Fast fashion
Fast fashion is a business model that rapidly turns current trends into inexpensive clothing, encouraging frequent purchases and quick style turnover.
Just-in-time manufacturing: A production strategy that schedules materials and goods to arrive close to when they are needed. Small, frequent orders can reduce inventory while keeping trend-responsive production moving.
Textile waste: Discarded fibers, fabric, and finished textile products generated during production and use. Frequent style turnover adds unwanted clothing to disposal and reuse streams.
Slow fashion: An approach to clothing that emphasizes considered production, durable design, and longer use. It rejects fast fashion's emphasis on rapid trend cycles and frequent buying.
Amancio Ortega: A Spanish businessman who co-founded the clothing company Inditex. Inditex's Zara became a prominent example of rapid, trend-responsive retail.
Fashion collection: A coordinated group of garments designed for a season, occasion, or brand identity. Frequent collection launches create visible cycles of newness in fast-fashion retail.
Supply chain: The network of organizations, people, and activities involved in producing and delivering a product. Fast fashion depends on coordinating suppliers, factories, transport, and stores across long distances.
Microplastics: Tiny plastic particles released as larger plastics fragment or shed. Washing synthetic garments can release fibers that enter waterways and ecosystems.
Capsule wardrobe: A small, coordinated collection of clothing designed for repeated combinations and long-term use. It favors fewer versatile garments over frequent additions driven by changing trends.
Inditex: A Spanish fashion group whose brands include Zara, Bershka, and Massimo Dutti. Its retail system helped popularize rapid design-to-store cycles.
Greenwashing: The use of misleading claims to present products or organizations as environmentally responsible. Sustainability marketing can obscure the effects of continued high-volume production.