With summer around the corner, people are exchanging their winter wardrobes of scarves and woolly hats with latest summer trends.

This year we expect to see ugly-but-cool trainers, jeans ripped to oblivion and those weird tiny sunglasses fit only for a face like Bella Hadid.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhkQwSqHQiN/?taken-by=bellahadid

However, the cost of the fast moving fashion world is greater than what it seems to your bank account. 

Fast fashion, a term used to designate the consumer’s ability to pick up cheap and almost disposable clothing straight from the high street, is quickly becoming a severe environmental burden.

Elizabeth Cline, author of Where Does Discarded Clothing Go?, says Americans are purchasing five times more clothing than they did in 1980.

But this rise in consumption does not only result in the average household producing 70 pounds of textile waste a year, it is also another vessel for the exploitation of developing countries.

The fashion industry is one of the most labour dependent industries. H&M (a fast fashion multinational), who had an annual revenue of just under 20 billion dollars last year, is the largest producer of clothing in the developing world. Bangladesh is home to nearly four million factory workers, most of whom are paid the minimum wage of less than $3.

The justification for this is seemingly that it is the only way for these brands to produce their unfathomably cheap clothing.

So, when going out with the old and in with the new, we should remember where our street style is really coming from.