H & M's 'Close The Loop'

H&M’s “Close the Loop” commercial starts out by describing many different fashion taboos in our society involving a variety of different people. H&M tries to promote a more sustainable lifestyle to their consumers, which from the advertisement is just about everyone, by telling their customers that if there is one fashion “do”, it is to recycle their clothing. This is an ad for their clothing and promoting their brand, but it is also trying to appeal to their consumers who are environmentalist at heart.

The article “Patagonia’s Anti-growth Strategy” details many of the goals and motives of the company through their campaign in which they drove a camper across the nation repairing products and selling used clothing. A major piece of Patagonia’s

values are based on what is considered good growth and what is considered bad growth. Good growth is people buying fewer, higher quality items at higher prices that will last longer and will eventually be recycled. H&M doesn’t really follow Patagonia’s standards for “good growth”. They stress the effort to recycle old clothes, but as far as production? H&M mass produces most of their clothes in what many people would consider sweat shops. According to an article by the New York Times, they are the largest buyer of apparel in Bangladesh. And while they have appeared to make improvements for their workers, their business is a far cry from the wholesome, long lasting products that Patagonia claims.
H&M somewhat contradicts themselves by promoting this lifestyle of sustainability through recycling, because they ignore the huge red flag of where all these clothes are coming from. H&M produces fast fashion to make money. Like most fast fashion stores, they rely on producing trendy clothing that is outdated within a relatively short period of time in order to have items purchased from their shelves. While H&M’s campaign might have some positive environmental motives, it is more likely a marketing plot and certainly not what Patagonia would consider “good growth”.
However, as much as Patagonia would like to sit above other companies on their conscience consumer efforts, the author points out that their goals are fairly unrealistic. Patagonia tries to tell the consumer to buy less, but at the end of the day they are a business looking to make money as well. Another factors is that trying to get a collective movement of Americans to own fewer items at a higher price is pretty counter culture. H&M may not have true push for environmentalism, but they don’t ask a lot from their buyers, just to recycle their clothes. And the fact that they appeal to much more of a mass market than a small niche of people may mean they will see more change in the end.