Boohoo Ascent

Political Economy of Fast Fashion: Governmentality, Competition Policy, Deregulation, and the Global Supply Chains

The rapid ascent of Boohoo from a Manchester‑based online retailer to one of the United Kingdom’s most influential fast‑fashion conglomerates is emblematic of a broader political‑economic transformation. Over the past two decades, the UK has embraced a deregulatory, financialised, and competition‑light policy environment that has enabled ultra‑fast‑fashion firms to expand aggressively while externalising social and environmental costs. Boohoo’s business model—characterised by hyper‑accelerated production cycles, synthetic‑fibre dependence, and labour exploitation—has flourished within this landscape. The company’s trajectory reflects the convergence of neoliberal regulatory restructuring, the intellectual legacy of Robert Bork’s consumer‑welfare standard, and the global reorganisation of supply chains under conditions of uneven development.

Here I examine Boohoo as a case study in contemporary political economy, drawing on theoretical frameworks from Michel Foucault, David Harvey, and Jamie Peck to analyse how deregulation, competition policy, and global supply‑chain governance have shaped the firm’s rise. I argue that Boohoo’s success is not simply the result of entrepreneurial innovation but the outcome of structural incentives that reward cost‑cutting, opacity, and dispossession. The analysis integrates UK parliamentary inquiries, independent investigations, and global supply‑chain evidence to demonstrate how Boohoo has leveraged regulatory gaps, exploited labour vulnerabilities, and intensified environmental harm while presenting itself as a champion of sustainability and ethical reform.

The intellectual shift in competition policy associated with Robert Bork’s The Antitrust Paradox (1978) profoundly shaped regulatory thinking in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Bork’s consumer‑welfare standard reframed competition around short‑term price effects rather than market structure, labour conditions, or long‑term industrial resilience. This narrow interpretation legitimised aggressive consolidation, predatory pricing, and the rise of dominant digital platforms.

In the UK, successive governments embraced this orientation, promoting “light‑touch” regulation and market‑driven restructuring. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has historically prioritised consumer prices over structural concerns, enabling firms like Boohoo to acquire distressed high‑street brands—including Debenhams, Karen Millen, Oasis, Warehouse, Wallis, and Dorothy Perkins—without significant scrutiny. These acquisitions were framed as efficient market outcomes that preserved consumer choice, even as they accelerated the collapse of physical retail and the erosion of local economic ecosystems (CMA, 2020).

Boohoo’s ability to consolidate brand assets while avoiding the obligations associated with physical stores reflects the broader deregulatory environment. The company benefited from tax advantages, flexible logistics, and minimal oversight, while high‑street retailers faced rising rents, business rates, and declining footfall. This uneven playing field effectively subsidised the growth of online‑only firms, reinforcing the structural incentives that underpin Boohoo’s model.

Foucault’s concept of governmentality offers a powerful lens for understanding Boohoo’s supply‑chain practices. Governmentality refers to the techniques through which power operates not through coercion but through the management of populations, norms, and behaviours. In the context of fast fashion, supply‑chain surveillance systems—vendor scorecards, compliance audits, digital tracking—function as disciplinary mechanisms that shape the conduct of suppliers and workers.

Yet Boohoo’s supply chain reveals the limits and contradictions of neoliberal governmentality. While the company publicly emphasises transparency and ethical oversight, its purchasing practices—characterised by last‑minute orders, price squeezing, and subcontracting—create conditions in which exploitation becomes structurally embedded. The 2020 Leicester garment‑factory scandal, in which workers were found to be paid as little as £3.50 per hour in unsafe conditions, exposed the failure of these disciplinary mechanisms (Labour Behind the Label, 2020). The Levitt Review concluded that Boohoo had “failed to monitor” and “failed to protect” workers despite being aware of persistent abuses (Levitt, 2020).

Foucault’s framework helps explain how Boohoo’s governance practices produce a veneer of ethical oversight while enabling the continuation of exploitative labour regimes. The company’s sustainability audits and compliance protocols function as technologies of legitimacy rather than mechanisms of accountability.

