#overdressed: the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion

[horsegir1]

mina what are you reading? more on that what is your taste like I know it's a horrible question but! favourite book?

for pleasure, im reading idaho by emily ruskovich, and for work, im reading overdressed: the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion by elizabeth l. cline, the invention of murder by judith flanders, and a confusion of prophets: victorian and edwardian astrology by patrick curry.

my taste in fiction is biased towards realism and slow burns. anything with family dynamics and complex characters. but if the writing is good, i'll read about anything!

some favorites off the top of my head: notes on an execution by danya kukafka, pew by catherine lacey, ex-wife by ursula parrot, kindred by octavia butler, of human bondage by somerset maugham, a certain hunger by chelsea summers, pachinko by min jin lee.

[annbourbon]

My Journey (Fashion Design)

I'm obsessed with fashion, please let me know if there's a 101 class, blog or something else cause I want to know more! Keep learning...

So far what I've been doing it's:

* Learn how to draw (actually taking classes and I'm currently an art student)

* Reading books 📚 about the topic (if you all want me to come up with some titles I'll make it happen, just let me know in the comments) but here are some for now:

♡ The Sewing Bible by Ruth Singer

♡ Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline

♡ Fashion Design: The Complete Guide by John Hopkins

♡ So you want to Work in Fashion?: How to Break into the World of Fashion and Design (Be What You Want) by Patricia Wooster

♡ Trash to Trend (a doctoral thesis, Estonian Academy of Arts)

♡ Patternmaking for Fashion Design

♡ Sewing for Fashion Designers by Annette Fischer

♡ Atlas of Fashion Designers by Laura Ecceiza.

(I have more of course, but the list is quite long.)

* Downloading some apps (Vogue Runway happened to be so interesting!)

* Learn how to draw online thanks to several YouTubers + downloading some drawing apps

I still suck, but I'll get better!

* Listening a lot of music

* Learn some psychology and color analysis

* Read books that have nothing to do with it such as novels, because that makes my heart flutter and my mind gets creative. Sometimes I even try to draw something that some of the characters might be wearing...

* Bought myself a sewing machine

* I'm trying to have enough patience to figure out how to use it (thanks again YouTubers, for making my life so easy 😭🤧)

* Acknowledging how fashion industry especially fast fashion is contaminating our planet (check out this blog!) and trying to figure out the way to start with sewing but I'm too intimidated by it rn 😭💀

* Studying how to re-do my portfolio, (because thank you internet for existing!)

* Studying make up on my own and learning some of the basics of cosmetology, because that's another passion of mine.

* Studying business and fashion marketing

* Realizing that technology is advancing so fast, nowadays there's even sprays that can create dresses or AI combining with holograms that will make our life as designers a bit more easy when choosing a fabric. But they can also put everything at risk if there's nothing to protect us as humans that create these beautiful clothes we use every day.

Keep in mind that I'm a self taught student. Sometimes I take classes to cover certain aspects but I don't think I am an expert at all in the field. If you have a recommendation, a comment or something you want to share to help me with my path I would really appreciate the feedback.

I'm currently looking for YouTubers that help me covering the basics of sewing and learning about fabrics, especially about fabrics! I'll keep y'all posted.<3

[chadsuke]

Books Read in 2023:

Liberated to the Bone: Histories, Bodies, Futures by Susan Raffo (2022)

Unflattering Photos of Fascists:  Authoritarianism in Trump's America by Christopher Ketcham (2020)

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline (2012)

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid (1988)

Why are Faggots so Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (2012)

The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy by Caroline Dooner (2019)

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple by Jeff Guin (2017)

Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes (2012)

The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (2007)

[ID: Covers of the aforementioned books. End ID.]

[realsamcalloway]

Regarding Style (www.regardingstyle.com)

Various web graphic designs from Regarding Style.

© 2017 TRSB (Sam Bone)

[swashbucklery]

Textile Nerd Book Recs

Because @zaritarazi and I were chatting about it and I thought maybe the rest of you nerds would be interested in this too!

