ABSTRACT
Fast fashion has become a defining characteristic of today’s textile and cloth-
ing industry. It is a combination of high speed production – tracking sales
with electronic tills, and just-in-time manufacturing that now makes it possible
to turn a sample or design sketch into a finished product in as little as three
weeks – and high speed, high volume consumption. A recent report revealed
that people are buying one third more garments than four years ago,1 fuelled
by the rise of cheap clothes and ‘value’ retailers like Primark and Matalan.