David Harvey’s theory of accumulation by dispossession provides a structural explanation for Boohoo’s expansion. Accumulation by dispossession refers to the extraction of value through processes such as privatisation, deregulation, and the commodification of labour and nature. Boohoo’s business model exemplifies this dynamic in several ways.

First, the company’s acquisitions of distressed high‑street brands represent a form of dispossession. As physical retailers collapsed under the weight of austerity, business‑rate burdens, and declining footfall, Boohoo acquired their brand assets at low cost, stripping them of their physical infrastructure and labour obligations. This process mirrors Harvey’s analysis of how capital resolves crises through spatial and organisational restructuring.

Second, Boohoo’s reliance on precarious labour—both domestically in Leicester and globally in Bangladesh, Turkey, China, and Ethiopia—reflects the commodification of labour under neoliberal globalisation. Workers are incorporated into supply chains through flexible, low‑wage, and often informal arrangements that transfer risk away from the firm and onto vulnerable populations.

Third, Boohoo’s dependence on synthetic fibres derived from fossil fuels illustrates the environmental dimension of accumulation by dispossession. The company’s escalating use of polyester and other petrochemical‑based materials contributes to carbon emissions, microplastic pollution, and ecological degradation, externalising environmental costs onto communities and ecosystems.

Harvey’s concept of the “spatial fix” further illuminates Boohoo’s global supply‑chain strategy. As labour costs rise or regulatory scrutiny intensifies in one region, production is shifted to new geographies—Ethiopia, for example—where wages are lower and oversight weaker. This constant search for cheaper labour and looser regulation is a defining feature of ultra‑fast fashion.

Jamie Peck’s work on neoliberal regulatory restructuring provides a framework for understanding how state policies have facilitated Boohoo’s rise. Peck argues that neoliberalism is not simply a withdrawal of the state but a reconfiguration of state power to support market expansion, labour flexibilization, and corporate mobility.

In the UK, labour‑market reforms since the 1980s have weakened collective bargaining, reduced enforcement capacity, and expanded precarious employment. The Leicester garment sector exemplifies this transformation. A combination of immigration vulnerabilities, informal subcontracting, and weak labour inspection created a “low‑road” production environment in which exploitation became systemic. Boohoo’s purchasing practices—demanding rapid turnaround times and low prices—intensified these pressures.

Peck’s concept of “state–market co‑production” is particularly relevant. The UK government’s refusal to implement the Environmental Audit Committee’s recommendations on fast fashion (EAC, 2019) demonstrates how state inaction can function as a form of regulatory support for exploitative business models. By rejecting proposals for extended producer responsibility, mandatory due diligence, and supply‑chain transparency, the government effectively reinforced the conditions that enable firms like Boohoo to thrive.

Boohoo’s supply chain spans multiple countries, each characterised by distinct labour regimes, regulatory environments, and development trajectories. The company sources from Bangladesh, Turkey, China, Pakistan, and increasingly Ethiopia, where wages are among the lowest in the global garment industry.

Bangladesh remains a key sourcing hub, offering low wages and high production capacity. Despite improvements following the Rana Plaza disaster, labour violations persist, including excessive overtime, union suppression, and unsafe conditions. Boohoo’s purchasing practices—short lead times, price pressure, and order volatility—exacerbate these issues.

Turkey serves as a near‑shore sourcing location, enabling rapid replenishment for European markets. However, the sector relies heavily on Syrian refugee labour, often employed informally and paid below minimum wage.

Ethiopia represents a new frontier in global garment production. The Hawassa Industrial Park, for example, has attracted major brands with wages as low as $26 per month. Boohoo’s interest in such regions reflects the logic of uneven development: capital flows to areas where labour is cheapest and regulation weakest, perpetuating global inequalities.

This global supply‑chain structure is not incidental but central to Boohoo’s competitive advantage. The company’s ability to shift production across geographies allows it to exploit wage differentials, regulatory gaps, and political instability, reinforcing the dynamics of accumulation by dispossession.

