Slow Fashion vs. Fast Fashion.
One of my main clients is a slow fashion innovation brand Two Neighbors www.twoneighbors.com Everything is made by hand. However, we often get questions such as why our prices are more expensive than Zara or Forever 21. The majority of people that work in the fashion industry understand fast fashion and slow fashion dynamics. However, the average customer may not. I decided to write a blog about the difference between fast and slow fashion
Slow fashion |
What is slow fashion? Once in a while, we get questions from people that are not familiar with the workings of the fashion industry. Recently someone wanted to know why our dresses were not competitively priced like Zara or other fast fashion brands.
There is a big difference in the way that fast fashion brands produce their garments as compared to slow fashion brands like Two Neighbors. Fast Fashion brands like Zara, Old Navy and Forever 21, have hundreds of stores throughout the world and produce products in massive quantities to fill all their stores around the globe.
When Zara designs a dress and places a production order with their China factory, they order 25,000-50,000 pcs of that same exact dress. The dress is made by about 20-30 people on a massive production line in China, India, Bangladesh or other places in Asia where the wages are very low (In Bangladesh the fashion workers make an average of $4-5 per day). After the dresses are produced they are sent by sea freight from the Asia factory to the warehouses in different countries and from there they are distributed to the regional stores. Each store may get 250 or 500 pieces of that particular garment depending on the size of the store.
The average cost to produce a Zara dress is $7.00-$10.00 USD. That is why its called cheap fast fashion. New designs come out every 4-6 weeks at super cheap prices! The factories that produce apparel for Zara produce thousands of units per week for this massive chain store.
Two Neighbors, in contrast as a slow fashion brand, produces about 40 pieces of each style of dress. Each piece of embroidery is handmade (hand stitched) by ladies in the Palestinian villages that we employ. The embroidery pieces are hand delivered by our Palestinian coordinator to our Israeli designer and sewing shop. The dresses are handmade one by one by Jewish seamstresses at a small sewing shop in Israel. There are no production lines! Two Neighbors pays fair wages for all of our workers and the cost is reflected in the craftsmanship and price of the apparel.
We hope that helps explain slow fashion vs. fast fashion! If you order from Two Neighbors we can guarantee you will have a one of a kind outfit that reflects the beauty of our work!
To learn more go to www.twoneighbors.com
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