Elizabeth McLaughlin, Editor

Please don’t partner with Boohoo. On Tuesday, Oct. 19, Boohoo released their biggest ever celebrity collaboration to date. This time around, Megan Fox’s line aims to “celebrate female sensuality,” according to Boohoo’s website. If I were Megan Fox, I would’ve preferred to craft a celebration of womanhood with another brand — one whose garments don’t fall apart almost as soon as they’re purchased; one that seeks to fix rather than destroy the environment; and one that doesn’t have slavery allegations.

Megan Fox and Boohoo teamed up to create the brand’s largest celebrity collaboration to date.

Every now and then, I search for news related to Boohoo. I’m currently doing my capstone on fast fashion and Buddhism and I’m using Boohoo as a case study. Recently, I discovered this collaboration with Megan Fox and immediately wished I had gotten the chance to talk her out of this despicable deal. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t return my calls, so here we are.

I worked for fashion week this past summer and spent most of my week working directly with Boohoo for their big debut. The Boohoo team arrived in Miami from LA with suitcases of garments for fittings before the show. I remember one influencer, Cindy Prado, came in to try on her swimsuit. I handed her the suit, she put it on, they took some photos, and Prado handed it back to us for safekeeping. It sat in a bag for a couple of days, and when it came time to dress the influencer for the runway, the garment was somehow already broken. Literally all it did was sit in a plastic bag, untouched — yet it was somehow unwearable. That’s because Boohoo deals in fast fashion, which is mutually exclusive to quality fashion. After all, there was once a time when fashion designers were responsible for crafting collections four times a year, in line with the seasons: winter, spring, summer and fall.

Now? There are 52 seasons. That’s not an exaggeration. Companies like Boohoo churn out new collections, on average, every single week, all year round. No wonder that garment was broken before it even got to the runway — it was built to fall apart. Once again, that is not a euphemism or exaggeration; fast fashion garments are literally built to fall apart so that you are forced to shop again, sooner rather than later.

How do brands like Boohoo accomplish such efficient capitalist modes of production? By slave labor, of course. I say that not to make light of the situation, but rather to elucidate the almost unfathomable allegation that slavery still exists today. Unfortunately, it’s not unfathomable — it’s reality. According to Livia Firth, 1 in 6 people work in the global fashion industry, making it the most labor-dependent industry on earth. There have been multiple investigations into Jaswal Fashions, a factory in Leicester, United Kingdom, which supplies up to 80 percent of its production to Boohoo alone. Some sources say that workers are paid as little as £3.50 an hour, according to an investigation from the Sunday Times. Other sources say that workers were forced to come in during COVID-19 lockdowns to keep pace with the increased demand for clothing as people stayed home and shopped online. It is unclear whether all workers at this factory are paid at all for their labor, and Boohoo has done little to redress the situation since it came to light.

I remember reading somewhere that Fox sends her kids to a “vegan school” (whatever that means). Thank you for caring at least a little about the environment and the meat industry’s impact on it, Ms. Fox. But has she thought about how many of her garments, manufactured by Boohoo, will end up in landfills? According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the equivalent of one garbage truck of clothes are burned or landfilled every second. Our environment can’t sustain this rate of waste, so if we want to be able to celebrate female sensuality and send our kids to vegan schools, we should make sure that we have a planet where we can do those things first.

This article isn’t to shame anyone who shops fast fashion, especially because it is (unfortunately) all most of us can afford. It is, however, meant to raise eyebrows at celebrities like Fox who continue to validate and support such harmful business practices. Ms. Fox, if you’re reading this, it’s not too late — ditch Boohoo in favor of sustainability.