fully meet that Mark there's still such a vast difference between Emmy but what she in does compared to them is just ridiculous like the number of garments that they're producing the prices that they are selling at it just knocks all of those other fast fashion brands out of the park and I think that sometimes it comes down to the intent behind it with those Brands like Emmy the intent is to do as well as they possibly can obviously they've still got to make a profit to be viable as a business um but to obviously be making strides to you know give their workers good pay good rights days off that's more than like one day a month um and actually have kind of good working conditions yeah and that's really interesting because when you start talking about and looking at the accounts from the 1850s of the Garment workers it's very similar to what you hear about the Garment workers producing clothing today in countries that are not necessarily but sometimes our own you know it hasn't changed it's just moved yeah you kind of can't have that and have people support that because ethically it's just not realistic yeah so as soon as people start finding out you have to move it yeah you know you have to put it out of sight out of mind they didn't have social media back then but you know eventually it comes out in print in the magazines and now you know we have social media it's coming out and people are obviously rightfully not pleased about it but then I think that like with the the Leicester Sweatshop Scandal a few years ago has anything changed it becomes a kind of a brief thing that people get up in arms about and then there are those of us that work in the industry that are more continually up in arms about it but actually the kind of popular movement that is needed to say no we refuse to buy things that are made in these sweatshops they don't tend to be very long lived so the problems continue unless we're constantly bombarding people with the realities behind those things that they are buying it's very easy to forget about it again it's behind a factory door it's not your friends and colleagues that are experiencing this these are people that you're probably not interacting with on a daily basis and it makes it easy to just not pay attention to it that's I think part of the trouble with the fashion industry nowadays is that it is so I mean for good reason secretive because you know you can't just go selling all of your secrets and you know the person next door is going to go take your business especially if you are a small business and that is your livelihood but at the same time that lack of transparency for what's going on in the manufacturing process makes it very easy to hide the sins well and there's so many other issues with these manufacturers as well like Sheen and and boohoo and things on Asos have all been accused of stealing small designers designs and work and pretty you sing I wonder what that's like I'm producing their own knockoff versions you know it's been brought up by many people in the past you might have to pay you know 70 pounds for a dress from somebody like that but you can buy a knockoff of it for four pounds on Sheen so that kind of value of the skill and the knowledge behind fashion is just being decimated even further just because this exploited labor is happening in 2020s China rather than in 1850s London does not make it any less real in fact I'd suggest that one of the drivers behind fast fashion today is how distant that making process seems it's hidden behind closed Factory doors and consumers turn a blind eye to the hardships required to meet an assumed right to be trendy so what exactly do we do with this information there is no one true solution to immediately solve fast fashion this is something that has been perpetuated for hundreds of years but I think it most immediately helps firstly just to have an awareness of precisely the scale of the problem how do we at the very least prevent it from getting worse most of us for most purposes in our lives do not need to be buying clothing every week let alone every month but I think one of the most important things that we can do is to learn to appreciate quality and clothing to learn to identify and to seek out items of clothing that are made with quality and that will last us more than two weeks and potentially refasten it when we want something different and that is one of the mentalities that throughout history I think has really worked this ability to recognize quality and clothing to seek out quality and clothing so that we cherish it just a little bit more so that we are incentivized to maintain it and to preserve it and to take good care of it because that sort of mentality directly combats the attitude that fast fashion corporations want us to have this worthlessness this disposability of fashion this mentality that the clothing that we wear doesn't have to be of good quality because ultimately the goal is for us to want to buy something new in two weeks time which is not in any respect a productive way to think about clothing this hasn't been conveniently placed the whole video oh let me tell you so Serena has a fabulous book and more than one and several forthcoming uh this one is called material lives which studies it follows the lives of Four Women in the 18th century and sort of explores what they wore what they owned and how their material culture reflects the people that they are it is a very fascinating book you should definitely give it a read you can also check out Serena on her YouTube channel where she discusses dress history fancy that as well as on Instagram on your website by her books go forth yes please follow this one she's awesome and she knows lots of stuff about old clothes yeah yeah cool yeah that was easy wasn't it that was so easy
2022-11-14 15:41
