来源：《大西洋月刊》2021年3月号
The ultra-fast-fashion brands have designed a shopping experience that makes the consumer feel as if the clothes magically appear out of nowhere, with easy purchasing and near-immediate delivery.
极速时尚品牌设计了一种购物体验，让消费者觉得这些衣服好像凭空冒出来一样，购买方便，送货快捷。
Of course, the clothes don’t come from nowhere. Ultra-fast fashion brings with it steep environmental costs. “You may get a $1 bikini,” Dana Thomas, the author of the book Fashionopolis, said. “But it’s costing society a lot. We’re paying for all of this in different ways.”
当然，这些衣服不是凭空而来的。极速时尚带来了巨大的环境成本。“你可能会买到一美元的比基尼，”《时尚都市》一书的作者达娜·托马斯说。“但这让社会付出了巨大代价。我们正在以别样的方式为这一切买单。”
Producing clothing at this scale and speed requires expending enormous amounts of natural resources. Cotton is a thirsty crop, producing a pound of it can require 100 times more water than producing a pound of tomatoes. But synthetic textiles have their own problems. They’re a major source of the microplastics that block our waterways and make their way into our seafood. McKinsey has estimated that the fashion industry is responsible for 4 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions; the United Nations says it accounts for 20 percent of global wastewater.
以这种规模和速度生产服装需要消耗大量的自然资源。棉花是一种耗水的作物，生产一磅棉花需要的水是生产一磅西红柿的100倍。但是合成纺织品也有自己的问题。它们是微塑料的主要来源，这些微塑料堵塞我们的水道，最终通过食物链进入我们食用的海鲜。麦肯锡估计，时装业的温室气体排放量占世界总量的4%；联合国称其排放了全球20%的废水。
Meanwhile, the volume of clothes Americans throw away has doubled over the past 20 years. We each generate about 75 pounds of textile waste a year, an increase of more than 750 percent since 1960. Discarded clothes get shipped overseas. Last year, a mountain of cast-off clothing in Ghana generated so much methane that it exploded.
与此同时，美国人丢弃的衣服数量在过去20年中翻了一番。我们每人每年产生大约75磅的纺织品废料，自1960年以来增加了750%以上。废弃的衣服被运往海外。去年，加纳一座堆积如山的废弃衣物产生了大量甲烷，导致了爆炸。
Fast-fashion companies tell their customers that it’s possible to buy their products and still have a clean conscience. H&M has increased its use of organic cotton and sustainably sourced materials; Boohoo sells 40 or so items partially made from recycled textiles. Aja Barber, the fashion-sustainability consultant, sees most of these efforts as little more than greenwashing: “It’s like, ‘Oh look, these five items that we made are sustainable, but the rest of the 2,000 items on our website are not,’ ” she said.
极速时尚公司告诉顾客，在购买其产品的同时仍然可以问心无愧。H&M增加了对有机棉和可持续材料的使用；Boohoo出售大约40件部分由回收纺织品制成的衣物。时尚可持续发展顾问阿贾巴伯认为，这些做法大多不过是在穿上“绿色外衣”：“这就像是，‘哦，看，我们制作的这五件衣服是环保的，但我们网站上的2000件衣服不是，’”她说。
Then there is the human toll. The rise of fast fashion was made possible by the offshoring of manufacturing to countries where labor costs are kept low through the systematic exploitation of workers. When Rana Plaza, an eight-story factory in Bangladesh, collapsed in 2013, killing 1,110 and wounding thousands more, the disaster brought international attention to the alarming labor conditions in overseas garment factories. Some ultra-fast-fashion companies have relocated manufacturing domestically or to nearby countries.
然后是人员伤亡。极速时尚的兴起是由于将制造业外包到那些通过系统剥削工人来保持低劳动力成本的国家。2013年，孟加拉国的八层厂房拉纳广场倒塌，造成1110人死亡，数千人受伤。这场灾难引起了国际社会对海外服装厂令人担忧的劳工状况的关注。一些极速时尚公司已经将生产转移到国内或周边国家。
But domestic manufacturing doesn’t necessarily mean ethical manufacturing. Several of Fashion Nova’s Los Angeles–based suppliers were investigated by the Department of Labor for paying wages as low as $2.77 an hour. Reporters in the U.K. have uncovered disturbing practices at Boohoo’s suppliers, including impossible quotas, unsafe working conditions, and garment workers paid well below the minimum wage. Fast-fashion companies typically outsource production to a long chain of contractors and subcontractors, making accountability a challenge.
但国内制造并不一定意味着遵从道德规范。美国劳工部调查了时尚新星在洛杉矶的几家供应商，原因是它们每小时支付的工资低至2.77美元。英国的记者发现Boohoo的供应商存在一些令人不安的做法，包括不可能完成的工作量指标、不安全的工作环境，以及服装工人的工资远低于最低工资。极速时尚公司通常将生产外包给一长串的承包商和分包商，这使得问责成为挑战。