The True Cost of Fast Fashion and How It Led Me to Vintage

I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time, about one of the reasons (among many) that pushed me irreversibly closer to vintage.

It’s been more than ten years since the collapse of the Rana Plaza in 2013, in Bangladesh. (For anyone who doesn’t know: Rana Plaza was an eight-story building in Bangladesh that collapsed in 2013. Inside were thousands of people sewing clothes for international fashion brands. The day before, huge cracks were discovered in the structure, yet workers were forced to return anyway. Over 1,100 people died.). I still remember seeing it on TV by accident. The building full of cracks. People entering anyway. Later I learned they had been forced to go back to work despite the danger. Realizing that so many lives ended like that so we could wear clothes we bought and wore every day was… a huge shock.

At that time I was already exploring my personal style, playing with fashion, trying new things. The first H&M in my city opened in 2000, but I didn’t go in until 2007. That was my first contact with what we now call fast fashion. I had no idea where those clothes came from or what it really cost to make them. I was a teenager, I saw “cute + cheap”, and that was it. If today it’s called fast fashion, back then in my head it was simply fashion.

But after Rana Plaza, something inside me was never the same again. I wanted to know who those people were. What they did exactly. And I discovered the term garment workers. That was the first hit of reality: the fashion I consumed had human consequences no one had ever talked about.

Then came the second hit: the documentary The True Cost (2015), directed by Andrew Morgan. That’s when I understood that for clothing to be so cheap, someone is paying the price you don’t see. And most of the time they pay with their health, their time, their youth, their dignity. I also recommend the mini-series Sweat Shop: Deadly Fashion (2014), directed by Joakim Kleven, if you want to keep pulling the thread of what happens behind mass-produced clothing.

After that, I never bought from those stores again. It can’t be that some people get to have style while others have to live in modern slavery.

And I’m not only talking about labor exploitation. I’m talking about toxic chemicals with no protection, inhuman shifts, impossible wages, child labor, bodies destroyed because someone wanted “new clothes every week”. I’m talking about an industrial chain where the human story gets erased because the only thing that matters is speed and volume.

And there’s another part that must not be forgotten: fast fashion doesn’t only exploit garment workers, it exploits creativity too. Independent designers spend their livelihoods turning ideas into reality. Then fast fashion giants copy those ideas in a matter of days, mass-produce them, and sell them for almost nothing. So the same system that destroys the hands that sew also destroys the minds that create. It kills craftsmanship twice, first in the factory, and then in the studio.

I also remember when I was little and looked at clothing labels: cotton, wool, linen, silk, viscose… Today almost everything is polyester. We were convinced that was quality. And that “self-care” meant spending €100 a month on throwaway clothes. A little treat, wellness, happiness. But it’s not wellness for anyone: not for our bodies, not for our health, and definitely not for the people who make those garments.

Our obsession with consumption built the cage we’re now trapped in. We want more → so it has to be cheap → so we accept badly-made clothes → so someone has to make them fast and underpaid. And by buying that way we feed a system where, when we are artists, entrepreneurs or creators, people also don’t want to pay for our work.

When did “fair price” start to mean “low price”? That idea deeply damaged small businesses, craftsmanship and creativity. If we want people to value our work, our businesses, our creations, then we also have to value the work of others.

Because the truth is this: people don’t really get angry about the price. They get angry about the idea that something used can have value.

Because if used clothing has value, then:
• Craftsmanship suddenly matters again.
• Time matters again.
• Quality matters again.
• Durability matters again.
• Identity matters again.

Fast fashion only survives as long as people believe that “new = valuable” and “used = worthless“. But the moment we start valuing what already exists, fast fashion loses its power.

In the end, if you want to have your own project, and at the same time contribute to the consumption that destroys the projects of others, you are throwing stones at your own roof. I opened my vintage shop, Wanda Core, because I wanted to be free from a system that dictates how we should live, consume and produce. For me, vintage is not nostalgia. Vintage is memory, craftsmanship, culture, patience and identity.

Over-consumption as a painkiller for an empty soul is destroying everything. And it’s also destroying those people who sew for €0.01 per piece so we can have 100 plastic T-shirts that mean nothing.

The truth is, the decision is ours. No one is coming to save us from consumerism or tell us what to do or show us the way. As Antonio Machado wrote, “Traveller, there is no road, you make the road as you walk.” And every day is a new chance to decide which road we want to walk in fashion, too.

For me, vintage is exactly that road: valuing human work again, rediscovering craftsmanship and history, caring for what already exists (which is already so much), refusing to let fashion erase people, and expressing myself through what I wear, not through mindless consumption.

This is what vintage means to me:
• The time it takes to find something you truly love, something that truly fits you.
• The patience you need in a world of throwaway trends.
• The artistry of sewing, adjusting a dress that wasn’t your size but you couldn’t leave behind… and after a couple of darts it becomes one of your wardrobe favorites and no one ever suspects it wasn’t your size.
• Romanticizing every era and seeing yourself in them even though you weren’t even born then.

And maybe that’s the most romantic thing about vintage, it forces you to have patience in a world that only wants immediacy.