Context: when I’m not doing my IRL Grownup Job or fandom I’m a huge textile nerd, I do tons of fiber arts but mainly knitting/spinning/adjacent wool processing as well as garment sewing and quilting. (I’d also like to be a weaver but the pandemic keeps getting in the way of that, alas.) I don’t do textile work professionally and I will not sell my art/mend your jeans/knit your uncle’s cousin a sweater but I have been doing this as a craft practice for many years and know a lot of things. I’m also a Huge Fucking Nerd and love reading about textiles on the side.

These recs are not skill-based or how-to books; these are Interesting Nonfiction Reads if you want to geek out about textiles. but not if you want to skillbuild per se. They can be an excellent compliment to skillbuilding work, as understanding context and history can often enrich your skilled knowledge and practice.

Books I’ve Read

Vanishing Fleece: Adventures in American Wool by Clara Parkes: Sort of about sheep but kind of really about the complexities of wool processing from sheep to yarn and the ways that outsourcing of textile processing have affected the ability to make and use American-made wool. Parkes does a really lovely job of getting to know local small-batch producers, explaining the steps of wool processing from start to end in a super accessible way, and explaining both the value of and challenges to creating local wool for the garment-production and handknitting consumer.

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth Cline: So this book is from 2012, and it feels dated now but this is like. The book that launched a thousand other books about fast fashion so it’s worth reading. It’s a very good deep dive into the questions: how can this shirt cost $2? and should this shirt cost $2? and goes through the granular and broader factors that lead to the $2 t-shirt and why it’s damaging both from an ethical and ecological perspective. If you’re Extremely Online you’ve probably absorbed a lot of the takes from this book via the internet but it’s a thorough and cogent overview and a great jumping-off point to start thinking more about fashion sustainability and how complex a thing it is to tackle.

How To Be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman: Only tangentially about textiles but also very much about textiles, Ruth Goodman specializes in history of domestic life which often means that things like underpants and how laundry got done are much more important than you think. She’s a truly stellar historical fiction writer and if you’re into historical costuming at all this is a great place to dive into.

Books I’m Currently Reading

A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield: Ok I’m about halfway into this so far and if you have any interest at all in textile dyeing and fashion history is this the book for you. An absolutely riveting history of cochineal, which is an insect-derived red pigment traditionally from Central and South America. It goes through traditional plant-based dyeing as an industry, and does a beautiful job of contextualizing why red dye was so important, and how this dyestuff shaped the colonial history of Spain and the rest of Europe, it’s wild.

Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather: A Scandalous History of Birds, Hats, & Votes by Tessa Boase: This is again sort of fashion-adjacent but I’m about a third of the way in and it’s great. Ostensibly a history of politically active women in turn-of-the-century London, and it parallels Emmeline Pankhurst’s journey with Etta Lemon, a prominent socially conservative activist who was equally instrumental historically - her work was in setting up the idea of bird conservation. This is related to fashion because this was during the peak of the whole-dead-stuffed-birds-in-hats craze, and the little history of millinery tidbits as they relate to feathers are truly fascinating.

[venusinmyrrh]

top five books to read this year (tagged by @tybaltsjuliet)

velvet was the night by silvia moreno-garcia. it's been so long since i picked up a novel just because it looked interesting! i'm very excited about it!

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid. i feel like i remember this book being really famous a while ago? maybe it's old news now but fortunately i do not read so i am free to enjoy my fake old hollywood memoir slash gossip column in peace.

the chiffon trenches by andré leon talley. an icon of glamour, a master of beauty and prose in equal measure, and a true personality the likes of which they simply do not make anymore.

overdressed: the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion by elizabeth l. cline. crucial reading in my opinion, about an aspect of the climate crisis that people can actually affect with their purchasing habits. we lived to see the demise of forever 21, we can kill shein and its ilk too.

barracoon by zora neale hurston. i've had it for several years and never got around to it. this year is the year!

tagging @mariacallous, @bluestockingbaby, @marzipanandminutiae, @forthegothicheroine, and @damianmcgintleman because i have a feeling you guys are gonna give me some gems

[fastfashionalert]

Clothes could have more meaning and longevity if we think less about owning the latest or cheapest thing and develop more of a relationship with the things we wear

Elizabeth L. Cline (Author of ‘Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion)

[pricecheckercanada-blog]

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[realfashun]

FAST FASHION- someone else, way less fortunate, is bearing the cost.

