Fast fashion... we have all heard the term, but what does it mean? As I see it, Fast Fashion is an unsustainable consumption of fashion products that comes at the expense of the environment and the people that produce them. Call it consumerism, call it over-consumption, —fast fashion is a disease.

Over time, the growth of industrialized mechanisms have enabled us to continuously reduce the cost of making a product, especially apparel. The introduction of seasonal styles asserts an expiration on a specific design or style. Clothing is no longer part of a hierarchy of needs, it is a rapidly consumable good.

Today, styles are designed for a season or half season. A ‘collection’ has 4-10 different styles, all of which have a shelf life less than two months. In order to keep up with this facilitated demand, the product must be churned out quickly and must expire quickly in order to promote next season’s trends.

What this cycle leaves us with is an industry that puts profit margin first at the expense of people and the environment.

That’s the bad news; the good news is that it’s changing. Brick-and-mortar bastions like Macy’s and J.C. Penney are shuttering their doors. Unilever is recording a 70% increase in investment returns from their social/ethically responsible brands.

Millennials emphatically prefer things with substance. We value experience over anything else. We willingly take a lower salary in order to maintain flexibility and the capacity to experience the world. This extends to the things we purchase. We choose brands that have a story to engage with.

The challenge is that this idea is not yet the norm. There is still a large portion of the population that purchases shitty fast fashion.

How do I know this? We ran a multi-week survey with over 1,000 participants. The results were interesting -- it was clear that the majority of our respondents, though willing to purchase from socially responsible companies, by far exhibited characteristics of a fast-fashion consumer.

Our sampling was prone to purchasing a new pair of shoes similar to ours every few months with the expectation that they would need to purchase a replacement within 12 months. As we divided by gender the data became even more skewed. Men purchased an average of 2 pairs like ours twice yearly -- women every 3 months.

So what can we learn from this? I think the key takeaway is that Millennials and Gen X are more receptive than previous generations to purchasing quality products that give back. The challenge is changing consumer behavior to make slow fashion the norm.