There's so many parts to this story.<p>There's "eroding my culture, no my culture finds expression in new ways" stories. People don't wear clothes the same way, despite clothes being the same. I just finished "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World" by Virginia I. Postrel and it relates how imported weaves in west africa were taken apart to derive threads, to be re-woven into indigenous cloth designs. What happened was the colour palette and material types increased.<p>There's a "surplus is bad, no surplus is good" story: many people drive to either side, arguing it's either wasteful, or indicative of a drop in costs for basic necessities. I tend to think the impact on economies which derive value from the waste stream of fabrics is one of those 'qui bono' things where the good and the bad don't equally relate.<p>There's a "imports are bad, no, imports are good" story: imports of cheap produce displace local production and impact the economy in bad ways, but access to normal international standard goods from elsewhere equalises for disparities and also can impact the economy in good ways: productive labour can be applied elsewhere<p>The one story which has no dichotomous pair is "what the hell do you do, with the stuff which can't be sold" and its a really heinously bad story of pollution, loss of land, microplastics entry into the ecosystem, health effects, you-name-it.<p>Personally, I think fast fashion is net bad, and moving cloth around the world to wind up dumping it and polluting other economies is bad, and that trade is good and access to modern technology is good, but it all comes with a bit of good and bad. "it depends" (apart from the pollution: thats all bad)