This week, the Yale Herald sat down with Claire Kalikman, MS ’21, Ale Aguirre, ES ’21, and Atarah Anbar, SY ’23, of the Yale Fashion House to discuss the bankruptcy of Forever 21 and the fate of fast fashion.
Yale Herald: So let’s get started, shall we? On Oct. 1, Forever 21 announced its bankruptcy and that it was closing an eighth of its stores. Now, is this the end of fast fashion as we know it? Ale, let’s start with you.
Aguirre: I think that it’s not quite the end of fast fashion. There are brands like ASOS and Boohoo and Daraz Online that have kind of been having a steady rise I guess in terms of revenues and sales. And I think brands like Forever 21, I don’t know how to separate it from like in a store like Zara… it’s too much.
Anbar: I don’t think fast fashion can ever die because if the death of fast fashion comes, then most of the world is out of an expression. The majority of people can’t afford to be part of the high fashion. So in fast fashion… If that were to disappear… People would just be dressing sterile[ly] because there wouldn’t be any options.
Kalikman: But I don’t know if that’s entirely true, because what we love about fast fashion is its ability to give us the trends we want to own as fast as possible, but there’s also a whole range of middle brands that are more sustainable than fast fashion that people can still buy. I think that more than “is this the end of fast fashion,” to some extent this should be the end of fast fashion because fast fashion is absolutely polluting our environment. Fashion is the second most toxic industry to our environment and billions of pounds of clothing are thrown away every year and a huge portion that’s coming from stores like Forever 21 and H&M. So I think that if fast fashion is going to continue, it has to find a way to do it sustainably because otherwise it’s going to wreck the planet.
Aguirre: Yeah, and I do think there’s also the increase in resale websites and rental websites that are also like cheaper options for people that you’re still getting new clothes and whatever. So I think that could also be detrimental to fast fashion which I agree I think is, again, detrimental to the world. And I don’t support it very much, to be honest.
YH: Atarah, I want to jump back to you here really quickly. What do you think that fashion brands and designers can learn from for Forever 21’s bankruptcy?
Anbar: I think that a big issue that Forever 21 has been having is the quality of their clothes have remained the same, so still falling apart in the same way that all fast fashion brand clothes do fall apart. After like five washes, you see discoloration and weird colors coming out of it, but they’re marking up their products to be the price of a mid-fashion brand. And the people that go to places like Forever 21 are looking for not only something inexpensive but it could be something that’s for a single time use. So when they’re charging the price of an item that should last at least a year, I think that’s becoming a huge issue. So if it’s going to be a place for fast fashion it should remain the price of fast fashion while they’re creating prices that you’d see at a Nordstrom or Bloomingdale’s.
Kalikman: Definitely. I think that a lesson to be learned is that Forever 21 expanded too quickly. They were in, I think, half the countries of the world within just a few years opening up, and it’s clear they weren’t able to maintain that quality that you were talking about while trying for this rapid expansion.
Aguirre: And their storefronts, some of them are rolling over 20,000 square feet. Like that was like the average size of a Forever 21 storefront, which is humongous. You guys always remember like going to a mall and it’s like three floors of Forever 21 and it’s like… [pause].
Anbar: Well, I remember 10 years ago just going to the same mall that I go to now. Forever 21 was just a small normal store that you walk into. And now it’s a department store. It’s under the department store category when only 10 years ago, in my short lifetime, I saw it as just a normal boutique size store.
Aguirre:Yeah, that’s true. I think it did also come out with a XXI [collection, which was] kind of better design slash more pricey.
Kalikman: And there was Forever 21 Red, which was the basic line. I think they were just they were trying to do too many things at once.
Aguirre: I agree.
Kalikman: And, also, I think that the essential complaint about Forever 21 has always been [about] customer service — that there basically is none. And that’s one of the first things to go when you try to expand quickly. I think that’s another lesson brands can learn, that you can’t sacrifice customer service completely in the name of profit-saving.
Anbar: Exactly. And a big issue is, with a store that they expanded to be that large, they also have zero organization. If you want to find a piece, employees don’t know where to go for it.
Aguirre: Because it’s too big.
Anbar: It’s too big, and a lot of them are separated by color, not by product. So you’ll see one shirt not in your size, and there’s zero chance [you’ll find it], if you’re not willing to spend at least half an hour looking for it, that you’re gonna find that. It’s all the luck of the draw.
Kalikman: I think one problem is that we all need to buy less. I think that with the rise of the digital age there’s this mentality of “we want what we want right now,” and people are okay spending five dollars on a shirt and buying ten of them instead of spending 50 dollars on one shirt. The size of these stores speaks to that — that there’s so much buying because people want so much volume, but we cannot continue at this pace. It’s just unsustainable.
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