Review of Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy, directed by Nic Stacey

In 2021, I graduated from one of the best fashion schools in the world, if not the best right now depending on the rankings. It’s name is the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. I worked internships in industry and all of my professors were high up at companies. It was my dream to work in fashion, but fashion school actually completely changed me.

I left FIT disillusioned with capitalism, the excessive waste created by the industry, and the fact we were openly exploiting people in order to make our clothes. I ended up with a degree in International Trade with a focus on the legality of garment sweatshops in places like Bangladesh, and even learned Bengali to study it more.

I continued that research through graduate school, and it’s horrifying. I became less of a consumer because of the fact it’s not just fashion that’s ugly: it’s all industries chasing profit. These companies are indeed destroying the world and openly deceive people with their marketing.

That’s why when I saw Buy Now is a new documentary on Netflix, I watched it the day it came out. A lot of it I already knew, already knee deep in this, but it was time to remind myself.

Let’s get into the review—I don’t want to ramble too much.

A searing look into how companies lower quality and destroy products in order to maximize profit.

In an hour and a half, this documentary covers quite a bit of ground. We first focus on the fashion industry, which is very familiar territory for me. As visualizations come up on the screen showing how the waste would fill New York City, we learn about how the industry creates an insane amount of clothes.

When I was in school, I did the math for how many garments Zara produced per year, and it was insane. It was in the millions, and that’s just in one year and a conservative estimate. The documentary mentions this, as well as the other fast fashion brands like Shein and H&M.

The fashion section is also interviewing a former high up at Adidas, as well as a UX designer at Amazon who did the beauty and fashion portions of the site. We go over how these companies are tapping into certain demographics to get them to buy more stuff, as well as how the stores and sites are designed to trick you into buying more.

While all of this is being narrated, a narrative framework of an AI machine named Sasha is used to show how people are following formulas, not very humane ones, to get more profit. She instructs us on how to avoid our emotions and humanity, and instead chase after being a better business owner.

Then there’s the question of planned obsolescence, which is why technology is built to fail. Apple is very specifically brought up because they were the ones who got rid of the headphone jack in order to force people to buy AirPods. Other companies then followed.

Now, I see little kids like my sixth grade niece wanting AirPods, trapping them in the cycle. AirPods are only built to last a little more than a year, so you’re forced to keep buying them as Apple made it so you can’t replace their batteries.

Climate change is another big point the documentary brings up. A lot of unsold and returned products are thrown into landfills, and even items we buy new and never use, throwing them in the trash, it all goes into landfills. Things just don’t go away into a void at the end of the day.

Another key point that was interesting to me was about how a woman interviewed mentions that people trust businesses over social institutions. That was a direct eye opening point to me; people would rather think somewhere like Coke is more interested in the environment than a government.

We know about greenwashing and whatnot, which is also brought up, but the fact people are so loyal to companies is wild to me. Amazon is one of the more obvious ones, and they only did their climate pledge because their workers were about to strike.

But can Amazon actually be sustainable with its business model? No.

Overall Thoughts

I feel like I didn’t learn a ton from this documentary because of how deep I’ve been on this research and work, but I think this is such an important documentary to watch if you aren’t this deep.

We’re the consumers in the end. In developed countries we are surrounded by consumerism, and people don’t realize every new product is something that was impacting the environment. It being made was an impact, and when you throw it away, that’s also an impact.

In the end, this is a reminder to be more mindful of what you buy. Buy quality items, if they’re a little more expensive and you can afford it, that last. You don’t need a new phone constantly. The latest and greatest is not the way to go for the vast majority of the time.

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