Funciones del software educativo

Fabric choices in fast fashion are dictated chiefly by cost. Although Company A and Label C3 sit at the lower-mid market tier, well above the discount market level of SES or Tightrope (see Figure 5.2), their main fabrics are still polyester, as are Tightrope and SES’s. While Tightrope is able to sell T-shirts for as little as $5 AUD, Company A or Label C3 T-shirts will sell for $79. The quality of Tightrope’s

manufacturing and textiles are certainly lower than that of Company A’s garments, however, not necessarily ten times lower in quality.²² Designing in-house adds

22 The difference could be in a number of material factors, chief being the price of manufacturing.

Countries such as Bangladesh (US 22 cents per hour) offer rates up to five times below those of

considerably to Company A’s overheads, and Jane suggested that to compensate, cuts are being made in the quality of fabrics. Designers at Company A can spend no more than 15 – 20 RMB²³ ($2 – 3 AUD) per metre, which is considerably less than the previous fast fashion company Jane worked at, in which the upper limit was 30 RMB ($5 AUD) per metre. Label C3 was also limited to no more than 30 RMB.

Other designers echoed this view. Jill thought that fabric choice was difficult, saying,

“we have been struggling recently trying to find fabrics that are quality but then trying to get them for the pricepoints …for our target.” She added, “we have had a bit of feedback lately that our fabrics really aren’t standing up to our competitors at the same pricepoints.” As fast fashion depends on rapid turnover of inexpensive garments, cheaper fabrics are essential.

Sophie in Label C3 said regarding her fabrics:

[Label C3] is a cheaper label so we are restricted by costs and everything has to be cheap, it has to be cheap. It means we are not allowed to use silks, we are not allowed to use some cottons because the prices have gone up so we are usually stuck using polyesters (2011).

The two most popular fibres used in fast fashion, polyester and cotton, each have considerable environmental impacts.²⁴ To Company A’s design room manager Hannah, quick growing crops such as bamboo would be a better alternative to water-intensive cotton.²⁵ However, when looking at more eco-friendly fabrics, April (2010), the fast fashion designer at Company B commented that it is always a challenge as it comes down to cost:

We don’t do anything that’s – bamboo – conscious… things like that, because it would increase the prices, and because it is fast fashion you want

Chinese suppliers, with examples being US 55 cents per hour inland, US 1.08 per hour in coastal regions (EmergingTextiles.com 2008).

23 The Chinese currency Renminbi, also known as yuan.

24 For example, cotton is a water-intensive plant, also requiring high quantities of pesticides and insecticides, while polyester is energy intensive to produce and manufactured from a non-renewable resource (Smith and Barker 1995). Fletcher (2008) argues that more important is the fitness – the right fibre for the right garment. Hence if fast fashion garments could be close-loop recycled, then polyester is an appropriate choice.

25 Observing Company A’s product in store six months later, I noticed that they had utilised some bamboo blends in certain garments.

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the cheapest one for the best price to be able to turn the trends over. So it’s trends [or] sustainability … it’s kind of scary, yeah it is scary, it's kind of sad.

There has been more progress in fibre choices in overseas fast fashion companies than in Australian fast fashion companies. For example, H & M and Gap both offer an organic cotton collection. H & M recently began to use chiffon made from recycled PET bottles (Chua 2010). However, these responses represent only a small portion of each company’s fibre consumption. If recent fibre price rises are a gauge, then fast fashion’s demand for fibre will soon outstrip supply. Cotton prices have fluctuated considerably during 2010 -12, prompted by floods in 2011 in both Pakistan and Australia (the world’s third largest cotton producer). In January 2011, Ragtrader reported that the high cost of fibre is likely to raise garment prices by as much as 30 per cent, in addition to which H & M attributed a recent 10 per cent loss in profit largely to rising cotton prices (Ragtrader 2011). Although this price rise may only be temporary,²⁶ when placed in a wider context of climate change, food security and global population pressures, high fibre prices may become more permanent. In 2011, Primark in the UK was absorbing the price rise of cotton rather than passing it onto consumers, although this strategy is hardly viable in the long term (Zientek 2011). Therefore, the need to find alternative fibres is not necessarily an issue of appearing ‘green’ and ‘eco-friendly’ for one’s customers, but crucially a longer-term need to adjust to a range of global pressures that may force different fibre choices in future.

The interviews revealed that it was very difficult for the designers to consider DfS in terms of choosing lower-impact textiles. With the exception of Hannah in

Company A, few of the designers had any knowledge of more sustainable fibre options, or of the environmental impacts of various fibres. This is therefore a crucial barrier in applying DfS strategies within the design process. Large companies such as H&M and Nike can devote sourcing departments to pre-determining the fabrics based on their developed criteria for lower-impact fibres (for instance, Nike’s

Considered Index, or the SAC’s Higg Index). However, both Label C3 and Company A are small operations in comparison to H&M and Nike, and even compared to

26 Cotton prices reached an all-time high of US$2.39 per pound in March 2011, but have since stabilised at US$1in early 2012.

Company B. Neither Label C3 nor Company A had sourcing agents who could potentially handle this research for them according to standards (e.g. such as Oeko-Tex, or GOTS). Rather, the designers in Company A and C select the fabrics, and as was demonstrated in the interviews, their chief concern is balancing the price per metre while ensuring acceptable quality in handle.

While the designers do not have the knowledge necessary to determine which fibres to source as substitutes, they also have no time to conduct the kind of research required, or indeed the time to source new fabrics and develop new relationships with suppliers. For example, Sophie, the head designer in Label C3, purchases her fabrics in the markets en route to the factory. Therefore she already knows what she needs to purchase based on the fashion trends, and has to find fabrics on that

foremost criteria. Similarly, Company A relies on a series of base fabrics, as Jill described, already sourced by the head designers based on price. More

problematically, even if the designers did have the time to conduct this research, all of the designers interviewed believed that their customer had no interest in lower-impact textiles, and so there was no external need to shift their sourcing practices.

However, despite these factors, the mid-volume fast fashion designers also have an opportunity. The designers do have greater degree of control over their fabric choices as they are directly responsible for choosing them, rather than relying on the choices of an intermediary or separate sourcing office (for example, as opposed to the designers in Company B, as will be discussed in Chapter 6). Therefore, this opportunity for designers to consider lower-impact fibres is significant, and points to the need for re-education and new strategies to share information regarding fibre choice with mid-volume designers, and to connect them with suppliers.²⁷ Mid-volume companies such as Company A and Company C make an interesting case, as while the designers potentially have more control to change their fibre choices than designers in a bigger company, they paradoxically have a reduced capacity to do so, due to barriers such as knowledge and time pressures.

27 This issue of knowledge building will be discussed in greater depth in Chapter 8, and was a key driver behind the ThinkLifecycle (Payne 2011) proposal, described in Appendix E.

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