In the 90s, fashion designers felt the pressure to increase product line, revenue, and other ways to market since up-and-coming department stores were taking all the customers due to their large selection and lower prices. Thus, fast fashion was born. Fast fashion is a term where “designers” (more like plagiarists) quickly recreate what was seen during fashion week into the hands of consumers cheaply and quickly. I am sure you have all heard about Fashionnova, and their ability to churn out a product within a DAY!!! Kim Kardashion (who is speculated to actually be working with the brands that she says ‘copy’ her), has voiced her opinion on how she wears a dress and within the next day, fast fashion retailers already have it up on their site. This is an entire supply-demand business that focuses on the hottest trends. While it is nice that consumers are able to wear catwalk-similiar clothing at a fraction of the cost, who is really bearing the cost for the cheap clothes? While we save, others peril. Examples of fast fashion retailers are ASOS, H&M, Zara, Topshop, Cotton On, Forever 21, Gap, Inc., Missguided, Zaful, SheIn, PrettyLittleThing, Romwe, Boohoo, and many more. While they have found an incredible marketing strategy and ways to make money, here are some important things to keep in mind next time you buy a Forever 21 shirt that says “I love pizza and smack my butt”. 

“We are increasingly disconnected from the people who make our clothing as 97% of items you’re overseas. There are roughly 40 million garment workers in the world today; many of whom do not share the same rights or protections that many people in the West do. They are some of the lowest paid workers in the world and roughly 85% of all garment workers are women.” – The True Cost

“Nearly 70 million barrels of oil are used each year to make the world’s polyester fiber, which is now the most commonly used fiber in our clothing. But it takes more than 200 years to decompose.” – Forbes

“Nine out of ten workers interviewed in Bangladesh cannot afford enough food for themselves and their families, forcing them to regularly skip meals and eat inadequately, or go into debt.” – Oxfam Made in Poverty Report

“Fast fashion companies design clothes that fall apart quickly. They pursue a strategy called ‘Planned obsolescence’. This means to design garments to become unfashionable, wear out, lose shape or fall to pieces easily to force consumers to keep buying new clothes.” – Be Global Fashion Network

“In 2017 it was revealed that fashion behemoth H&M — which has made much of its green agenda with recycling points in stores and what it calls a Conscious Collection — burned about 19 tons of obsolete clothing (the equivalent to 50,000 pairs of jeans).” – Huffington Post

“250,000 Indian cotton farmers have killed themselves in the last 15 years due to the stress of debt they accumulated through buying genetically modified cotton seeds to keep up with demand.” – The True Cost

“The fashion industry is designed to make you feel “out of trend” after one week. Once upon a time, there were two fashion seasons: Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter. Fast forward to 2014 and the fashion industry is churning out 52 “micro-seasons” per year. With new trends coming out every week, the goal of fast fashion is for consumers to buy as many garments as possible, as quickly as possible.” – Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

Just remember that yes these clothes are way more affordable, but it is purposely made to wear and tear so you come back to buy more. These giants do not care if you can afford it, they just found a way to get you to come back. I definitely have shopped at these stores and sites before, but I did my research and would rather pay a higher dollar value for a more durable shirt knowing that the worker who made it was appropriately compensated. I might not be able to afford as many clothes, but I can get some good pieces that will last longer in my closet. 

[ki5kjx]

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The way Americans dress has fundamentally changed in recent years. Once crafted in domestic factories, 98% of our clothing is now made abroad. And stores ranging from fast fashion chains like H&M and Forever 21 and discounters like Target to traditional companies like Gap and Macy's offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. It's driving up our pace of consumption and turning fashion into one of the most environmentally destructive industries on Earth. And we have little reason to keep wearing much less repairing the clothes we already own when styles change so fast and it’s cheaper to just buy more. In her debut book, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, journalist and former cheap fashion addict Elizabeth L. Cline sets out to uncover the true nature of the cheap fashion juggernaut. What are we doing with all these clothes? And more important, what are they doing to us, our society, our environment, even our souls?

