Once the go-to site for £5 night-out clothes, disposable fashion trends and collaborations with influencers from reality TV like Love Island, Pretty Little Thing have done away with the bubblegum pink and unicorns, club couture and disposable fashion trends in place of muted neutrals and simplistic ‘investment pieces.’
PLT’s founder and returning CEO Umar Kamani states “We are leaving ‘fast fashion’ as we currently know it behind and discouraging wearing items just once.” With the fast fashion market being near-completely dominated by Shein, more and more fast fashion brands like PLT are reshaping their offerings like this to pose as antidotes to unsustainable fashion. However, with the brand itself and others under the Boohoo Group PLC having historic backdrops of slave labour, cheap low-quality fabrics and unethical supply lines, is the rebrand really a ‘Legacy in Progress’, or will it prove to be a continuation?
Have women really ‘outgrown’ club-style, eye-catching outfits and started favouring respectable and understated fashion, or is society shifting to greater encourage or enforce this preference?
So far, there are suggestions of the latter, with most of the new products being up to 100% polyester, not quite the ‘high quality’ consumers may have been expecting. Kamani also stated, “The rebrand is all about evolving with our customer who we feel has outgrown elements of what we had offered her.” The question is, have women really ‘outgrown’ club-style, eye-catching outfits and started favouring respectable and understated fashion, or is society shifting to greater encourage or enforce this preference?
Fashion does not exist in a vacuum. It has always intersected with politics, particularly when it comes to women’s clothing, a timeless example being the mini skirt of the sixties. It was not just a garment, but a statement of rebellion and solidarity for female sexual freedom and women’s rights. With many of the world’s powers taking a more right-wing turn, notably America in the wake of the November election, fashion arguably appears to be reflecting this, with aesthetics like the ‘tradwife’ gaining traction online, and brands turning to suit a so called ‘quiet luxury’ aesthetic, evocative of ‘high quality’, understated pieces which align with conservative worldviews, the rejection of excess, and high class. The rise of such fashion trends correlates with growing societal concerns about the future, linked to economic instability, recession, political polarisation and conflict.
In the turbulent global climate of 2025, the rebranding and superficial turn from fast fashion by brands like PLT is reflective of a developing cultural legacy, but whether this is a new legacy, or a revival of the old, remains to be seen.