Maeve Jordan

Intro to Rhetoric
Rhetorical Analysis
November 17, 2021

Rhetorical Analysis

Fashion. You cannot deny that fashion is one of the most adored, followed and passions

of people all over the world. For centuries, fashion has been how we illustrate our individuality

and manners of our behavior. I, for one, follow fashion and am very passionate about this topic.

However, the fashion industry has been declared as both a social and environmental emergency,

and this is because of one reason. Fast fashion. Fast fashion is defined as “inexpensive clothing

produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends.” April Perrin gives a

compelling and enlightening speech that depicts “The Value of Fast Fashion”. Perrin’s main

message is how fast fashion has become more popular than ever before, and at this rate it is not

sustainable socially or environmentally for not just the United States, but the world as a whole.

April Perrin is a sustainable fashion advocate who believes that the fashion industry can

do better. So she sought out to create a blog called “All Aware”. In her blog she claims how

society can make the right steps toward ending fast fashion. She claims that “consumers (us) play

the largest role in fast fashion, and if anyone wants it to end, it is us that will stop it” (Perrin).

She worked in public relations in the fashion industry and realized how much of a problem we

are creating, so she decided to provide her love of fashion with philanthropy. In her blog she

advocates shopping second hand or vintage, along with many companies that are ethical fashion

brands.
 Perrin starts her TED Talk with a sad event that portrays the real dangers of fast fashion.

She opens up with the collapse of Rana Plaza, a Bangladesh garment factory. She explains that a

woman by the name of Rosina Begum walked into work like any other day and within minutes

her life changed. It was the last time she would ever see her sister, it was the last time she would

ever have a right arm. She saw the walls crumbling right before her eyes. The worst part of this

story is that the workers had complained about their working environment to the manufacturer

managers but they told workers to report to work anyway. That day around 1,100 people died, all

mostly women. These kinds of factories are numerous around developing countries because most

fast fashion brands' clothing are made in these countries. Perrin states “these employees work

upwards of 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week and get an average of $197 US dollars per

month” (4:32). This is debilitating to hear and makes me question every purchase I have ever

made. In addition to Rana Plaza, I have heard dozens of stories about factories in developing

countries having terrible working conditions that lead to many losing their lives. When will we

reach our last straw? Do we value our trendy, cheap and of course vogue-is fashion more than the

lives of human beings?

In a world where we have a clock counting down the time of our demise, fast fashion is

not helping this cause. “The average family household throws away about 70 pounds of clothes

every single year” (5:27). It is known that around 80% of the clothing we buy ends up in landfills

which can take around 20 years to decompose. In my parents' generation, you would get lets say,

a coat and keep that coat for a few years or at least until you outgrew it. Nowadays, most people

I know have many coats, buying one each season. This is a part of the problem. This generation

needs the best of the best, and instead of appreciating everything you do have we are always on

to what is next. And with the prices of clothes depleting this is also a cause of the problem. With
these fast fashion companies, the quality of their products are not there, but they are cheap, so

who cares! The quality and cheapness of these fast fashion companies products allows them to

be disposable to us, which is why landfills are getting fuller by the day and the environment is

declining.

Perrin started with this argument because this statement immediately drew the audience

in. This was by a use of pathos. Pathos is what evokes our emotions and passions to persuade.

This talk definitely had an emotional appeal for me. Fashion has been something I have been

passionate about since I was a little girl, and obviously being interested in fashion I want to be up

to date on the latest trends, but this TED Talk changed my views. The value of a human life is

not even comparable to having the most up-to-date, trendy clothes to wear and show off.

The amount of facts she disgusted with her audience demonstrated what we know as

logos. Logos are defined as using persuasive appeal to the audience’s logic and rationality. She

illustrated her use of logos by sharing with us evidence, data and universal truths. She was

definitely the right person for this TED Talk because she was so passionate about this subject,

and you could tell she really knew what she was talking about and wants society as a whole to

understand the astronomical problems we are causing. She gave us many percentages, and used

the United Nations forum as a source calling fast fashion a “social and environmental

emergency” (3:54). This source is reliable because the role of the UN is to ensure and control

international peace and security. If they are addressing this issue then obviously it is something

that needs to change. This was smart of her to mention because it gets the point across that this is

a serious problem with consequences that could be astronomical if we do not change our ways as

a society.
 After watching this TED Talk and reviewing April Perrin's blog along with many articles

about her mission, I believe that she is a trustworthy source with real morals. This is everything

you want in someone trying to persuade you. Ethos is defined as the character or emotions of a

speaker or writer that are expressed in the attempt to persuade an audience. I believe that Perrin

did exactly this, and it helped because you could tell she was passionate about this subject and

wanted to make a change internationally. Her credibility was very strong and everything she said

was relevant, true and an important issue. I also enjoyed that during her TED Talk she made it

interactive. She had the audience look at what they were wearing and determine how long they

had owned their articles of clothing, and if it was from a usual brand known to be “fast fashion”.

This really made the audience stop and think about their actions and if they were contributing to

this issue. The tone of her speech was rather serious, but you could tell she did that on purpose

because she wanted to be taken professionally and really depict how urgent of a problem this is.

Overall, April Perrin presented this talk with nothing but intelligence about this topic and a

determination to make a difference even if it is just with one person at a time.

As a person who is so passionate and interested in the fashion world, and loves to wear

nothing short of the best, this was very eye opening for me, and I am so glad I decided to choose

this. I never realized how something like fashion could really be affecting the world in a larger

way. I now know to steer clear of your normal fast fashion brands like Zara, Shein, H&M,

Forever 21, etc. Because as April said “if you buy a $10 shirt, how is the manufacturer even

making money off of this product”(5:54). This really made me realize that if we are buying

something for this cheap, they must be doing something unethical to be able to still be making

money as a business. The popularity of fast fashion has put an environmental and social demise

on our planet. We must take what Perrin said into consideration and think about what we can do
to make a change. Think about this. If fast food is not considered healthy, why do people think

fast fashion is?

Works Cited

Perrin, April. “The Value of Fast Fashion.” TED,

https://www.ted.com/talks/april_perrin_the_value_of_fast_fashion.

Perrin, April. “All Awear.” All Awear, http://allawear.com/.