[grad502-gracemacd]

Interview with Author of ‘Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion’, Elizabeth Cline. 

This interview that I discovered through the research journey was a pivotal piece because Cline is a women who has done research on the industry, she has seen the environmental impacts first hand, the emissions and waste. 

The interview has motivated me to dive into the environmental impacts of fast fashion and really consider the impact of our smaller actions, such as donating clothes. The interview highlights the impacts of clothing after it’s used (or not used at all) on the environment, specifically, landfill and what the larger fast fashion companies do with the clothes even when they are not sold. 

Resource:

Make.Good, (n.d), Elizabeth Cline - Author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Fast Fashion, https://www.makegood.world/interview-elizabeth-cline

[paidrestperiod]

The Degradation We Wear on our Sleeves

I stress about my clothes, greatly. Not so much what they say, or people’s perception of them, I dress pretty conservatively for the most part.  I stress about their quality, not only the strength of their fibers but the strength of their morals. I have a huge and real moral dilemma when it comes to buying new clothes, and often this means wearing through the few thrift store finds, watching them age from acceptable to tattered rags. In this essay I wrote for my environmental literature class, I explore the clothing industry through the lens of the concept of “Slow Violence” (See Rob Nixon) (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021909613495648?journalCode=jasa) and will hopefully give some context  as to why I feel the way I do about clothing. 

Bare with me for a moment.

Take a look at the shirt you’re wearing. Inspect it. Look at the stitchings and feel the material between your fingers. What does it feel like? Solid? Bargain? Now ask yourself, where did that shirt come from? No, not the Macey’s or other store where you bought it, but where did it originate? Where did it take shape? In what country did the maker do as you just did and feel the fabric between their fingers as they stitched the lines that hold your garment? A simple turn of the tag may reveal to you probably one of a host of familiarly distant names. But the story that isn’t told through the tag, one even more ingrained in the fabric, is that of the environmental and working conditions that person who created your fancy threads is subjected to as a result of careless consumerism; a mindset that perpetuated in the garment you now wear. This mindset, made acceptable by years of rich consumers demanding more for less, has resulted in these countries that produce our clothing bearing the burden of our demand for cheaper costs. Forced labor, environmental destabilizing, as well as other atrocities are side effects of this floor driving mindset, but one of the worst atrocities of them all is that for the most part, these clearly unethical business practices that we stimulate, go unnoticed or unreported by the mainstream conscious. The fact remains that outside of a handful of interested activists and documentary filmmakers, the issues surrounding our clothing consumption aren’t immediate to our lives and don’t generate enough sensationalist news to create any real long lasting efforts to change our consumer habits, ones  that cause the degradation of the environments and lives of garment workers.  This distancing of ourselves from the destruction we perpetuate every time we buy bargain clothing, whether intentional or not, puts the effects of our mindless consumer habits in line with Rob Nixon’s theories presented in his book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor.  The long lasting environmental degradation being done by continually lowering the floor on our clothing prices as seen through practices such as “fast fashion”, the way that so quickly massively destructive instances like the Rana Plaza building collapse disappear from the public consciousness, the unflinching resolve in our mindless consumer habits, these are all examples of how we cognitively disconnect ourselves from the atrocities that make our clothing, and turn any of the issues that result from the practices into issues of “slow violence”.

