fast fashion

noun

|Updated on: 28 May 2018

Definition of fast fashion

: 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

Recent Examples of fast fashion from the Web

This season, their freedom to expend hours and hours of work into the creation of one artful garment (which will likely only be worn once, on the runway) provided a respite from our faster-than-fast fashion society.

— peter ash lee, The Cut, "Couture, Simplified," 2 May 2018
Between the fast fashion cycles creating an excess of stock which turns into waste, to the harmful chemicals used in the manufacturing process, something needs to be done.

— alyssa hardy, Teen Vogue, "These Brands Are Offering Sustainable Clothing Just in Time For Earth Day," 21 Apr. 2018
These companies aren’t out to nail trends, as the fast fashion manufacturers of past decades did, but rather to sell an all-encompassing clothing system through which consumers are meant to live.

— kyle chayka, The New Republic, "How Tech Is Remaking Fashion in Its Image," 9 May 2018
Since the early 2000s, business has largely boomed for fast fashion retailers such as ASOS, H&M and Inditex, which owns Zara.

— elizabeth paton, New York Times, "H&M, a Fashion Giant, Has a Problem: $4.3 Billion in Unsold Clothes," 27 Mar. 2018
The Weeknd Cuts Ties with H&M The pop star, citing an offensive image, is no longer working with the Swedish fast fashion retailer.

— jake woolf, GQ, "The Weeknd Cuts Ties with H&M," 9 Jan. 2018
By 2027, that’s projected to shift to 11 percent resale and 10 percent fast fashion.

— sarah spellings, The Cut, "Could Resale Shopping Overtake Fast Fashion?," 3 Apr. 2018
Clothing and the cycles of fast fashion are one of the top polluters on the plant.

— alyssa hardy, Teen Vogue, "H&M's Clearance Sales Have Led to Lowest Profit Levels Since 2005," 28 Mar. 2018
Guararapes Confeccoes SA, the family’s conglomerate, entered the fast fashion market and sped up store openings since 2011 and now has over 300 stores in Brazil.

— fabiola moura, Bloomberg.com, "Billionaire Retailer Wants to Wake Up Brazil With Presidential Bid," 3 Apr. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'fast fashion.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.