Top 5 Fashion Practices that Need to Die Already

Everyone knows the old expression “sex sells,” but year after year, the fashion industry continues to push the envelope. Brands large and small have made it common practice to use female models in over the top sexual poses and scenarios. It doesn’t help that these models are often underage, with some of the most controversial ads featuring actual children posing like adults in full makeup. Even more disturbing is the trend towards using images of violence against women in advertising. Even major brands, like Dolce and Gabbana, have been accused of running ads that evoke the concept of gang rape and the brutalization of women’s bodies.

Fast fashion has gained even more popularity in recent years, with chains like H&M and Forever21 dominating sales. However, there is a price to pay for such inexpensive clothing. The working conditions in countries like Bangladesh, where many large chains have their clothing produced, are abysmal. Factory workers, who are primarily women, work long hours in extreme conditions for wages as low as approximately one US dollar a day. In 2013, over a thousand people were killed when a garment factory collapsed in Savar, shedding light onto the dangerous and shameful conditions under which our clothing is produced.

Fashion designers can take inspiration from just about anything in the world around them. When it becomes problematic however is when artists from a dominant group take advantage of the cultures of the less privileged by using ideas and designs that inherently belong to those cultures. What makes this an even bigger problem is that often these designs are presented using white models and excluding members of the group that the ideas were taken from. There is still a serious lack of diversity in racial representation both on the runway and in advertising and that needs to change.

Though fur went out of fashion for many years, it has recently come back, much to the dismay of animal rights activists. There is no lack of information on the brutal cruelty inherent to the fur industry, but top designers continue to put looks that feature this controversial material on the runway. There are so many great modern options for eco-friendly faux fur designs that it seems surprising that anyone would insist on the real thing, but they do. Fur may be the most contentious issue, but in reality many animal products like leather are used far more widely. So before you point fingers, check your wardrobe and evaluate whether you equally need make a change.

Retouching photographs using digital editing software is common practice for all photographers, but in recent years, extreme photoshopping has become particularly problematic in the fashion industry. Models and actresses have their skin perfected, their features enhanced and most importantly, their bodies digitally whittled down to an unnatural size. It’s bad enough that the models used to sell clothing are far thinner than the national average, but further altering their bodies after the fact establishes a fundamentally unrealistic expectation of what a woman should look like. Body image issues and the rise of eating disorders seem intrinsically linked to these problematic trends.