What is perhaps the most measurable indicator of the “violence” in the “slow violence” of our consumer habits, is the environmental degradation of these industrial countries being funded by our shopping sprees and insatiable need for weekly wardrobe changes. The countries supplying the world with many of it’s clothes, China, India, and Bangladesh, have earned their spots as clothing producing capitals as a result of their extremely low environmental and working standards, allowing them to conduct business with low interference from regulators. This is not news, it’s a well acknowledged fact by most of the public consciousness. But with that information in mind, most consumers still don’t give a second thought as to how their actions could be perpetuating these poor working and environmental standards.  People often wax on about the environmental issues facing their local states, in California brown lawns have become a sign of environmental consciousness, while shorter showers and intentionally dirty cars are becoming a popular “statement”. But yet, fewer consider the fact that some 2,700 gallons of water is used in producing an average cotton shirt, as estimated by studies collected from the World Wildlife Fund, and even fewer will take into account that more than 20 percent of the world's clothing is produced in areas deemed “water scarce” by the environmental collaboration Growing Blue. Even more striking is the International Food Policy Research Institute study which Growing Blue cites, stating that due to continued overuse of freshwater, that some “4.8 billion people – more than half the world’s population – and approximately half of global grain production” as well as “45% of total GDP ($63 trillion)”  will be at risk of collapsing due to instability caused by water stress by 2050. This means that not only will wasteful practices as a result of our clothing addiction affect our own economy in the future, but by forcing the burden of production on these water scarce countries, we are contributing to an impending catastrophic collapse of these countries economies, all for the luxury of a wardrobe change.

Elizabeth Cline delves into the mindset that perpetuates careless consumerism in her book Overdressed : The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, in which she focuses on the subject of “Fast Fashion”. Fast Fashion she describes as an industry move where retailers put out exorbitants fashionable clothing “constantly throughout the year” as opposed to the traditional seasonal fashions, at a bottom line price “much lower than its competitors” that succeeds only by “selling an unprecedented amount of clothing” and can “only give us low prices if consumers continue to buy new clothes as soon as they’re on the floor.”  She points to stores like H&M and Zara as some of the biggest culprits, contributing to our 20 billion a year garment addiction in America alone.  These stores that supply us with our clothing fix, not surprisingly, base nearly all of their operations in developing countries like ones mentioned above, who provide clothing at the lower and lower prices that are perpetuated by our fast fashion consumer habits, at the expense of worker and environmental regulations.

This creates a horrible cycle, where a garment manufacturer produces an exorbitant amount of clothing at rock bottom pricing, to be bought up a these fast fashion retailer, only for them to turn around demand a lower price on the already low garments in order for them to undercut their competition, forcing the manufacturer to cut costs again, to produce an even cheaper product, on the back of their “employees” and the the neighboring environment. All the while, we are the ones perpetuating this business practice, funding it, demanding it, without acknowledging the downward spiral which we are sliding. This sort of cognitive dissonance allows for us as a population to turn blind eyes to terrible tragedies such as the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013, where a Bangladeshi garment manufacturing building, due to negligence by the owners, collapsed and took with it some 1,100 people, more than a third of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. And as if it were any surprise, of the retailers who were being supplied by this particular building? H&M and Zara were some of the biggest buyers. And yet, only some three years removed from this incident, one doubts whether any of the people lined up outside these stores on a daily basis are aware of this, as the story of this tragedy faded from our public attention in a matter of weeks.

This distancing oneself from the clear connection of their clothing and the destruction that it causes, or “willful ignorance” was studied by a group of researchers in a study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology that asked if “less ethical consumers denigrate more ethical consumers” as a means of justifying their own consumer habits. What they found was that “consumers who willfully ignore ethical product attributes denigrate other, more ethical consumers who seek out and use this information” because of a perceived “self-threat inherent in negative social comparison with others who acted ethically”. This perceived “self-threat” felt by the “denigrators” was also shown to have further consequences in “undermining the denigrator's commitment to ethical values, as evidenced by reduced anger toward firms who violate the ethical principle”, meaning they reacted with ambivalence toward companies who acted unethically in their business model.  This unconscious reaction contributes directly to the problem at hand with the unacknowledged ethical travesties being committed in the garment industry. This shows that not only has our clothing consumption and culture come to accept unethical practices as the norm, but also stigmatizes people who choose to shop in an ethical fashion, further hindering efforts to bring to light the problems we create and perpetuate by our mindless spending.  

As a consumer culture, it’s imperative that we engage in open discourse about our consumer habits, and the wide ranging effects of our actions in perpetuating environmentally unstable and atrocious living conditions for the people who are forced to work in the factories that make our weekly deals. We need to recognize that we are teetering on the brink is an impending crash, and we are the ones fueling it. We need to see the wastefulness in our mindless consumer culture, and shift our perception of clothing back to where it was 50 years ago, in a time where we bought less and cared more. It is time for us to stand up hold ourselves accountable for our the slow violence we are subjecting these countries to.

