I'm not that well-versed in Weird Things Happening On The Internet. It's a strange world out there and I find it best not to look, if I'm being perfectly honest. In the grand scheme of things, the new YouTube obsession with 'Wish Wedding Dresses' is possibly not even that bizarre – but it does raise a whole lot of questions. The craze has spawned multiple videos from people with millions of subscribers, all of which follow the same format: a YouTube star has just got engaged (link to the proposal vid below, guys!) and has decided that this is the perfect time to order a wedding dress from Wish, which could be as 'affordable' as £11.
Wish appears to be an online marketplace on which one can buy anything. And I really do mean anything. But its selection of wedding dressesis truly staggering, with the majority of them under £100. There is, of course, lots of websites like this in existence – sites which advertise with images of more expensive, normally superior products and deliver very cheap, poor quality items that don't resemble the original in any way. Much has been written about this, with people expressing their disdain when an item arrives with a section missing, or when a dress is too small for a human head. But in the context of our current climate, when the world is burning and fast fashion's horrendous impact on the planet is overwhelming, it seems strange that not a single YouTuber seems to even refer to where these wedding dresses might come from, who makes them or what the environmental – or indeed human – cost of them may be.
Some of these videos have millions of views and a quick Google search for 'Wish wedding dress' unearths a staggering 112,000,000 results. Some of the most highly-viewed videos are from Safia Nygaard(who has 8.2 million subscribers), Roxxsaurus (3.7 million subscribers) and Tina Yong (2.8 million) and all include a run down of what's been ordered from Wish, before each of them tries on a number of the dresses. While all acknowledge that their expectations are low and that they're not, in the words of Nygaard, actually filming a 'serious wedding dress try-on', it's interesting that not one refers to the source of these dresses. There's discussion in each video about the quality of fabric, whether something has been sewn on or glued but seemingly no consideration as to where – and by whom – they were made.
Recently, Missguided ran a promotion for a £1 bikini, prompting backlash on social media as people rushed to ask the company exactly how it could justify manufacturing clothing at such a low cost. The brand responded, suggesting that it absorbed most of the cost of production as 'a gift' to its customers but even so, the question needs to be asked of anything being sold for so little. It was only when a factory in Bangladesh collapsed six years ago, causing thousands of deaths, that the world started to really examine where and how fast fashion brands were making their clothes.
Aside from the environmental impact (not just from manufacturing, but also from the sheer amount of clothes that end up in landfill around the world) there's also the question of who is making these clothes. Are they being paid fairly? Do they have workers' rights? It was only last year that reports emerged of 'dark factories' operating here in the UK, manufacturing clothes for brands like Boohoo; an undercover report published in the Financial Times in May last year unearthed mass labour exploitation in factories in Leicester, where workers were paid well under the minimum wage.
Of course, it's not YouTube's fault and these young women are simply making videos to entertain their vast audiences. But it's worth bearing in mind that, in reality, an £11 wedding dress probably comes with an unseen cost that's far more serious. At best, it's a poorly made piece of clothing that will end up in landfill. At worst, it's the result of systemic exploitation that is still allowed to remain unpunished. If mainstream, legitimate fast fashion brands are guilty of it, then who knows what these unregulated marketplaces are doing?