The Dangers of Fast Fashion
My film starts off with footage of a wave filmed from below the water, which is a beautiful image but it is also meant to be somewhat disorienting – it is the ocean without any visual reference to land or to humans. There is then a sharp transition to the “surface,” as we begin to see the haute couture process, which is the slow, deliberate, thoughtful creation of beautiful clothing. I then included clips of this beautiful clothing being shown on a runway. My goal in including these clips was to help the viewer understand that these garments are made and displayed to make us covet them, but this is still an exclusive world available to only a few people. During this section of the film, the music is slow and dramatic, which represents how in the mid 1900s clothing was created slowly with lots of attention to detail. It was a slower process with less being produced and less being consumed. The clothing was still being made to last.
Next, there is a quick segue to catwalks in the 80s and 90s. The clips in this section are at a faster speed to show how the fashion industry has become more fast paced. The clothing also starts to become more accessible, as we see an increasing number of models walk the runway. I repeated a clip of photographers swirling around a group of supermodels multiple times to draw attention to the idea that they are sending out the images of the show to the masses. Also, this repeated clip of the photographers ‘swirling’ across the screen is meant to reflect the footage of the wave at the beginning of the film. During this part of the film, “Material Girl” by Madonna is playing to represent how the world is becoming increasingly materialistic as the fashion industry is expanding.
There is then a segue to clips that depict fast fashion. We see footage of luxury fashion shows full of extremely bright colors and patterns that will be trendy for a short period of time and then discarded. I sped up these clips to emphasize how quickly these trends cycle. We then see clips of people dumping out huge boxes filled with colorful clothing from Shein (a fast fashion company), which reveals how these luxury fashion shows drive the desire for more and incentivize other companies to make clothing as quickly and cheaply as possible. During these fast fashion clips, the audio is multiple overlapping voices describing the negative impacts of fast fashion. This audio is meant to emphasize the manic quality to the production and consumption of fashion and the chaos that the fast fashion industry has caused to the earth. A clip from a fashion show on the beach reminds us of the disconnect between this consumption and the nature that it impacts, specifically the ocean.
To further emphasize that fast fashion has heavily impacted the ocean, I transitioned to footage of large amounts of trash in the ocean, which includes clothing that is discarded. I repeated the same slow, dramatic music from the beginning of the film to remind the viewer of the first clip of the ocean without the presence of any human impact.
