It is usually argued that worldwide fashion has positive and negative impacts on people’s lives. Despite the arguments to the contrary, I certainly claim that there are lots of drawbacks for humans. In the following essay, the reasons will be addressed, and some negative aspects of global fashion will be presented.
Obviously, there are several ways for global fashion to affect an individual’s life. First, digital media and influencers play an important role in delivering attractive images and messages to the world in minutes. For example, commercial organisations recruited Key Opinion Leaders as their fashion representatives, who posted decent and luxurious photos on Facebook or Instagram. On the other hand, globalisation contributes to convenient transportation and enables the rapid production of fast fashion. In other words, production factories are usually established in underdeveloped countries, so the companies can have a massive output of clothes at a higher speed and lower cost. At the same time, consumers constantly purchase trendy clothes worldwide. Therefore, the digital world and globalisation give access to the great growth of fast fashion and vigorously influence every person’s life.
Looking at the negative aspects of the fashion trend, there are many long-term unfavourable developments for people and the environment. In order to reduce costs and enhance profit margin, relatively poor clothing materials would be used in fast fashion. As a result, governments have to increase their amount of public expenditure or fundings to environmental organisations which help recycling fast fashion clothes that can only be worn for one or two seasons. In addition, global trend creates a toxic competitive environment among people, especially young people. This means that global fashion serves as a very powerful non-verbal language, demonstrating person’s personality, attractions, social status and financial ability. If young people experience the stage of identity, it might easier have low self-esteem since the competition in social medias is very aggressive. Thus, widespread of fast fashion all over the would cause negative impacts on the public revenue and the identity formation of youngsters.
In conclusion, it is clear that social media and the free flow of trading contribute to the development of trending fashion and caused inevitable impacts on governments’ financial burden and social culture. Therefore, I would recommend governments and schools implement public education and community campigns to promote the benefits of buying second-hands clothes.