Modelling Interdependencies Between Fast and Luxury Fashion: Implications for Sustainability

Monday, July 20, 2026, 11:00 AM

Session: SOC Poster Session (In-person)

The fashion industry has been criticized for its substantial environmental pressure. Despite increasing regulations, consumer awareness, and industry initiatives, progress towards sustainability remains limited. Existing literature has generated important insights into sustainable fashion, but it often tends to examine either demand-side drivers or supply-side and operational responses in isolation. Moreover, even within the supply-side literature, fast fashion and luxury fashion are treated as separate isolated empirical contexts. This segmentation has led to limited theorisation of how these two segments interact and jointly shape consumer demand and operational choices. To address the need for systemic understanding of the dynamics within the industry, we develop a casual loop diagram of the operational decisions of fast and luxury fashion and their interdependencies. Preliminary findings reveal that competition between the segments has increased speed and waste across the fashion system. Fast fashion’s business model, built on speed, pressures luxury brands to shorten lead times and increase collection frequency, which further intensifies fast fashion responses. The resulting escalation raises forecasting error, excess inventory, material waste, and reinforces a disposability culture among consumers.