Fast fashion is cheap and accessible. It’s not only cheap to buy, but also to produce. Because clothing is produced and sold so quickly, companies can keep making garments continuously.

People buy cheap clothes, wear them briefly, then donate or throw them away in which an abundance of clothing ends up in landfills or in developing countries where the garments cannot be sold due to poor quality, leading to environmental harms. 

Barbara Willard, an associate professor at DePaul who focuses on environmental communication, said the fashion industry uses cheap labor to reduce costs and does so by creating more trends and cheap products to sell more. 

“It used to be four seasons a year,” Willard said. “Now it seems that there’s 40 seasons a year.”

The fast production and ever-changing trends allow overconsumption to be mindless. However, there is a concept that counters the overconsumption habits: a capsule wardrobe.

The concept of a capsule wardrobe, while not necessarily new, is gaining popularity on social media. People show their followers how they curated a limited amount of clothing items that all can be mixed and matched together.

Mel Bandas, a DePaul senior studying communication, wonders if capsule wardrobes are just another fleeting trend. 

“There are going to be people that pick it up, and it’s ‘whatever’ the next week,” Bandas said. But she thinks others might make the capsule wardrobe “a part of their aesthetic and lifestyle.”

Willard likes the idea of a capsule wardrobe, but she worries that some people may treat it as a trend, buying clothes to create a capsule wardrobe and then discarding them when a new trend takes priority.

She said pulling items that are already in your closet and investing in quality clothes is the best way to create a capsule wardrobe.

Melissa Gamble, an assistant professor in Columbia College Chicago’s fashion studies department, added that the idea of a minimalist wardrobe requires a lifestyle change, not a trend approach.

“Be OK with showing up in an outfit that somebody has seen you in before,” Gamble said. “That’s really the key.”

Evelyn Ashburner, a DePaul senior who’s majoring in public relations and advertising, said she loves a capsule wardrobe. She said there is nothing wrong with having a lot of clothes — she admits to having a ton — but it matters how long they last, she added.

“I wear everything I own, and I wear it until it’s no longer wearable,” Ashburner said. “I think that’s the biggest difference is that I’m not cycling through clothes.”

She thinks waste from discarded clothing and overconsumption has become an out of sight, out of mind problem.

“Once you throw it out or you don’t wear it anymore, or you’re giving it away, you think that its life cycle is done,” Ashburner said. “But it’s not biodegradable. It’s not breaking down.”

There are a number of environmental effects from the production and disposal of clothing. Willard mentioned a few, such as toxic dyes ending up in waterways and clothing ending up in landfills. When clothes decay, they can even release methane gas into the atmosphere, she said.

A 2026 World Metrics Report found that the fashion industry uses 79 billion cubic meters of water annually and accounts for 10% of microplastic pollution globally. 

Willard said programs such as H&M’s garment collecting and recycling are laughable. “You cannot recycle mixed fabric clothing,” she said. “It just can’t be done.”

The EPA estimates that in 2018, the most recent data available, more than 11 million tons of textile waste ended up in landfills. 

She continued, when cheap clothing is put into recycling bins the majority is not recyclable. The discount given for dropping off your clothes at these bins leads to the purchase of more cheap nonrecyclable clothing “and the cycle goes on.”

Many people need affordable clothing options. Gamble says this is a very real reality.

“There’s (no) shame in how we talk about this or how we think about it,” Gamble said. “It is … developing a much more intentional and mindful approach to fashion and thinking about it and understanding it in a different way.”

A capsule wardrobe, while it may be another trend for some people that will be tossed aside, has the qualities of sustainable change if adopted the right way.

“It’s about making small incremental changes as you can, where you can,” Gamble said.

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