Annotations: From Empire to Runway: The Colonial Logic of Fast Fashion

Image by Fran Zaina on Pexels

When we think of colonialism, we picture ships crossing oceans, empires extracting resources, and foreign powers profiting from distant lands. Fashion appears far removed from that history. It sells creativity, self-expression, and individuality. Yet behind a £5 t-shirt lies a global system that bears uncomfortable similarities to colonial economic structures. Cotton is grown in one country, manufactured in another, branded in a Western capital, and sold worldwide at a price that bears little resemblance to what producers were paid or the true cost of materials. The flags and warships of imperialism may be long gone, but the flow of wealth remains strikingly familiar.

Modern fashion has recreated many of the economic structures of colonialism: resources and labour are extracted from poorer countries, value is added and captured in wealthier countries, and the communities that produce the goods remain trapped at the bottom of the system.

A modern garment begins its journey in a cotton field in West Africa, is spun and woven in one country, assembled in a factory in Bangladesh or Vietnam, designed in Europe, marketed from New York or London, and sold globally under the label of a Western brand. Each step creates value, yet the rewards are distributed unevenly. Those who grow the raw materials and manufacture the clothing often receive the smallest share of the profits, while companies responsible for branding, marketing, and retail capture the greatest returns.

The issue is not simply low wages. It is the structure itself. Countries in the Global South frequently provide infrastructure that sustains the industry. They absorb many of its environmental consequences, from water pollution and textile waste to unsafe working conditions and industrial emissions. A perfect example of this is how Bangladesh's fashion industry places significant pressure on the environment, generating 500,000 metric tonnes of textile waste each year while depleting groundwater and polluting rivers with hazardous dyes and PFAS (“forever chemicals"), despite recent advances in sustainable manufacturing.

Bangladesh is the world's second-largest exporter of garments after China, with clothing accounting for approximately 84% of its exports in 2022–23. The industry has been celebrated as a development success story, generating billions of dollars in revenue and employing millions of workers, the majority of whom are women. Yet beneath this narrative of economic progress lies a model built on maintaining some of the lowest labour costs in the global fashion industry. Bangladesh's primary competitive advantage is not technological innovation or ownership of major fashion brands, but its ability to provide labour at a lower cost than its competitors. As political economist Rehman Sobhan argues, the country has effectively shifted from dependence on foreign aid to dependence on global trade, remaining deeply vulnerable to decisions made by international markets and multinational corporations.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, major American and European retailers cancelled or suspended approximately $3.8 billion worth of orders, affecting more than 2.2 million Bangladeshi workers. Factories were forced to close, wages went unpaid, and workers absorbed the economic shock of decisions made thousands of miles away. The asymmetry was clear: brands retained the power to withdraw, while workers and suppliers were left to bear the consequences to their livelihoods. Just as colonial economies were structured around extracting resources while externalising costs onto colonised populations, modern fast fashion often allows global brands to capture profits while transferring economic vulnerability, environmental damage, and labour precarity to producing countries.

International fashion brands often drive down purchasing prices, pressuring suppliers to cut labour costs, speed up production, and tolerate poor working conditions. As a result, profits are concentrated among global brands, while economic risks remain with workers in producing countries. This imbalance was starkly exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when retailers cancelled billions of dollars in orders, leaving millions of Bangladeshi garment workers without wages while brands largely protected their own finances. Much like colonial economic systems, value is extracted from poorer countries while branding, decision-making, and profits remain concentrated in wealthier nations.

This is where the comparison to colonialism becomes difficult to ignore. Colonial economies were built on extraction: resources were removed from one region, transformed into profit in another, and sold back at a significantly higher value. Fast fashion operates through a different political framework, but often produces a similar economic outcome. The workers who make the clothes don’t share in the wealth they create, while consumers are encouraged to view garments as affordable expressions of individuality rather than products of a deeply unequal global system. While Bangladesh's garment industry generated approximately $47 billion in exports in 2023, garment workers themselves continue to earn some of the lowest wages in the world, with a minimum monthly wage of around $113 - far below the estimated living wage of $460 per month.

