[Green_man]

As a poor college student, I was surprised hearing the stores I went to described as fast fashion. For me, thrift stores or hand me downs were the sensible choice for clothes, and h&m or forever21 were splurges for $30 pants or whatever. Obviously the price points and quality that these fast fashion brands output don't lend themselves to being deliberate, long term "investments", but spending twice as much on pants that I was already hesitant to buy was unthinkable.

I also think buying some chinos or button down shirts at these places made it a lot cheaper to get business casual work clothes as I transitioned from fast food/retail to actual internships etc. I think it's really good for young people or people turning their life around to have very low barriers to entry when it comes to "looking respectable" or fitting in with the workplace as they grow, and fast fashion helped do that for me (and some of this could be addressed by loosening dress codes if you're hiring college students/young people/whatever).

[samarthr1]

While I come from a much lower CoL area, 30USD gets me tailored pants with good material and tailoring