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

—usually hyphenated when used before another noun

fast-fashion chains/retailers

Examples of fast fashion in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

This was everything wrong about fast fashion, literally writ large. —Jasmin Malik Chua, Sourcing Journal, 2 July 2025

The Chinese fast fashion giant recently partnered with Reliance Industries to bring its brand to India in February, after being banned from the country in 2020. — Yeo Boon Ping What happened in the markets? —Spriha Srivastava, CNBC, 12 June 2025

There are new economic factors at play that may have the inadvertent effect of slowing fast fashion and overconsumption, which would ultimately reduce industry emissions. —Karen Dougherty, The Orlando Sentinel, 30 May 2025

There's a lot of talk about factories and producing overseas and a lot of fast fashion. —Rachel Elspeth Gross, Forbes.com, 16 June 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1975, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for fast fashion

• compassion
• ashen
• passion
• ration
• aurignacian
• internation