The state of fashion

What It Covers

Fashion's impact spans environmental waste, labor exploitation, and personal expression. Machine Dazzle explores maximalist costume design, Aparna Mehta reveals online shopping's hidden costs, Amanda Mull exposes returns processing waste, and Cameron Russell documents modeling industry abuse and complicity.

Key Questions Answered

• •Online returns crisis: Retailers process returns costing $5-25 per item, with online return rates reaching 15-30% versus single digits in stores. Workers sniff clothing, check pockets for underwear, and most returned items cannot be resold, ending in landfills or incineration facilities.
• •Textile waste scale: Americans generate 81.5 pounds of clothing waste per person annually, totaling 11 million tons nationwide. Ghana and Chile host massive trash mountains of discarded fast fashion. The core problem is overproduction of unwanted clothing, not just consumer returns behavior.
• •Returns processing reality: Inmar Intelligence facilities process 100,000 packages daily using human workers to open, inspect, and sniff each return. Fast fashion items often become unsellable within weeks, making returns economically unviable. Retailers now reintroduce fees to discourage returns after years of free policies.
• •Fashion industry exploitation: Twenty conglomerates control 97% of fashion profits while 80% of workers are women earning below livable wages. Models face sexual harassment normalized as industry standard. The supply chain relies on gendered labor exploitation from garment workers to runway models.