Fast fashion’s reckoning cannot come soon enough
February 21st 2022
Credit: Stella McCartney
It’s been a few days since the first Pretty Little Thing x Molly Mae fashion show at the Londoner Hotel in Leicester Square. An awe-inspiring variety of women walked the catwalk, with typically marginalised bodies, skin colours and abilities all strutting their stuff. Models were adorned with familiar pastel-hued synthetic crop tops, oversized blazers and slicked-back buns - all a signature staple from the brand, found on the pages of the biggest Instagram models and TikTokers. Pulsating lights and R&B music set the ambience of the show while influencers sat in the front row, the event documented via their Instagram feeds. At the end of the show, Molly Mae Hague, Love Island contestant and influencer now turned Creative Director of PLT, walked out onto the runway to explosive applause and praise usually reserved for the top fashion designers of our time. Cultural cornerstone The Mirror called the show “stunning”. To the naked eye, this show seemed like a huge win - inclusive models, accessible fashion on show and an all-around successful event.
Except all was not well. Outside the Londoner in the pouring rain and wind provided by Storm Eunice, a protest was taking place. Organised by the organisation Oh So Ethical and activist Venetia la Manna, the group stood by the entrance bearing placards of ‘Pay your workers’, ‘there’s nothing pretty about wage theft’ and ‘we all have the same 24 hours in a day’ (paying homage to the now-infamous podcast quote from Miss Hague herself, where she told people to stop being lazy and to achieve their dreams with all the a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps energy as a conservative talk show pundit). The group was protesting the outrageous, yet unsurprising claims of wage theft and unsafe working conditions carried out by PLT’s factories and subsidies. The brand was accused of modern slavery in 2020 by the Independent and exposed of paying their factory workers in Leicester as little as £3.50 per hour, while staying open during the first Coronavirus lockdown and achieving enormous success during an otherwise turbulent period for retailers. “These motherf*****s know how to exploit people like us. They make profits like hell and pay us in peanuts,” a factory foreman was quoted, per The Sunday Times. While factory workers were forced to come in to work during one of the biggest outbreaks of Covid in the UK, the CEO of PLT, Umar Kumani, purchased a £1.5 million diamond engagement ring for his fiancée.
The protesters waged on in the storm while show attendees snickered and stood awkwardly in the queue. In an embarrassing move for both Molly Mae and PLT, the British Fashion Council asked the company and the influencer to remove all claims that the show took part in the official London Fashion Week - even though both had stated that it was a part of the official yearly event. People raised eyebrows once more at the fact that PLT had appointed Molly Mae, a person with no creative direction or fashion design background, as the Creative Director of the brand - cleaning up an estimated £4.8 million per year. Whether an official role or not, it annoyed many in the creative industries - proving that it’s possible for those rich and famous to land roles that otherwise take years for the average person to achieve.
Many defended Molly Mae after the protest hit the headlines. “She can’t control what goes on in the factories”, one said. “She would change it if she could” said another. Or, the classic, “people love to hate on a woman doing a good job”. To all of these points - I totally disagree.
As a public figure with an army of publicists, enormous wealth and ample opportunity to do the research for herself, it is an undeniable choice that she makes to be associated with this brand. The same could be said about the SHEIN collab with influencer Georgia Toffolo - a brand that has been labelled ‘the worst of the worst’ by environmentalists for their shady and secretive supply chain operations and dirt cheap pricing. Imagine what would happen if a figure of their influence told the brand that they would drop the association with it if they didn’t improve their supply chain issues - the statement and effect would be enormous. To have an audience of that size and to educate the mainly young, impressionable girls about the horrors of the lives of garment workers in Bangladesh and how we can shop more sustainably. Maybe one day it’ll happen. Until then, we’re stuck in an endless cycle of people knowing how awful these companies and their practices are - from wage theft to stealing designs from smaller brands - but falling prey to these enormous corporations and their rapid growth in one way or the other. As for the #girlboss perspective of hating on a woman for doing her job? Until the female garment workers in PLT’s factories are freed from their sweatshop prisons, you can take every plus-size model and hijabi influencer in their fashion shows as 100% performative.
At the end of the day, those with the means and the influence need to make the choice to align themselves with these brands or to wage an offensive against them. In both our heart of hearts and in black and white, we all know how fast fashion is destroying our planet. We need to decide whether to succumb to that £2 tank top from the H&M sale or to take a look at exactly why these brands are giving away their clothes - literally - for pennies or for free. It’s not an excuse to say we don’t know about these practices, because it’s becoming increasingly obvious that we do - people just don’t want or are unable to make the change. Until the day comes where fast fashion companies can be held accountable for their actions and real change is implemented, we’ll be tuning into fashion shows after fashion shows, full of microtrends and plastic clothes.