Are Homewares the New Fast Fashion?

Supermarkets and high street stores are full of cheap cups, cushions and ceramics. How can it ever be a good deal for designers, factory workers – or the planet?

4–5 minutes

Walk into any big supermarket and you’ll find an aisle stacked with seductively stylish yet affordable homeware. From tableware to throws, cushions to coasters, objets d’art to duvet covers, the shelves will be teeming with everything you could possibly need to furnish your home – all in the latest shades and styles, and most costing less than the price of a takeaway.

In recent years, fast fashion has faced a reckoning – in part due to the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, in which 1,134 people were killed and at least another 2,000 injured when a factory collapsed in Bangladesh. The garment workers inside – who operated in sweatshop conditions, earning less than $2 a day – made clothes for big name high street retailers. Since then, a slew of initiatives – from sustainable fashion week to Second Hand September – have changed how many of us buy and think about clothes.

Yet, at the same time, the ever-growing fast homeware industry has slipped under the radar.

“We need to slow down and start thinking about how we value things – why we’re buying something, where it has come from and who has made it”
– Interior designer Helen Gordon

The beginnings

The homeware market began to speed up in the years after the second world war, when brands began mass-producing modern, affordable furniture. By the 1970s, Ikea was expanding worldwide. Throughout the 1990s, production continued to grow. Zara Home was launched in 2003. It may have been the first fast fashion chain to add a dedicated homewares line, but it was far from the last. In 2009, H&M Home entered the market, and by the 2020s Primark and hyper-fast online brands such as Boohoo, Pretty Little Things and Shein had followed suit.

The similarities between the fashion and homewares industries is no coincidence. And it’s not just foreign workers who are being exploited. Pieces of independent makers are being copied from handcrafted designs to factory-made pieces. Unfortunately for independent makers, high-end looks for low prices is exactly the appeal for many shoppers.

While historically Christmas was the only season in which people redecorated their homes, in recent years homewares retailers have created entire ranges to mark everything from Valentine’s Day to Halloween. Unsurprisingly, this trend owes much to social media, with 39% of respondents saying their purchases were inspired by influencers, and 37% by social posts from retailers.

Environmental Impact

As with fast fashion, the environmental impact of our lust for the latest, on-trend homeware is catastrophic. Research commissioned by British pottery brand Denby as part of its Reloved campaign found that the British throw away about 70m homeware items each year, with 35% of people admitting to binning things simply because their tastes have changed.

But the amount of waste is not the only problem. Due to the diversity of materials and toxic compounds used, fast homeware is incredibly complex to dispose of – and much is not recyclable: for example phthalates (you can’t just take them to the dump) and chipboard (that’s already rubbish that can’t be recycled).

It’s a problem the industry is aware of, and many big-name brands are actively taking steps to be more transparent with consumers and lessen their impact. As one of the leading names in the industry, Ikea is at the forefront of this with a multi-pronged strategy to transition to a fully sustainable, yet still profitable, business model by 2030. H&M has included detailed information about its supply chain for each item on its website since 2019, and has a line of products under its Meet the Maker banner, which are made in collaboration with small-scale artisans around the world.

What We can do

As to how we move forward, some believe we can’t rely on governments or industry alone to drive the change because of greenwashing. There’s a whole world of hidden lobbying going on by people who are trying to keep this industry going.

Hopefully raising awareness of the problem will help shift our collective mindset.

“You can go from being somebody like me who has seasonal boxes full of tat, to someone who now actively discourages it. Months go by where I don’t buy anything.”
– former cheap homeware addict Carol Murdoch

Murdoch is not alone in embracing a “less is more” philosophy. Search the term “underconsumption” on social media, and you’ll find thousands of posts celebrating this anti-consumerist ideology, with users sharing tips on upcycling and visible mending, or simply celebrating well-worn pieces they’ve had for years.

Conscious consumption can lead to a sense of satisfaction that more than makes up for the loss of quick-fix dopamine hits. Most things we buy don’t have an emotional connection. Yet if you buy something from a local producer that’s properly handmade, you know it’s making a difference to somebody’s life. It’s something that will last a lifetime, that you’ll be able to pass on. It’s something that will bring you joy for years to come.

Source:
‘You go to buy a loaf of bread and come home with a candle’: how fast homewares became the new fast fashion by Siam Goorwich | The Guardian (Feb. 2025)