*The Hidden Costs of Water” World Wildlife Fund,  http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/rivers_and_lakes/the_hidden_cost_of_water.cfm 

*Water in 2050” Growing Blue, http://growingblue.com/water-in-2050/ . 

*Elizabeth, Cline, Overdressed the Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, New York : Penguin Group, 2013, 85-88.

Julfikar Ali Manik,Nida Najar, “Bangladesh Police Charge 41 With Murder Over Rana Plaza Collapse”, “New York Times”  June 1, 2015.  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/world/asia/bangladesh-rana-plaza-murder-charges.html

Daniel M. Zane, Julie R. Irwin, Rebecca Walker Reckzek, “Do less ethical consumers denigrate more ethical consumers? The effect of willful ignorance on judgments of others”, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21, October, 2015. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057740815001011

[newstfionline]

‘We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things’

By Alana Semuels, The Atlantic, Aug. 21, 2018

It’s easier than ever to buy things online. It’s so easy that Ryan Cassata sometimes does it in his sleep. Cassata, a 24-year-old singer/songwriter and actor from Los Angeles, recently got a notification from Amazon that a package had been shipped to his apartment, but he didn’t remember buying anything. When he logged onto his account and saw that a fanny pack and some socks were on the way, he remembered: A few nights back, he had woken up in the middle of the night to browse--and apparently shop on--Amazon.

He shops when he’s awake, too, buying little gadgets like an onion chopper, discounted staples like a 240-pack of gum, and decorations like a Himalayan salt lamp. The other day, he almost bought a pizza pool float, until he remembered that he doesn’t have a pool. “I don’t really need most of the stuff,” he tells me.

Thanks to a perfect storm of factors, Americans are amassing a lot of stuff. Before the advent of the internet, we had to set aside time to go browse the aisles of a physical store, which was only open a certain number of hours a day. Now, we can shop from anywhere, anytime--while we’re at work, or exercising, or even sleeping. We can tell Alexa we need new underwear, and in a few days, it will arrive on our doorstep. And because of the globalization of manufacturing, that underwear is cheaper than ever before--so cheap that we add it to our online shopping carts without a second thought. “There’s no reason not to shop--because clothing is so cheap, you feel like, ‘why not?’ There’s nothing lost in terms of the hit on your bank account,” Elizabeth Cline, the author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, told me.

Shopping online also feels good. Humans get a dopamine hit from buying stuff, according to research by Ann-Christine Duhaime, a professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School. “As a general rule, your brain tweaks you to want more, more, more--indeed, more than those around you--both of ‘stuff’ and of stimulation and novelty,” Duhaime wrote in a Harvard Business Review essay last year. Online shopping allows us to get that dopamine hit, and then also experience delayed gratification when the order arrives a few days later, which may make it more physiologically rewarding than shopping in stores.

Sites like Amazon have made it especially easy to shop. In 1999, the Seattle retailer patented a one-click buying process, which allows customers to purchase something without entering their shipping address or credit card info. It launched its Prime program in 2005, and now more than 100 million people have signed on to pay $119 a year for “free” two-day shipping. As a result, most other major retailers offer free shipping too. Returning stuff is a little more difficult--shoppers usually have to print a label and then go to the post office or a UPS or FedEx site to return packages. Many wait too long, or decide the hassle isn’t worth it because the stuff was cheap anyway. A recent NPR/Marist poll found that nine in 10 consumers rarely or never return stuff they’ve bought online.

Justine Montoya, a caregiver in Los Angeles, buys all sorts of stuff online--baby formula, clothes, household goods. She estimates that she shops online twice a week. “It’s just so easy--you click a button, and it’s on its way,” she told me.

In the last few months alone, I bought an $18 smart watch from Wish.com that I will probably never use, a second Kindle because it was on sale and I am worried my first Kindle is going to die soon, an electric space heater I no longer need, and a pair of wireless earbuds that I had hoped would allow me to charge my iPhone and listen to music at the same time, but that instead just fall out of my ears whenever I put them on. I also bought, on Amazon, a (used) book about hiking in the Sierras for $1.99, only to find the exact same book in a box of my stuff in my parents’ basement. I didn’t return any of it.

