We are Laxer

What a great idea – fast, cheap and convenient. Just drive-thru, get a basic meal in mere minutes for some pocket change and be back at work before you skip a beat. 

How quintessentially American a concept! The perfect fuel for productivity. Until you get obesity and diabetes pandemics on your hands which requires a major shift in the choices we make and gives birth to the growing trend of healthy nutrition and the importance of exercise.

Being fashionable is a right, not a privilege they proudly announce. A response to decades of fashion austerity – when fashion was reserved for the fortunate few.

With fast-fashion you could all of a sudden walk out of an H&M or Zara a completely new person barely feeling a tingle in your wallet or purse. And then came eCommerce and the party was really on. A few years of this though and we started understanding that there is a hidden price tag to this endless shopping spree; a few actually.

From the planet’s perspective – disastrous. The fashion industry being the world’s 2nd biggest polluter, with tonnes of textile ending up in landfills and toxic by-products polluting the air and water, not to mention sweatshops and the cost of shipping. 

From a consumer perspective, fast fashion hardly survives 2-3 washes and our closets end up housing stuff we’ve maybe worn once or twice. After the initial excitement, savvy consumers started purchasing less, but better. They became more discerning; and start asking some questions.

And last, but not least, we came to fast travel, also known as low cost travel – a relatively new phenomenon. At first, it was a beautiful thing; democratising something that was traditionally out of reach for most people.

Now, travel is a great thing; it helps us broaden our horizons, meet new cultures, learn new things. But, just like fast fashion, there’s a fine line between a healthy sense of adventure and curiosity, and mindless consumerism.

For many, fast travel fueled an inner sense of restlessness, a desire to go somewhere, post something on instagram and think about the next destination. Not to mention the fact that for many premier destinations, the onslaught of tourists and digital nomads made their cities uninhabitable for many of the locals -- with rents and restaurant prices rocketing.