Is Glassons Fast Fashion? An Expert Breakdown!
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Fast fashion has definitely made life easier just as much as it has had a negative impact on the environment and lowered the quality of clothing. Fast fashion has offered manufacturers and retailers the opportunity of producing garments using low quality materials and sell them in bulk amounts that are only usable a few times. This has lowered the general quality of clothing found at brands and given rise to unethical means of manufacturing.
Glassons is a New Zealand based brand founded in 1918 by JH Glasson who began the company just to supply items to malls. It received a good response and the owner found good connections which led him to transform the company into a brand that mostly sold women’s wear and also started manufacturing clothing. It started off small, selling garments at low prices before it began to expand and started to sell to a wider audience.
It was almost the 1960s when Glassons was expanded to include many stores and was branched out. With every new owner, a unique touch was added to the brand and expansion was constant. Today, it is one of the leading fast fashion retailers in New Zealand that has already spread its roots in Australia.
Glassons does not try to sugar-coat anything on its website and proudly embraces the fact that it is a fast fashion brand. It claims to sell whatever is new and trending, from casual clothing and party wear to formal clothing. It is there to offer you a complete wardrobe from start to finish. It boasts about its quality clothing and quick production of the newest trends. While its stores are smaller than most of its other fast fashion competitors, Glassons generates more than 60% revenue for its parent company.
Even though it does produce women’s clothing for all ages, it especially caters to teens and young adults, displaying beautiful dresses and skirts and even swimwear.
Sustainability Rating: 4/10
Category: Clothing, Shoes, Accessories
For: Women
Products: Skirts, Dresses, Swimwear, Sandals
Style: Trendy, Casual, Formal
Quality: Low
Prices: -
Size: 34 – 44 (European Size)
Fabrics: Polyester, Cotton, Spandex, Viscose, Elastane, Linen, Leather, Nylon
100% Organic: No
100% Vegan: No
Ethical and Fair: No
Recycling: No
Manufacturing Countries: Not transparent enough
Certifications: Not transparent enough
Glassons has a significant online presence with over 300k followers and multiple partnerships with famous influencers. That is why Glassons is well known among young girls who are avid users of Instagram and TikTok where they come across Glassons haul videos and other promotional content. It also has many videos on YouTube where content creators order a huge number of garments from the brand and try them on for the viewers.
As compared to its online presence, we were not very impressed with our first look at its website. Its quite plain and simple with nothing that really stands out and captures your attention. These days, brands are working really hard to make their websites more attractive because people tend to have shorter attention spans and need something to constantly stimulate their senses. We found Glassons lacking in this regard.
However, the most important thing to discuss here is Glassons’ attempts towards sustainability. Looking at the brand’s introduction, one imagines the brand to be attentive about its impact on the environment. It claims that “it is our responsibility to minimize our environmental impact and support people and planet…” It believes that it can provide people with affordable and sustainable clothing.
It has been on the journey to a sustainable future for some years now and it has undeniably made progress on the way. In 2022, the brand managed to reach 48% sustainability in all of its products which is a huge achievement. The brand believes in 3 pillars that drives its ideology for an eco-friendly future and that includes People, Planet, and Product. Without compromise, the brand wants to focus on these 3 components as the first priority.
It wants to bring sustainability in its entire supply chain while also making it ethical. It has proper regulations in place that are necessary for factories to comply with to maintain a partnership with the company like agreeing to Glassons’ Restricted Substance List and having an Environmental Action Plan.
It does carry out audits regularly in some factories but provides no further information about this. It has also come under fire in the past for using sweatshops and violating labor rules. But it does not have any worker empowerment initiatives and there are rumors about labor abuse being carried out in its factories. It proudly mentions that it pays minimum wage to all its workers but it is nothing to brag about because minimum wage does not equate to living wage. Most people can barely afford their basic necessities on the wage paid in factories.
The GoodOnYou directory has given it a rating of “Not Good Enough” on all fronts for its ethicality, sustainability, and animal treatment. It claims not to experiment on animals and use cruelty-free methods to obtain materials from animals. It also uses wool, leather, and exotic animal hair in its products.
It also has most of its factories in India, China, and Bangladesh which raises suspicion about child labor and unfit working conditions. In fact, the brand was accused of child labor in Bangladesh which saddened many fans who flooded its social media pages to demand better conditions. Glassons did not take any apparent action, instead just promising to be better.
It received a rating of C+ by Global Baptist Aid for its lack of transparency and efforts towards ethical working conditions. The reviews on Trustpilot also consist of many people complaining about the low quality of the clothes which is obvious for a fast fashion brand.
Glassons has been accused of greenwashing because most of its clothing do not reflect the quality that the brand claims to use for its items. Sustainable clothes are made of good quality material yet the brand’s clothing seems very cheap. Greenwashing is becoming a weapon used by many brands lately because they know that people demand more sustainability and transparency in the supply chain now so companies have begun using tactics to appear more sustainable. We cannot say for sure that Glassons is greenwashing or not but it is a fast fashion brand that has a long way to go on the path of sustainability.
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