Fast fashion, a vital threat to the French textile industry, according to an NGO

Between job destruction and unfair competition, fast fashion has threatened the French textile industry for several decades, estimates in a report published Wednesday by the NGO Friends of the Earth, which calls for “urgent legislative action”. The threat posed by foreign players in fast fashion on the French textile industry began at least in 1990, as its most illustrious representatives established themselves there, judges the association in a study.

That is 1990 for the Spanish Zara, 1998 for the Swedish H&M, 2013 for the Irish Primark, before the sensational arrival of the Asian giants selling only online, Shein in 2015 and Temu in 2023. But the model of fast fashion and its relocation of production to Southeast Asian countries began in the 1980s, “to culminate with the end of the multifiber agreements from 2005 to 2008”recalled the association. International treaties which established import quotas for textile products in Europe and the United States to protect local production from competition from low-wage countries ended in 2005, leaving the field open to Asian textiles.

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Since 1990, these are “nearly 300,000 jobs” which have been destroyed in France in the textile industry, figures the NGO, which relies in particular on data from INSEE, Ademe and the e-commerce federation (Fevad). Because if “in less than 40 years” the quantity of clothing consumed has doubled, this has not benefited the French industry, notes Friends of the Earth, who believe that the players in ephemeral fashion are creating a “unfair competition” for the rest of the sector. “In 2023, all clothing and shoe stores in France saw their business volume barely higher than that of 2016, while brands like Zara and Primark showed increases of +70% and 116% respectively. %»they compare.