Fast fashion is so last season, an international iD Dunedin Fashion Week judge says.
About 100 people listened to public lecture by a Melbourne fashion designer, who has 40 years' industry experience, at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery yesterday.
Fashion and textiles associate professor Karen Webster, of RMIT University in Melbourne, said the smell of plastic in the shoe department of a chain store induced ''gut-wrenching nausea''.
The shoes were cheaper than a ''cup of coffee''.
''Mass production has brought speed, efficiency and cheaper prices but it's also brought diminished standards ... more, more, more is clouding the benefits of better, better, better.''
Past generations spent 20% of their family income on clothing, five times more than modern consumers, she said.
''If people spent 20% of their income on clothing, we [designers] would not be struggling today.''
Although consumers spent less on fashion, they bought more, with sales increasing by 60% in the past 10 years.
''Why, as consumers, do we think we need so much stuff?''
A ''supermarket mentality'' had entered the industry, she said.
Large corporations had design teams ''scanning the world'' for fashions to adapt and call their own. Wardrobes were being filled with ''fast fashion'' that lacked integrity, she said.
''Speed to market is given priority over quality product.''
The clothing and textile industry employed a sixth of the world's population and included a fashion system that embodied a lack of respect for design originality and encouraged product disposability.
''As a design community, we share the collective guilt of sweatshops, environmental pollution and child labour ...
''Stop this fashion system, I want to get off.''
