Mass-produced fashion slop

Today, Explained

The episode examines how algorithms and social media have transformed fashion from a top-down, runway-driven industry into an ultra-fast, data-optimized machine that prioritizes novelty over durability. Host Jonquilyn Hill interviews

Key takeaways

• Shein introduced around 4,700 new apparel styles per day by using algorithms to track trends and test demand in small batches before scaling production.
• Fashion journalist Amy O'Dell explains that retailers now rely on algorithmic inputs from social media engagement and search data rather than traditional runway trickle-down models.

Main topics

• Algorithmic fashion and ultra-fast retail
• History of ready-to-wear clothing

Notable quotes

This is not fast fashion. This is real-time fashion.

Conclusion

The episode underscores how technological acceleration has commodified style, leaving consumers

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:01) Support for Explain It To Me comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Are you a pet owner? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Always an unwelcome surprise. That's according to a study from a pet insurance company. That's where Fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats, according to ConsumerAdvocate.org. You get paid back up to 90 % of vet bills at any vet in the U.S. and Canada with claims paid back in as little as two days. Go to FetchPet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's FetchPet.com slash save. Speaker 1 (0:47) As a Gen Z person, I think that we grew up pretty concerned about the amount of Speaker 2 (0:52) waste that Speaker 1 (0:53) fast fashion produces. Wholeheartedly reject fast fashion as Speaker 7 (0:57) much as humanly possible and try to shop in person. I Speaker 1 (1:00) had to ask myself, do I actually want these or did Instagram just tell me I do? Speaker 5 (1:07) You've probably heard of Melrose Avenue. It's an iconic place to go shopping in L.A. And the other day, producer Denise Guerra was there to check out a store called Detour. And let's go. The store's whole deal is that they sell secondhand clothes from influencers. Speaker 7 (1:24) Here is a viral trend right now. Butter yellow, as we know. That's founder Megan Speaker 5 (1:30) Russell. She's filled the place with racks and racks of trendy Instagram-ready clothes. She loves a good throwback, too. Speaker 7 (1:39) Hannah Montana wrap. Isn't that kind of crazy? Yeah. Did anyone else wear these in middle school? Because they're back. Speaker 1 (1:47) Looks like a disco ball on pants. Oh, they're rhinestones. Wow. How much Speaker 7 (1:54) would this retail? Let me check. We probably wrote it. Retail, $630. For sale here, $315. This is one of our more expensive items from all ranges, from Princess Polly all the way up to luxury. So these are more expensive, but you will definitely find $10 jeans in this rack. Speaker 5 (2:18) The store is brick and mortar, but like a lot of fashion right now, it's Speaker 7 (2:22) shaped by the internet. Speaker 7 (2:25) consumers follow influencers to dress like them, right? So it's like, why not be able to thrift their closet directly, being able to keep up with trends and also be sustainable and create a solution for influencers to just process through the sheer amount of clothing that they have? Because when your job is to post a new outfit every single day, you just acquire so much clothing. Some of these girls are dropping off around 10 bags every single month full of clothes. I'm not an influencer. But even I Speaker 5 (2:54) had a couple bags to purge the last time I cleaned out my closet. And Speaker 7 (2:58) I think that's something that, you know, we kind of need to grapple with as the fashion industry in general. Like, how quickly are these trends changing? And, you know, how does that affect the environment? And yeah, also, how does that affect the consumer? You know, they're trying to keep up with these trends, but things are just changing so rapidly. I'm Jonquan Hill. And this week on Speaker 5 (3:22) Explain It To Me from Vox, how algorithms transformed fashion and how we can be the tastemakers again. Speaker 2 (3:32) I'm Amy O'Dell. I'm a fashion journalist. I write the Back Row newsletter and I host the Back Row podcast. Speaker 5 (3:37) Okay. I want to go back in time a little bit. Let's say it's 2007. Speaker 5 (3:45) I'm walking around the mall. I'm looking at the store windows for the latest fashion trend. You know, I'm seeing what's at Forever 21. I'm seeing what's at Charlotte Roos. How did these stores decide what they were going to sell? Speaker 2 (3:57) I think at that time, fashion really trickled down more from the runways and tastemakers who were appointed, you know, the Anna Winters of Vogue. You are leading. You are not following. Or... John Galliano at Dior. I just make dresses. Speaker 1 (4:15) What's the big deal? Or Speaker 2 (4:16) Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel. Speaker 1 (4:19) Evolution cannot be stopped and will not be stopped tomorrow morning. Speaker 2 (4:22) These styles from these cult of personality designers would end up in the pages of Vogue and they would trickle down to the mall brands or the fashion brands. So taste was really coming from on high, let's say. Speaker 5 (4:39) I think we all know that scene from The Devil Wears Prada. It's seared into, like, everyone's brain now. It's Miranda Priestly. What you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue. It's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. Explaining how high fashion finds its way into the mainstream. Speaker 1 (5:00) And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. I'm going to filter down through the department stores and then trickle down into Speaker 5 (5:09) some tragic casual corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance Speaker 2 (5:15) bin. Speaker 5 (5:15) Is that still the case today? Speaker 2 (5:17) I think you could argue that it's not the case at all anymore. When that movie was made, we didn't have the internet the way we know it today. We didn't have social media. We didn't have Instagram, which is crazy to think about. Social media has changed everything. And now what we're seeing is that mall brands, fast fashion brands, maybe there's higher end brands out there doing this too. They're looking for algorithmic inputs from the internet to figure out what people like and what will sell. And then they're making products that way. Speaker 1 (5:53) Retailers take fewer risks. Designers are asked to make what the data Speaker 6 (5:57) says people already want. Speaker 1 (5:59) As a supply chain expert, I see a terrifying industrial evolution. This is not fast fashion. This is real-time fashion. Speaker 6 (6:06) All the brands that you can think of, the nice brands, Zara, the Forever 21, the Opali. Listen, Shein has them. Speaker 2 (6:14) Shein has been a juggernaut in the fast fashion space. And in fact, people call it ultra fast fashion, or I've also heard it called instant fashion. Why is it called instant fashion? Well, the way it works is they use algorithms to track trends and what people are interested in. And then they make a few hundred of a very large number of different items and they test demand. And this model allowed them, this is according to the New York Times, to introduce around 4,700 new apparel styles per day. Zara, by comparison, was producing around 20,000 a year. Oh my gosh, that's huge. Yeah, Xi'an was revolutionary in pairing technology with the ability to produce things cheaply, quickly in China. Speaker 5 (7:10) Can you talk a little bit about that algorithmic input a little bit? How do these companies decide what they're going to make and sell to people? That's Speaker 2 (7:20) probably... like top secret information Speaker 5 (7:22) that Speaker 2 (7:23) they have or a top secret formula. But what we do know, and the Wall Street Journal had a really interesting story about this brand Addicted, which is sort of like a tween or teen women's clothing brand. And they're looking at, according to the Wall Street Journal, what their customers are searching on the internet, what they're engaging with on social media, and what celebrities like Hailey