Love Island Blog - Fast fashion

Guys, it’s that time of year - the return of Love Island. Or, as Iain Sterling loves to claim through their new catchphrase, ‘Love, we OWN it!’ Are you ready to dive back into the waves of reality TV, the artificial construction of life, and to swim in chaos, drama, and of course, recoupling's?! I don’t know about you, but I sure am!

You see, Love Island is the TV series of the summer, of every summer since 2015 to be precise, single handily beating every other UK reality dating series, while stepping on every other series' toes, or should I say, consistently stepping forward in the reality tv scene.

This is why when their viewers, usually between the demographic of young adults and teenagers between the ages of 16-35 year olds, found out that they won’t be witnessing the typical Boohoo, Misguided and I Saw It First adverts that just love to insert themselves in the middle of all the chaos and drama of Love Island through their flashy advertisements, it was a shock. Because, as human beings, we don’t know what we like, we like what we know. Therefore, the idea of eco-friendly items being the only type of provocative clothing that we’ll be seeing these islanders wearing on a daily basis just to walk downstairs to meet the same people they saw an hour earlier- this could’ve been a hard pill to swallow for some of our Love Island fans. Even I, an extremely big fan of this hit TV series, was quick to observe the lack of advertisements being placed on my screen. I also noticed the peculiar style of clothing on our islanders this year, their outfits possibly appearing slightly more reserved and plain, but still stylish enough to be on TV, of course.

If you’ve ever heard of fast fashion, you’ll know that this is a direct reaction to our global climate change crisis, as well the exploitation of workers as a result of producing clothing at a fast pace. The term breaks down the idea that the fashion industry, as an attempt to replicate modern catwalk styles, tends to produce mass clothing products quickly. This is incredibly downgrading and harmful towards foreign workers who are being abused through their extended work hours for minimum wage. Watching the documentary, Inside Missguided, on Netflix allowed me to gain a deeper insight on the manufacturing process of many clothing industries, including their own. The documentary follows their headquarters in Manchester, where their Creative Director narrates the documentary, many scenes illustrating the process of finding the right manufacturer to create their clothing line, and turning it into an overnight success. That’s the key word, though, overnight. The combination of insane ambition, and copying the latest trends in relation to this product industry almost always leads to fast fashion, this documentary revealing their backlash during their early years in the fashion game. Their entrepreneur and founder, Nitin Passi, stated in the documentary that this led to their downfall in many ways, and their reputation as they began to be labelled negatively by society and lost a wide range of customers. Therefore, he took it upon himself to visit the manufacturer and get hands-on experience of the environment in which these workers will be producing his products for him, as he knows the quality, honesty and authenticity behind his products is much more valuable than their pace. This documentary represents the concept of ensuring your workers are comfortable and not being exploited for an entrepreneur's personal gain. Based on the recent success of Missguided, it goes to show that authenticity always leads to prosperity in the long run!

You see, Love Island has the ability to effect the latest trends in our society, which is why the use of no fast fashion advertisements, or companies that have been associated with fast fashion in the past, makes for extremely powerful marketing, as this strategy may lead to the domino effect of the increasing popularity of eco-friendly products in our society, as individuals from younger demographic, who are usually influenced by the stylistic qualities of our Islanders each year on this hit TV series, may feel reluctant to purchase non eco-friendly products based on its lack of appearance on Love Island this year.

These contestants are even making a fast fashion lover like me consider eco-friendly products, if I may say so myself.

So, it’s only looking up from here!