Fast Fashion

Photograph of demonstrators holding "Who Made My Clothes" signs at Rana Plaza, 2015

Rana Plaza Commemoration March by Greens/EFA Group is licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Resource Description

Who doesn’t want to be fashionable? Fast fashion is quickly becoming one of the world’s biggest problems. The fashion industry is creating more clothing than we can use, most of it of lower quality, and many of which ends up in landfills. Consumers buy this cheaply made clothing following fashion trends, but the garment breaks or we grow tired of it, and we donate it. What happens to the clothing we donate? It has been said that after oil, the fashion industry is globally the most polluting industry. This module explores the global impacts of fashion consumerism, the impact on local economies, and its effects on the environment.

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Melba I. Amador Medina

Photograph of author Melba I. Amador Medina

Melba I. Amador Medina is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Spanish at Penn State New Kensington, where she teaches the beginning and intermediate courses of Spanish, along with the Ibero-American Civilization class. She studied at the University of New Mexico and her doctoral research examines gender, race, and identity in the work of three Caribbean women writers writing in English from the United States. Her current interests include the interactions between Latinx and Chicanx writers and their counterparts in the fine arts, in particular contemporary printmakers and performance artists. A little-known fact is that in her twenties, Melba worked as a fashion designer before deciding to continue her studies in art and literature.

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Gillian G. Russell

Photograph of author Gillian G. Russell

Gillian Russell is an undergraduate student and Paterno Fellow at Penn State University who is double majoring in Anthropological Sciences and Global and International Studies. Her interests are very broad, but they center on topics such as history, culture, conservation, environmental advocacy, and public outreach. She is currently working on her honors thesis which will be about human-environmental interactions in National Parks around the world, with a focus on indigenous land rights. In Gillian’s free time, she enjoys running, knitting, kayaking, reading, hiking, and listening to music.

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