Fast fashion vs. Trump: why women may pay more in the tariff wars
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Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
Two or three months ago, I went into my closet to do my routine purge. Attempted it and failed many times. But this last time, it actually worked.
Emma Chamberlain, who's one of the biggest influencers, she became known in part for her thrift hauls. And she just threw out 95% of her wardrobe.
That is Veronique Hyland. Thank you for having me. Fashion features director at Elle and author of Dress Code, unlocking fashion from the new look to millennial pink. She's followed online fashion trends from Mob Wives to Vera Bradley's TikTok revival. And after watching Emma Chamberlain's closet clean out, she noticed the latest shift in online fashion. Under consumption.
I was seeing people sometimes refer to it as underconsumption core. And I thought, well, this is something that a lot of people have been doing for a long time because there are people who are doing no buy January or even no buy years. And then there are sort of more low buy or shop your closet, as we called it during the recession.
According to McKinsey & Company, from 2000 to 2014, clothing production doubled, and the number of garments purchased per capita increased by about 60%. That's in part due to the rise of fast fashion. And now, some consumers are seeing the fallout of that.
People have remarked that there's been an overall decline in clothing quality, or that when they're getting vintage pieces, even sometimes from a specific brand, the quality is better than before. the newer and people talking about relying on natural fibers like wool and cotton more, looking at tags very closely to see if things will last.
At the time of our chat, we wondered if the shift would stick in the post-New Year's resolution shuffle. It's no secret that Americans are deeply concerned about the economy, and there are numerous concerns about what fast fashion is doing to the environment. But that hasn't stopped the rise of places like Shein or Taimou. However, there's one other piece of the puzzle that may influence the way we buy.
It'll be interesting to see how potential tariffs impact all of this if things get even more expensive because there have been rumblings about that in both fashion and beauty and obviously other realms too. I wonder if that'll push people more towards either secondhand or lower priced alternatives.
I chatted with Veronique in January, right before President Trump took office. And since then, we've seen that Trump has decided to go forward with imposing tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico, and China. So now you might be wondering, what does that have to do with underconsumption? Actually, what does that have to do with fashion at all? Well, everything.
What's really kind of remarkable about this current trade war that we're finding ourselves in is that it's so broad, right? It means that a huge amount of stuff that we kind of take for granted is going to be affected. And, you know, that includes clothing and includes footwear, includes handbags, you know, the stuff that makes the consumer economy run, you know?
That's NPR's very own Waylon Wong from The Indicator. I want to make sure everyone's clear. A tariff is a tax that American businesses or consumers pay on imported goods from overseas. So as tariffs on goods from China or Mexico go up, our prices go up. But then you have to ask, if our prices are going to go up, why is the Trump administration doing this in the first place?
The economic rationale for tariffs is typically that it is meant to stimulate domestic production or protect a domestic industry. So basically, as Chinese steel or Mexican avocados or whatever get more expensive because of tariffs, American shoppers will turn to American businesses for those things. The problem with this rationale, especially as it applies to clothing or apparel, is that the U.S.
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