The Best Books About Fast Fashion & How To Stop Buying It

by Carley Lake | Last Updated:   May 26, 2020

These are my go-to books about fast fashion, sustainable fashion, and to learn about the fashion industry—environmental issues, human issues, and overall waste problems. There is hope. The authors and experts provide recommendations on how governments, corporations, and how we as citizens and conscious consumers can create change.

I also share a list of my favorite reads on how to create a conscious, curated wardrobe. You’ll learn that you can buy and consume less while more easily discovering your true style. The planet and your wallet will thank you.

Now read on. 🙂

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1. Overdressed

By Elizabeth L. Cline

Year: 2013

Cline shows how the way Americans dress has fundamentally changed (hello Forever 21, bye well-tailored, investment pieces). She also writes how it’s driving up our pace of consumption and turning fashion into one of the most environmentally destructive industries. She sets out to uncover the true nature of the cheap fashion juggernaut in one of my favorite books about fast fashion. What are we doing with all these clothes? And more importantly, what are they doing to us, our society, our environment, even our souls?

2. Fashionopolis

By Dana Thomas

Year: 2019

Journalist Dana Thomas traveled the globe to discover the designers and companies who are propelling the industry toward that more positive future by reclaiming traditional craft and launching cutting-edge sustainable technologies to produce better fashion.

In one of my favorite books about fast fashion Thomas sees renewal in a host of developments, including printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling—even lab-grown materials. From small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to such household names as Stella McCartney, Levi’s, and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading the change.

3. Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale

By Adam Minter

Year: 2019

Donation may not always be the answer and this book dives deep into this world. Journalist and author of Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter, answers the question I always had, when we drop our old clothes and other items off at a local donation center, where do they go?

He takes us on an unexpected adventure into the often-hidden, multibillion-dollar industry of reuse: thrift stores in the American Southwest to vintage shops in Tokyo, flea markets in Southeast Asia to used-goods enterprises in Ghana, and more. He also reveals the marketing practices, design failures, and racial prejudices that push used items into landfills instead of new homes and how we can change to build a sustainable future free of excess stuff in one of my top books about fast fashion.

4. Wardrobe Crisis: How We Went from Sunday Best to Fast Fashion

By Clare Press

Year: 2018

In Wardrobe Crisis, fashion journalist (and Vogue Australia’s first Sustainability Editor!) Clare Press explores the history and ethics behind what we wear in one of my favorite books about fast fashion and sustainable fashion. Putting her insider status to good use, Press examines the entire fashion ecosystem, from sweatshops to haute couture, unearthing the roots of today’s buy-and-discard culture. She traces the origins of icons like Chanel, Dior, and Hermès; charts the rise and fall of the department store; and follows the thread that led us from Marie Antoinette to Carrie Bradshaw.

5. To Die for: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World?

By Lucy Siegle

Year: 2011

This is an in-depth expose and one of the most well-researched books about fast fashion written by the journalist, Chair of the Real Circularity Coalition, and host of the new Fashion Critical podcast, Lucy Siegel, examining the inhumane and environmentally devastating story behind the clothes we so casually buy. She wrote it almost 10 years ago, at a time when the global financial crisis and contracting of consumer spending ushered in a new epoch for the fashion industry.

The global banking crisis put the consumer at a crossroads: when money is tight should we embrace cheap fast fashion to prop up an already engorged wardrobe, or should we reject this as the ultimate false economy and advocate a return to real fashion, bolstered by the principles of individualism and style pedigree? I’m excited to dive back into this writing as we go through an economic crisis once again. We as consumers hopefully now know what choices to make. We need to push our governments to do the same.

6. Slave to Fashion

By Safia Minney

Year: 2017

Fair trade and sustainable fashion expert and founder of the brand People Tree, Safia Minney, uses personal stories and easy-to-grasp infographics to call attention to the human hardship that goes hand-in-hand with producing our clothes, and highlights what governments, business leaders, and consumers can do to call time on this unnecessary suffering in one of the best books about fast fashion

The book celebrates those fighting for justice and the many initiatives that are taking place. It also contains a practical toolkit that all consumers can use to demand change from the companies that produce our clothes. Check out her book Slow Fashion too.

7. Inconspicuous Consumption

By Tatiana Schlossberg

Year: 2019

The former New York Times climate and science writer examines the unseen and unconscious environmental impacts in four areas—the web and technology, food, fashion, and fuel. She shows, in simple and sometimes funny writing, how our daily habits impact the environment—how streaming a movie on Netflix in New York burns coal in Virginia; how buying an inexpensive cashmere sweater in Chicago expands the Mongolian desert; how destroying forests from North Carolina is necessary to generate electricity in England, and more. The fashion chapters include information on denim and water usage, athleisure issues, fast fashion consumption, rayon fabric concerns, and cashmere production. Because of this, I consider it part of the books about fast fashion.

She doesn’t leave us hopeless though but with actions (like voting) we can take to create change.