Fast Fashion Before Fast Fashion: Rethinking Histories of Mass-Produced Clothing

Fast fashion is often understood as a recent business model defined by speed, low cost, and disposability. Yet many of its challenges—labor exploitation, environmental harm, and the normalization of overconsumption—have much deeper historical roots. This talk traces the emergence of “fast fashion” through the lens of nineteenth- and twentieth-century shifts in media, merchandising, and consumer culture at large, showing how notions of “progress” and “prosperity” helped obscure the human and environmental costs of mass-produced clothing while shaping perceptions of style, value, and necessity.

This talk also considers how to study fast fashion’s history from an archival perspective, highlighting the use of sources such as mail-order catalogs, home economics textbooks, and trade publications. By reframing fast fashion as a historically embedded cultural construction rather than a fixed category, this research offers new perspectives for educators, curators, and researchers seeking to connect fashion history with urgent questions around sustainability.

Sara Idacavage is a Professor at Southern Methodist University in the Division of Journalism, Fashion Media Program.

The Nixon Seminar Series in the Department of Human Centered Design was established through a generous gift by John W. and Lea P. Nixon, Class of 1953. Designed to provide students with exposure to leading scholars and industry professionals, the Seminar Series is an expansion of the Nixon Distinguished Speaker Series and builds upon Mr. and Mrs. Nixon’s shared vision of creating a more engaged community on campus and providing a bridge to professional knowledge and opportunities.