Ultra-fast Fashion Is Eating the WorldSocial media wasn’t just a convenient place to advertise—it was also changing how we think about our clothes. Fashion brands have always played on our aspirations and insecurities, and on the seemingly innate desire to express ourselves through our clothing. Now those companies had access to their target shoppers not just when they stood below a billboard in SoHo or saw an ad on prime-time TV, but in more intimate spaces and at all hours of the day. Brands flooded our feeds with their wares, whether through their own channels or, more surreptitiously, by enlisting influencers to make an item seem irresistible, or at least unavoidable.The more we began documenting our own lives for public consumption, meanwhile, the more we became aware of ourselves (and our clothing) being seen. Young people, and young women in particular, came to feel an unspoken obligation not to repeat an #outfitoftheday; according to a 2017 poll, 41 percent of women ages 18 to 25 felt pressure to wear a different outfit every time they went out.Macro-level changes were transforming the industry. Synthetic fibers made it possible to manufacture cheaper (and in many cases less durable) clothes; new trade policies led to a globalized supply chain. Companies shifted production offshore, where environmental regulations were less stringent, or nonexistent, and garment workers sometimes earned 20 times less than in the U.S. Clothing got massively cheaper.Forever 21, which initially catered to L.A.’s Korean community, set itself apart by offering a steady flow of new merchandise that capitalized on emerging styles. As it grew, its co-founder Jin Sook Chang reviewed as many as 400 new designs a day. Shopping for fast fashion was exciting—there was always something new, and the merchandise was so cheap that you could easily justify an impulse buy.While high-end fashion companies were still releasing fall and spring collections, Forever 21’s rival Zara offered fresh styles twice a week. The company, which prefers to distance itself from the “fast fashion” label, says it was just trying to respond to customers’ desires. But stocking inexpensive, ever-changing options also stimulated our desire to buy more. If you found a look you liked at Zara, you had to snap it up right away, or else suffer from fashion FOMO. One study found that, whereas the average shopper visited any given store about four times a year, Zara shoppers stopped in once every three weeks.Traditional brands initially scoffed at fast fashion, but they also feared losing market share; they, too, began shifting manufacturing overseas and releasing items more frequently. The 2008 financial crisis further cemented fast fashion’s hold on the market. If you were going to a job interview while the economy collapsed around you, a $25 Forever 21 blazer was hard to beat. Even after the economy recovered, people kept buying inexpensive clothes, and in ever-larger quantities. Worldwide, clothing production doubled from 2000 to 2015, while prices dropped: We were spending the same amount on clothes, but getting nearly twice as many items for it. At its peak, in 2015, Forever 21 made $4.4 billion in global sales.It’s hard to overstate how much and how quickly fast fashion altered our relationship with clothing, conditioning us to believe that our clothes should be cheap, abundant, and new. Trends used to take a year to pass from the runway to the mainstream; now the fashion cycle has become so compressed that it takes just a few weeks, or even less. Americans buy a piece of clothing every five days, on average, and we pay so little for our garments that we’ve come to think of them as disposable. According to a McKinsey study, for every five new garments produced each year, three garments are disposed of.