What do you really pay for that 4$ Tee?

It’s the fall new season with buy one item get the second with 50% discount,
It’s the mid-season sale,
It’s black Friday,
It’s the holiday last-minute discount,
It’s the winter sales,
It’s the valentine special,
It’s spring new season with 20% discount,
It’s don't miss out on a 75% discount on summer items…

Have you ever wondered how come we have so many sales? If you’re a GEN Z, then you probably think that's how sales work. However, millennials, like myself, know something has changed in the fashion industry, even though we can’t pinpoint it. But, when clothes get way cheaper, what's to complain about?

A conspiracy “theory”

Miranda Priestly would give us one of her cold-blooded stares. But hey, a Tee for 4$, it’s quite a bargain, isn’t it?

Now that I think of it, we got so used to sales that actually they’ve become the average price on the market.Regular sales are the new normal, but something feels unsettling. No company would or could afford discounts all year long. It’s too generous and quite suspicious!

So here come my conspiracy theories!

Theory 1: Perhaps, they over-manufacture, and they have too much waste that they need to get rid of.
Theory 2: There are no sales. Something now on allows big fashion brands to pay less for their manufacturing, which could frankly be anything!
Theory 3:Theory 1+ theory 2 + who knows what else…

Let’s go back to where it’s started, shall we?

The fast fashion fairytale:

Once upon a time, around the 90s, clothing brands wanted to produce a lot of items, make them cheap, and put a pricey tag on them. But they couldn’t... Yet!
They made clothes in their own countries, so they needed to pay a lot of money for safe working conditions, taxes, fair wages, health insurance, and avoiding some chemicals…
But one day, they realized: “This isn't working for us, we need to come up with a plan!”
They thought and thought until one day they found it: “What if we took our manufacturing somewhere else, like developing countries. We could pay them less, and still sell those clothes at the same price, we will make a whole lot more.”
And that’s what they did.

They were making a lot of money, and people were happy too because they didn’t have to pay more to buy clothes like before. So, they buy and buy and buy…

But then these companies thought once again: “What if we ask those manufacturers to pay their workers even less? They should be grateful they have jobs thanks to us in the first place. If they don’t lower their minimum wage, we’ll take our business somewhere else cheaper.”
And that’s what they did.

These brands were happy and so were their customers ( who had no idea about what was going on). However, on the other side, things were way different. Workers were not happy, so they thought something like this: “We don’t feel safe where we work, and something terrible might happen someday. It’s not fair to work all day long without making enough money to support our families. And now our kids work instead of going to school to help us make ends meet. We need to talk about this!”
They talked and talked… but no one listened to them.

Until one day, something terrible happened!
There was an accident, and many people died after a building collapsed in Bangladesh, leading to over 1000 dead workers.

It was disgraceful, but that’s not the worst part.
People who worked in this building warned these brands manufacturers many times. They told them all about the cracks in the building and that it wasn’t safe to work there. But nobody listened to them!

Sadly after the Plaza Rana tragedy, the whole world knew what was happening.
But this time, people started to listen to people.
It was a wake-up call for so many, raising serious doubts about the morals of these brands.

Is this what people have to go through for a sale?

Thankfully, things started to change.

The mindset is changing…

More people today are asking relevant questions about what they wear. Something like: How are my clothes made? Who made my clothes?
Are my clothes harming the environment? Are they exploiting people?

And these are legit questions for those who want to practice what they preach.
So, here is the thing! It’s no longer a secret what fast fashion is doing in developing countries but, it doesn’t mean that everyone knows about it.
I heard something vague about this topic back in the days when Zara and H&M were my havens. Still, I never took the time to put the pieces of the puzzle together to acknowledge the stakes here. To come across information that does not suit the interest of big corporations takes digging.
So, raising awareness about the fast fashion industry matters because the sales are a cover-up. There is no conspiracy theory; there is only a conspiracy REALITY. We may be paying 4$ for a Tee, but the real cost is our planet, our species, our health, our moral values, and our legacy.

You got the power within you:

There is a silver lining in all of this because we can change the narrative. Yes, sing it proud and sing it out loud: I GOT THE POWER! Because you do. This industry relies entirely on us as consumers. So if each one of us decided to make their voices heard against this harmful well-implated system, things would change for the better. Unity is our strength and is perhaps one of the reasons we didn’t go extinct. Speaking up means that we actually care about the future of our planet and its species, including our own.

But remember to veto brands and not people!

Just because clothes are made in Bangladesh, it doesn’t mean that their manufacturers are exploiting people or harming the environment. Sustainable manufacturing exists in developing countries too. And that is something people should be aware of because they wrongly boycott products simply because they’re made in Bangladesh or India. Therefore, they assume it’s an enslaving industry destroying our planet whereas it’s actually supporting people to break the cycle of poverty without damaging the environment.

But how would you know?
If a brand claims to be as clean as a whistle, but certifications that prove that are nowhere to be found, then there is your smoking gun!

Find out more about certifications for ethical brands.

The takeaway

Long story short, there is no such thing as mid-season sales; buy two and get the third for free, or 75% discount. Everything the fast fashion provides is full-priced with a large sum of profit, and the tax is us, the planet and its species.

Information that exposes human rights violations is literally not in fashion, so we need to raise awareness about what’s really going on. Forcing people to do things never worked and never will, but enlightening them about facts is how we can have a fashion renaissance.

Speaking against this 4$ Tee is not only about the fast fashion industry polluting the planet and enslaving people. It’s also about choosing who we are. After all, we are what we wear, and our values within are reflected in every decision we make, and that includes small things, like putting on a t-shirt in the morning.