Unique Characteristics of the Fashion Industry

'Fast Fashion' is the main characteristic of the fashion industry throughout the world. With fashion trends on the high street always changing from season to season, and with huge time pressures that designers face, clothing needs to be produced with speed in order to meet the demands from consumers.

The fashion industry is divided into two areas: the design/production side and the sales/distribution side. As consumer demand for high street fashion is so high, clothes need to be produced quickly and with as little cost to the designer as possible to make sure that profit is gained and sales are made before the trends change once again. For designers, the cheapest option in terms of production is to get their garments constructed in factories in another country. For example countries such as China and India can produce garments at low prices because of their low labour costs.

Technology has played a huge part in making current trends more accessible as fashion events can now be streamed live on the internet and fashion retail houses can display their merchandise on websites for customers to browse and purchase directly from a computer. Because of this, it has made it easier for low-end stores to imitated and reproduce currents trends faster, instead of having to wait until photo shoots and runway pictures are released to magazines for the public, which means that 'fast fashion' on the high street continues to take charge in the fashion industry.