Yet the colonial dynamics of fast fashion begin long before a garment reaches a factory floor. Countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Benin are among the world's leading cotton producers, supplying a raw material that underpins much of the global textile industry. Yet despite producing the foundation of countless garments, cotton farmers often receive only a tiny fraction of the final value generated from their labour. This mirrors the structure of colonial commodity systems, where colonies exported raw materials while metropolitan centres captured the value-added stages of production. A cotton farmer may earn only cents from the cotton used in a garment that eventually sells for €40, €60, or even €100 under a Western brand. In many ways, the continent remains locked into a system of "extraction without transformation," supplying the raw materials that fuel global fashion while the most profitable stages of manufacturing, branding, and retail remain concentrated elsewhere. As one recent fDi (2025) analysis notes, Africa continues to "export potential and import value," with the overwhelming majority of its cotton exported in raw form before returning as finished garments sold at a significant markup. The real profits emerge later through textile manufacturing, branding, marketing, and retail, stages of production that are largely controlled elsewhere.

However, the colonial logic of fast fashion does not end with production - it extends to disposal. Every week, Ghana imports an estimated 15 million items of second-hand clothing, much of it originating in Europe, North America, and China. Much of this clothing arrives at Kantamanto Market in Accra, one of the world's largest second-hand clothing hubs. However, as the volume of fast fashion has increased, the quality of these garments has declined dramatically. Traders report opening expensive bales only to find stained, damaged, or unsellable clothing, while an estimated 40% of the garments arriving at Kantamanto ultimately become waste rather than reusable goods.

As a result, countries that already provide labour and raw materials for the global fashion industry are increasingly forced to absorb its environmental consequences. Unsold clothing is burned, dumped in informal landfills, or washes into waterways and beaches, contributing to severe pollution across parts of Accra. In communities surrounding the Korle Lagoon, residents describe landscapes buried beneath layers of discarded garments, while local fishers report catching more clothing in their nets than fish. Colonial systems historically extracted resources while exporting costs and environmental impact elsewhere; today, fast fashion follows a similar pattern. The industry not only outsources production to the Global South but also increasingly exports the environmental burden of its overconsumption to many of the same regions that supply its labour and materials.

According to Amnesty International's 2024 investigation, the business models of major global fashion brands, including Adidas, ASOS, Fast Retailing (Uniqlo), Inditex (Zara, Pull & Bear, H&M, Stradivarius), Primark, Gap, Next, Boohoo, Walmart, M&S, and Desigual, depend on sourcing from countries where garment workers' rights to unionise are frequently repressed. Amnesty International argues that, by maintaining purchasing practices that prioritise low costs while failing to adequately protect freedom of association and collective bargaining, these companies benefit from a system that keeps wages low and weakens workers' bargaining power in countries such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The inequalities embedded within fashion do not stop at the factory floor. Even within the industry's most visible spaces, labour protections remain weak. Models are frequently classified as freelancers, which limits their access to sick pay, job security, and formal complaint mechanisms. Diversity has improved visually, yet many models of colour continue to report unequal treatment and fewer opportunities. While distinct from the conditions faced by garment workers, these dynamics reveal an industry that often normalises asymmetrical power relationships at every level. Freelance models, the majority of whom are women, face structural disadvantages that make them particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Across freelance work, women earn 28% less than men globally and are significantly more likely to feel pressured to underprice their services (72% compared with 41% of men), while platform commission fees further reduce already lower earnings. The lack of transparent pricing and standardised pay leaves many female freelancers in precarious financial positions, with women-led freelance households more than twice as likely to experience financial insecurity (2025 Global Freelance Gender Equity Study).

We are increasingly willing to critique the parts of fashion we cannot see: the factories, supply chains, and distant production sites. Yet we often ignore the inequalities that exist in plain sight on runways, in campaigns, and behind the scenes of the industry's glamorous facade.

Fast fashion is not colonialism in the literal sense. No empire governs Bangladesh, and no foreign power formally controls cotton farmers in West Africa. Yet the economic logic remains familiar. Resources flow outward, labour is undervalued, profits accumulate in the West, and environmental costs are displaced onto vulnerable communities. Fashion sells aspiration, beauty, and self-expression. But beneath the glamour lies a system that continues to rely on extraction, imbalance, and unequal power. The uncomfortable question is not whether colonialism ended, but how much of it simply changed its appearance.

Beneath fashion's image of creativity, aspiration, and self-expression lies a global industry in which enduring power imbalances ensure that, although colonial rule has ended, the extraction and concentration of wealth continue to follow strikingly similar patterns.

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Edited by Arielle Sam-Alao, Co-Fashion Editor