Black Friday and Clothing Poverty in the UK: A Decade of Imported Consumption and Rising Deprivation

At one end of the market, households buy discounted fashion at unprecedented scale; at the other, millions cannot afford the essential clothing required for daily life. 

Artificial consumption model 

What has become embedded is not just a new date in the retail calendar, but instead an Americanised approach to clothing consumption. 

TIME magazine noted in 2017 that “before 2010, Black Friday didn’t exist in Britain.”¹ Introduced by Amazon and accelerated by US retailers such as Walmart-owned Asda, the event exported a consumption model built on urgency and excess. 

During Asda’s first major Black Friday promotion in 2013, BBC News reported injuries in stores as shoppers rushed for discounted goods.² By the mid-2010s, UK retailers had fully absorbed the model, with analysts describing Black Friday in a 2024 review as “ingrained in British culture.”³ 

As Black Friday expanded, so did its influence on what — and how — people buy. In 2015, online Black Friday sales surpassed £1 billion for the first time.⁴ 

By 2024, 44% of UK Black Friday shoppers bought clothing or footwear, making fashion the most popular category.⁵ Across the Black Friday–Cyber Monday period, UK online spending reached £3.63 billion.⁶ 

Oxfam campaign research estimates that around 1.7 billion items of clothing lie unused in UK wardrobes, based on survey-derived averages of unworn garments per household.⁹

Each year, around 350,000 tonnes of clothing are landfilled or incinerated in the UK,¹⁰ reflecting the scale of waste generated by fast fashion and seasonal discounting.  

Public and retail attitudes  

Consumer surveys also show mounting regret around impulse buying, with significant numbers of shoppers admitting they purchased items they did not need, later regretted, or never used. 

A 2023 Consumer Survey from Starling Bank found: 

• 38% say they bought something they did not need.¹² 

• 29% regret a purchase.¹² 

• 23% say items went unused for a year.¹² 

A 2024 Opinium poll for Keep Britain Tidy found: 

• 70% believe Black Friday promotes over-consumption.¹¹ 

• 16.6 million UK adults say they “hate” it.¹¹ 

• 14.5 million say they would boycott it.¹¹ 

A 2025 survey by the British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA) found that around three-quarters of independent retailers plan to reject Black Friday participation. 

Citing concerns that Black Friday: 

• distorts normal trading patterns. 

• encourages wasteful over-discounting. 

• undermines the perceived value of their goods. 

Others said that with squeezed margins and rising overheads, heavy discounting is no longer sustainable. 

These findings sit within a broader change: retailers report less dramatic sales boosts and consumers increasingly view the event as manipulative, environmentally damaging or poor value. 

Growing consumer scepticism

Research by Which? (2025) showed that most deals were not genuinely the lowest prices of the year; many items had been cheaper before or became cheaper afterwards. This has eroded trust in the event’s value. 

A 2025 YouGov poll similarly reported that 63% of shoppers felt discouraged by what they viewed as misleading or confusing discounts, citing concerns about environmental impact and suspicion of hype-driven pricing.  

Taken together, these findings indicate a shift towards more discerning consumer behaviour, with shoppers increasingly questioning the credibility of Black Friday rather than engaging with it unquestioningly. 

Clothing poverty deepens 

While spending on discounted fashion has accelerated, essential clothing remains out of reach for many. A decade ago, national research showed that millions of adults lacked basics such as a warm coat or adequate footwear.⁷  

Today, frontline organisations warn that deprivation has deepened. The Right to Clothing campaign estimates that around 5.5 million people in the UK are affected by clothing poverty.⁸ 

Sharewear Clothing Scheme, one of the country’s major providers of emergency clothing, supported 25,736 people between November 2023 and October 2024 alone.¹³  

The demand reflects a growing number of families without suitable clothing for work, school or even the weather — illustrating that clothing poverty is now a widespread, everyday reality in sharp contrast to the surge of discretionary fashion spending seen each Black Friday. 

Surplus vs scarcity 

The billions spent on discounted clothing each Black Friday sit uneasily alongside the reality that many households cannot afford basic garments.  

Consumer watchdog organisations have challenged the ethics of heavy discounting and over consumption within fast-fashion supply chains, raising concerns about environmental harm and labour conditions. In this context, large-scale spending on non-essential items can appear out of step with public values. 

Although some shoppers use Black Friday to make planned, cost-saving purchases, they do so within a system designed to promote excess. This contrast carries cultural weight in the UK, where fairness and access to essentials remain widely held expectations.  

The spectacle of abundance — racks of cheaply discounted clothing — against the backdrop of deepening deprivation heightens a sense of moral discomfort.  

In effect, Britain has imported a model born of American abundance at a time when deprivation is expanding. 

References:

1. TIME Magazine (2017). Black Friday Comes to Britain: How an American Shopping Tradition Took Hold.

2. BBC News (2013). Black Friday: Shoppers Injured During Asda Sales Events.

3. ClickThrough Marketing (2024). Black Friday in the UK: A Cultural and Retail Review.

4. IMRG (2015). UK Online Retail Performance: Black Friday Sales Exceed £1 Billion.

5. VoucherCodes (2024). Black Friday Consumer Behaviour Report.

6. Adobe Analytics (2024). UK Online Spending During Black Friday–Cyber Monday, reported by Reuters.

7. Poverty and Social Exclusion UK (PSE-UK) (2013). The Impoverishment of the UK: Lacking Essential Items.

8. Right to Clothing Campaign (2024). Clothing Poverty in the UK: National Estimates.

9. Oxfam (2019–2023). Second Hand September Campaign Materials.

10. Vogue (2025). UK Clothing Waste and Disposal Figures.

11. Opinium Research / Keep Britain Tidy (2024). Public Attitudes to Black Friday and Over-Consumption.

12. Starling Bank (2023). Consumer Spending and Regret Survey.

13. Sharewear Clothing Scheme (2024). Annual Impact Report: Emergency Clothing Provision.