fast fashion

noun

: an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers

For many shoppers, Primark has an irresistible offer: trendy clothes at astonishingly low prices. The result is a new and even faster kind of fast fashion, which encourages consumers to buy heaps of items, discard them after a few wears and then come back for another batch of new outfits.

—The Economist

Competition is fierce at every end of the fashion spectrum from luxury to fast fashion.

—Nedra Rhone

In 1985, we bought roughly 31 clothing items per year; now [in 2012] we snap up twice that many thanks to "fast fashion."

—Azeen Ghorayshi

The allure of fast fashion makes sense in times of economic hardship. People still want to dress up, feel good and express their creativity.

—Shama Nasinde

—usually hyphenated when used before another noun

fast-fashion chains/retailers

Examples of fast fashion in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The Zara-Bad Bunny collaboration suggests that even the world's most successful fast fashion companies increasingly recognize the need to compete on meaning as well as merchandise. —Esade Business & Law School, Forbes.com, 31 May 2026

For Osei, this makes fast fashion’s toll on Kantamanto, where merchants already court economic ruin by gambling on bales of low-quality clothing, all the more insidious. —Jasmin Malik Chua, Footwear News, 28 May 2026

The chain cited the rise of fast fashion websites like Shein and Temu cutting into Claire's sales. —Greta Cross, USA Today, 20 May 2026

Meanwhile, Shein’s rise may have cratered any beliefs that fast fashion could be contained—that spending more on those utilitarian, eco-friendly basics would lead to meaningful change. —Elizabeth Cline, The Atlantic, 19 May 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1975, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for fast fashion

• compassion
• ashen
• passion
• ration
• internation