Boohoo’s environmental impact is substantial. The company’s reliance on synthetic fibres—particularly polyester, nylon, and elastane—has increased even as it promotes sustainability initiatives. Synthetic fibres, derived from fossil fuels, are associated with high carbon emissions, microplastic pollution, and non‑biodegradability. The Changing Markets Foundation (2021) found that Boohoo’s sustainability claims often mask continued dependence on petrochemical‑based materials.

The contradiction between Boohoo’s sustainability rhetoric and its production practices reflects a broader pattern of greenwashing within fast fashion. While the company has launched recycled collections and carbon‑reduction pledges, these initiatives represent a small fraction of its overall output. The fundamental driver of environmental harm—overproduction—remains unaddressed.

The UK government’s refusal to implement the EAC’s recommendations on environmental regulation further entrenches this dynamic. Without binding standards, firms can continue to market themselves as sustainable while expanding production volumes and synthetic‑fibre use.

The Leicester scandal prompted significant parliamentary scrutiny. The BEIS Committee and the EAC launched inquiries into fast fashion, exposing systemic failures in labour enforcement, environmental regulation, and corporate governance. The EAC’s Fixing Fashion report (2019) highlighted Boohoo’s poor transparency, excessive production volumes, and resistance to regulatory reforms.

Despite these findings, the Conservative government rejected most of the committee’s recommendations, citing concerns about competitiveness and regulatory burdens. This refusal reflects the broader neoliberal orientation of UK policy, which prioritises market flexibility over labour rights and environmental protection.

The Levitt Review, commissioned by Boohoo, acknowledged significant failures in supply‑chain oversight but framed them as managerial shortcomings rather than structural issues. This individualised framing obscures the systemic nature of exploitation within fast fashion.

Boohoo’s rise illustrates the consequences of a political economy shaped by deregulation, financialisaton, and a narrow interpretation of competition. The company’s success has depended on the ability to externalise costs onto workers, communities, and ecosystems while leveraging policy gaps to consolidate market power. Theoretical frameworks from Foucault, Harvey, and Peck reveal how these dynamics are embedded in broader systems of governmentality, dispossession, and neoliberal restructuring.

Parliamentary inquiries and public pressure have forced Boohoo to adopt new governance measures, but the underlying incentives remain unchanged. Without structural reforms—ranging from competition policy and labour enforcement to environmental regulation and supply‑chain governance—the fast‑fashion model will continue to reward extraction over accountability.

A new regulatory paradigm is urgently needed, one that prioritises social value, ecological limits, and democratic accountability over short‑term consumer prices. This requires rethinking competition policy beyond the consumer‑welfare standard, strengthening labour rights and enforcement, implementing binding environmental standards, and addressing the global inequalities embedded in supply chains.

Boohoo’s trajectory is not an anomaly but a symptom of systemic failures. Addressing these failures demands a comprehensive reorientation of policy, governance, and economic priorities—one that places people and the planet above the imperatives of ultra‑fast fashion.

References

Bork, R. (1978) The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself. New York: Basic Books.

Changing Markets Foundation (2021) Synthetics Anonymous: Fashion Brands’ Addiction to Fossil Fuels.

Competition and Markets Authority (2020) Retail Mergers and Market Concentration: Policy Overview.

Environmental Audit Committee (2019) Fixing Fashion: Clothing Consumption and Sustainability. UK Parliament.

House of Commons BEIS Committee (2019) The Impact of Fast Fashion on the UK Economy. UK Parliament.

Labour Behind the Label (2020) Boohoo & COVID‑19: Exploitation in Leicester’s Garment Industry.

Levitt, A. (2020) Independent Review into Boohoo Group PLC’s Leicester Supply Chain. London: Boohoo Group.

Peck, J. (2010) Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Harvey, D. (2003) The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Foucault, M. (2007) Security, Territory, Population. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Foucault, M. (2008) The Birth of Biopolitics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.