Listen to an original Ethical Threads podcast episode discussing TikTok's affects on the fashion world:
Podcast Transcript
Opening — ‘Dayspring’ by Firefl!es on SoundCloud, played in the background while ambient clothing noises set the scene.
Hello listeners, it’s Georgia Dunne, and welcome to the ‘Ethical Threads’ podcast! Join me each week to discuss fashion, sustainability and trends. This week, we’ll be covering TikTok and fast fashion.
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To begin I’ll define fast fashion. Fast fashion is notorious for producing clothing that is made from cheap materials, and aren’t constructed to last a long time. Let’s get into today’s discussion.
With more than a billion monthly users, more than half of which are under the age of 30, TikTok has skyrocketed in popularity since its launch in 2016. It’s a pivotal contender in how people view the world around them, and has acted as a platform for broad and niche groups to thrive.
Store manager, Katherine West, is very aware of the influence TikTok is having on culture and online interaction, particularly in the fashion field.
KATHERINE WEST: “I think that TikTok has affected fashion trends in the sense of it's continuously changing, and the trends are moving, creating much more of like a fast fashion, then there is anything sustainable, I think, with the amount of people who sort of show their thrifting hauls, people then want to find dupes of what they found thrifting and it's just a bit of an endless cycle and creates so many micro-trends that can really come across as, like fleeting, they're just here one minute and then go on to the next. So it just sort of keeps going and going and going. As opposed to in the past. You would only be able to find trends by looking through magazines which came out monthly, or you know, fortnightly, whereas now you can see it every single day.”
Micro-trends are defined by Wrap Compliance as a trend that “rises in popularity and falls even faster” than normal fashion trends. While ‘average’ trends tend to last 5—10 years, micro-trends last 3—5 years. Now with social media, especially TikTok, fashion trends are soaring and plummeting at lightning speeds. West briefly explained why she thought this was the case.
KATHERINE WEST: “Sort of one of the downsides of TikTok is people feel the need to constantly dress in a trendy way whenever they leave the house. There's no room to be just comfortable anymore, which creates a lot of fashion waste. But I also see a lot of people on TikTok, creating, like, up-cycling their clothes and turning old big t-shirts that they have into cute crop tops, or turning broken tights into those weird fishnet tops. But that in itself is creating somewhat of a better carbon footprint for the fashion trend.”
The app also has popular groups that focus on sustainable fashion, buying secondhand clothes, and ‘thrift flipping’, the term used when you transform op-shop purchases into more stylish pieces, through sewing or other methods. Former fashion student Morgan Nichols takes this into account when explaining her standpoint on TikTok’s fashion world.
MORGAN NICHOLS: “Look, it’s really controversial, and a lot of my friends in the fashion industry, people that I know, would disagree with me, but my hot take is that I really do think that TikTok has done wonders for the world of fashion. It's let people express themselves, new styles, small designers have been able to grow massively, grow their small businesses. It's done amazing things for like DIY, and inspired younger people to get into the fashion industry. So like turning out, hopefully future designers that are really mindful of sustainability, and, you know, like the general health of our world. So I think that that's amazing. And I just, you know, fashion is a very elitist kind of world. So I think that TikTok is letting the general masses be a part of high fashion and different groups that were previously closed in. And some people really don't like that. But I think that it's really good for growth, because how are we going to move forward, but if we don't grow?”
West shared a similar sentiment about the upsides of the app, and looked optimistically towards the future of fashion in a new era that might focus more on aesthetics than trends.
KATHERINE WEST: “I think that the future of fashion is going to be a lot more personalised. It's not gonna be 'What's a global trend right now?' It's going to be 'What's a trend in your aesthetic?' And I think that TikTok really pulls that off in the fact that people post videos in their aesthetic.”
Background music (‘Dayspring’ by Firefl!es on SoundCloud) begins.
Thank you to Katherine West and Morgan Nichols for your input, and thank you listeners for tuning in to this week’s episode of Ethical Threads! Next week, we’ll be discussing op-shopping’s rise in popularity, and what this means for consumers. This is Georgia Dunne on Ethical Threads, signing off.
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End.
Resources
Wrap Compliance: 'Micro-trends: The acceleration of fashion cycles and rise in waste'
Music: 'Dayspring' by Firefl!es on SoundCloud
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