We live in a world that prides itself on challenging principles of time. Everything we desire needs to be fulfilled now, quicker and faster. And yet put the word ‘fast’ next to ‘fashion’ and suddenly for those that know, the mood changes.

When fashion trends inspired by extravagant catwalk displays hit the streets quickly, making the latest styles affordable, ‘fast fashion’ becomes a reality. With carefully crafted messaging, every season, big brands are bringing to the common person what was once a privilege of the fashionable elite and the wealthy. It makes us all trendy and fashionable. And it even helps retailers manage stock. They just replace it. Surely that is a model for success. What’s the problem?

But surely there must be another side to this? And there is.

In meeting this race to bring the latest fashion to the high street, unfair pressures are put on manufacturers (often based in developing nations with low wages), with practices that are having an obvious detrimental impact on the planet. Mass produced yarn and fabric are used (to produce one kilogram of cotton, equivalent to a single T-shirt and pair of jeans, 20,000 litres of water are used). Petroleum based synthetics produced using fossil fuel resources are weaved in, with benefits shamelessly highlighted to the customer, almost begging the underlying question – how did we ever survive without them? Add to this, the fabric dyeing processes and the use of toxic dyes to make the garment colourful are contaminating water bodies.

Do we need to check our lust to acquire and be trendy? Undoubtedly. How? We need to change mindsets; change the way we buy and discard. But do we really have to wait to be led, to be incentivised, for what is a simple change? Can each person not just stop buying, or at least buy sensibly? Surely we all can.

And yet we continue indulging, fuelling fast fashion. Why? What’s the issue?