Jan Fran: facing off against fast fashion and what we can do at home – 2024 Health & Environmental Sustainability Conference keynote

12 November 2024

Jan Fran speaking at the 2024 ANMF (Vic Branch) Health & Environmental Sustainability Conference. Photo: Christopher Hopkins

With a recent RMIT study finding that one in three Australians throw their unwanted clothes in the rubbish, it was timely to hear from TV presenter Jan Fran about the fast fashion industry – and what we as individuals can do about it – at the 2024 ANMF (Vic Branch) Health & Environmental Sustainability Conference.

The problem: the TV industry and sexist double standards

Fran currently cohosts the weekly ABC TV show Question Everything with Wil Anderson. In 2019, when she was hosting SBS’s nightly series The Feed, she began questioning the amount of new clothing she was required to wear as a TV presenter. ‘Every night I would be wearing something different,’ she told conference attendees.

This wasn’t by choice; it’s ‘just the standard’ for female TV presenters. A decade ago, Nine’s Today show host Karl Stefanovic made global headlines when he revealed he had worn the same blue suit on air every day to highlight the double standards male and female anchors face. The fact that he had to reveal this proved nobody had noticed, while his co-host Lisa Wilkinson and other female TV presenters received – and still receive – daily comments about their appearance.

After hosting The Feed for several years Fran had had enough. The clothes bought for her were piling up. Most were cheap, derivative and disposable, and not items she would wear outside the studio. So she decided to fight back: she told her stylists she no longer wanted to wear new clothes and asked them to source secondhand. They agreed, and Fran’s life changed for good.

She started the hashtag #nonewclothes and challenged herself to stick at it for a year. Six years later, she still hasn’t bought any new clothes (excluding underwear) professionally or personally.

The problem: the fast fashion industry

Fast fashion is cheap, disposable clothing produced rapidly by mass market retailers to keep up with the latest trends. Most members will be familiar with many fast fashion brands – H&M, Zara, ASOS and even Uniqlo, for example – and Fran was keen to point out that it’s okay if you have purchased from these brands; most of us have.

‘The problem with fast fashion, however, is that it runs all the way through the supply chain,’ she explained, ‘from the resources used to grow material such as cotton right through to the production and the distribution in terms of emissions and worker exploitation. Then there’s the interplay with rampant capitalism right up until the end cycle of life for a garment where the quality and disposability mean that it ends up in landfill. All of these things work together to produce an ecosystem of bad waste.’

Some of the environmental impacts of this ecosystem:

It takes 2700 litres of water to make one cotton t-shirt. ‘We drink that much in four years.’
An estimated 500 billion extra t-shirts will be in circulation by 2030.
The fashion industry is the world’s third largest polluter, producing more carbon emissions than shipping and aviation combined.
Australians, per capita, purchase more items of clothing than anyone else: ‘56 new clothing items per year, ahead of the Americans on 53 and the UK on 33.’
200,000 tonnes of clothing end up in Australian landfill every year. ‘And if they don’t end up in Australian landfill, they end up in places like Ghana.’

This ragged cliff, some 20 metres high, is formed not of earth or stone but of landfill. Most of it – an estimated 60% – is unwanted clothing.

The problem: ultra-fast fashion

The problem is only getting worse, Fran said, with ultra-fast fashion brands such as Shein (and Temu). Companies like Zara and H&M introduce new clothes roughly every two weeks but ‘Shein just doesn’t stop. It keeps churning them out, every day. Even more.’

Company	New items listed per year
Gap	12,000
H&M	25,000
Zara	35,000
Shein	1.3 million

The solution: what you can do

‘It starts with a fundamental shift in values,’ Fran said. ‘Valuing slow rather than speed. Valuing quality over quantity. Valuing conscious style and creativity; rejecting consumerism and trend culture.’

For members who want to follow in Fran’s footsteps, she offered some advice. It will be challenging. It can be limited and difficult, especially for certain sizes or when you’re post-partum. It may not be particularly cheap. You’ll have to compromise. And there is a loss of a certain feel-good feeling.

But it can also offer opportunities. It is creative. It forces you to think individually. There is a sense of community around shared values. It offers a different kind of feel-good feeling. You can apply it to other aspects of your life – all Fran’s furniture and crockery is now secondhand. And it’s joyful and fun.

‘This was something I was not expecting,’ Fran said, ‘but it has made me feel really great.’

The best part? It works. Consumer behaviour has an impact. Burberry, she explained, like many luxury brands used to burn perfectly good unsold stock to prevent it being on-sold for a discount. When consumers found out, they were rightly outraged and boycotted the company. In 2018, Burberry announced they were ending the practice, and would instead re-use, repair or recycle unsold stock.

‘Secondhand clothing is on track to take 10 per cent of global fashion sales,’ Fran added. ‘And France now makes fast fashion companies pay a $16 tax for every item they sell.’

Fran suggested trying no new clothes for a month. ‘See how that feels, and then ask yourself: what would it look like if I cranked these values to 10? And you can start today. Have fun, and hopefully you’ll experience a degree of joy.’