In the 21st century, the fashion industry has perfomed well. Costs decreased, operational processes became more efficient and consumer spending on fashion increased. This resulted in a doubling of total clothing production between 2000 and 2014. In the same period, the number of items of clothing purchased per capita increased by 60%. The emergence of the so-called “fast fashion” era resulted in consumers seeing clothes more and more as a disposable item, after wearing them seven or eight times certain items of clothing were already discarded. Between 2000 and 2011, European fashion companies went from an average of two collections per year (summer and winter) to five collections per year. Zara tops the list with 24 new collections per year, while H&M actively applied this with 12 to 16 new collections per year. The question that – rightly – is increasingly being asked: how long can this continue?
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