Yes, Bonmarché is a fast fashion brand.
Bonmarché is a British fashion retailer. It is owned by Purepay Retail Limited, a group that specialises in high street fast fashion brands and also owns Edinburgh Woollen Mill.
Bonmarché was founded in 1982 by Indian businessman Parkash Singh Chima and was purchased by Peacocks Group in 2002. After going into administration in 2021, the group was broken up, and Bonmarché is now wholly owned by white British businessman Philip Day (worth £1 billion).
As a business, Bonmarché makes an estimated £200 million in revenue each year across its website and multiple retail locations that employ 2,600 employees.
Bonmarché is a fast fashion brand due to the speed it produces its clothes, the huge scale of clothing styles that it offers, and the sheer number of clothes that it sells.
Fashion Revolution Transparency Rating: N/A
Good On You Sustainability Rating: N/A
Remake Fashion Accountability Report Rating: -10/150
Additional Reasons Why Bonmarché Is A Fast Fashion Brand
- When checking their website, I found Bonmarché selling 692 styles of women’s clothing, and over 835 styles of clothing in the sale. This is simply too much.
- There is no information about the business’ supply chains, sustainability, or anything other than legally-required information such as their Modern Slavery Statement and Gender Pay Gap Report.
- In 2020, Bonmarché stopped paying their garment factories using the excuse of covid-19. Two years later, it still continues to refuse to pay up.
- In the same year, The Telegraph newspaper reported that Philip Day blundered his takeover of Bonmarché and that “his major concern is the welfare of the beleaguered chain’s staff, but that is just window dressing.”
- In 2013, Bonmarché was one of the fashion retailers associated with the Rana Plaza factory collapse. The brand later signed an agreement to provide compensation to the families of the 1,134 garment workers who lost their lives, and the 2,500 people who were injured.
Sustainable Alternatives To Bonmarché
If you’re looking to stop shopping at Bonmarché, I recommend checking out the affordable brands with similar styles and better ethical and sustainable credentials listed in my guide to 150+ sustainable fashion brands to find more, or consider searching for second-hand Bonmarché garments on my favourite second-hand fashion sites.
This post is part of a larger guide to UK fast fashion brands, which goes into more detail about the issues with fast fashion, why it will never be sustainable, and how to make your wardrobe more sustainable.
Data for this review is taken from the brand’s website, corporate website, Wikipedia, and sites linked throughout. All information is assumed correct at date of publication. Last updated: October 2022.