Fashion industry gives rise to a 'disposable culture'

The push to wear the latest clothes helps clutter our closets with old castoffs.

from the August 22, 2007 edition

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Beyond the endless flow of money these constant purchases require – "Charge it, please" – fast fashion, with its throwaway mentality, encourages a feeling that everything is expendable. It can foster a sense of impermanence, even restlessness, as a shopper goes in pursuit of the hottest new style. It can also require space – lots of it.

Several years ago, I went through a house in Wisconsin that had been built around 1890. Inside and out, the white structure, with its hilltop setting and wraparound porch, had a certain grandeur. But it lacked something absolutely essential today: storage space for clothes. None of the bedrooms had a single closet. Residents hung their clothes in wooden wardrobes and armoires, often only four feet wide. That says everything about the modest amount of clothing early occupants owned. A 21st-century visitor could only wonder: How did they ever manage?

Today, to accommodate mountains of clothes, Americans build houses with ever-bigger walk-in closets, some the size of a room. Shoppers make frequent trips to stores specializing in storage containers to stock up on stackable units to hold sweaters and shoes. And still we have too little space for the quickly outdated clothes we think we might still wear "someday."

Instant obsolescence isn't just a sartorial challenge. Ever-changing electronic devices also help to create a disposable culture. As part of manufacturers' planned obsolescence, consumers constantly receive subtle, insistent messages. The voice of temptation whispers: Your cellphone doesn't have a camera, a video recorder, a flashlight, a calculator, and a GPS. How outdated. Time to get a new one. And you don't yet own a flat-screen TV or the very latest digital camera? What are you waiting for?

With each new generation of electronic gadgets – ever smaller, faster, more powerful – we congratulate ourselves on our progress. But as our closets and houses fill with an accumulation of castoff possessions, sartorial and technological, progress can create its own forms of enslavement.

No wonder there's a growing audience for a new magazine called Organize. And no wonder publishers keep churning out books with titles such as "Put Your House on a Diet." Our cluttered closets, attics, and basements attest to our affluence and our easy-come, easy-go approach to possessions.

"Staying power" has its uses. As landfills bulge with unwanted but often still-functional possessions, our throwaway culture could heed a reminder: "Fast" has its appeal and its purpose. But slower and longer-lasting still have their place.

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