In 2017, Americans spent $240 billion--twice as much as they’d spent in 2002--on goods like jewelry, watches, books, luggage, and telephones and related communication equipment, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which adjusted those numbers for inflation. Over that time, the population grew just 13 percent. Spending on personal care products also doubled over that time period. Americans spent, on average, $971.87 on clothes last year, buying nearly 66 garments, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. That’s 20 percent more money than they spent in 2000. The average American bought 7.4 pairs of shoes last year, up from 6.6 pairs in 2000.

All told, “we are all accumulating mountains of things,” said Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He sometimes asks his students to count the number of things they have on them in class, and once they start counting up gadgets and cords and accessories, they end up near 50. “Americans have become a society of hoarders,” Cohen said. Montoya said she has more stuff now that she has started shopping online: “It’s easier to accumulate more, and it’s easier to spend more.”

At the same time we are amassing all this stuff, Americans are taking up more space. Last year, the average size of a single-family house in America was 2,426 square feet, a 23 percent increase in size from two decades ago, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The number of self-storage units is rapidly increasing too: There are around 52,000 such facilities nationally; two decades ago, there were half that number.

Of course, not everyone is a part of this hoarding revolution. There are people who can’t or don’t shop online, because they don’t have credit cards or because they are barely making ends meet. Only about 29 percent of households with incomes under $25,000 are members of Amazon Prime, according to Kantar Consulting. Some people are embracing the zero waste movement, or have followed the example of the author Ann Patchett, who published a widely-circulated op-ed in The New York Times about how she resolved to stop shopping for a year. When she ceased buying things like lip gloss and lotion and hair products, she started finding half-used versions of them under the sink, and realized she hadn’t needed new things after all. “The things we buy and buy and buy are like a thick coat of Vaseline smeared on glass,” she wrote. “We can see some shapes out there, light and dark, but in our constant craving for what we may still want, we miss life’s details.”

But most Americans are not curtailing their shopping habits. And as consumers demand cheaper clothing, electronics, and other goods, manufacturers are spending less to make them, which sometimes means they fall apart more quickly. The share of large household appliances that had to be replaced within five years grew to 13 percent in 2013, up from seven percent in 2004. Cheap clothes might lose their shape after a wash or two, or get holes after a few tumbles in the dryer; electronics become obsolete quickly and need to be replaced. While some of this stuff can be recycled or resold, often, it ends up in landfills. In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, Americans put 16 million tons of textiles in the municipal waste stream, a 68 percent increased from 2000. We tossed 34.5 million tons of plastics, a 35 percent increase from 2000, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Over that same time period, the population grew just 14 percent.

“Sometimes, people sit down and cry when they see the amount of garbage we produce in a day,” said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Recology, which handles recycling for West Coast cities like San Francisco. Centered in America’s tech capital, Recology has seen an increase in discarded electronics, including products with lithium batteries, Reed told me. In 2016, a lithium battery fire burnt down a waste management facility in San Mateo.

The 16,000 students who live in dorms at Michigan State University left behind 147,946 pounds of goods like clothing, towels, and appliances when they moved out this year, a 40 percent increase from 2016, according to Kat Cooper, a spokeswoman. The university packs up these goods and donates to them to its surplus store, so that incoming students can buy used, rather than new, stuff. In recent years, dorm cleaners have been finding so many packages of unopened food and toiletries that the university started a program to get students to donate leftover food and toiletries to local organizations like food banks when they move out. This year, it collected 900 pounds of personal care items and 4,000 pounds of nonperishable food items to donate. Pomona College has seen the volume of packages delivered grow by 325 percent in the last 12 years, according to Patricia Vest, a spokeswoman; it, too, asks students to donate unused goods to a resale program. This year, it diverted 42 tons of clothes, furniture, and office supplies.

The Internet has also made it easier to recycle some of the stuff Americans buy and no longer want. Online consignment shops like thredUP and Poshmark help people buy and sell clothes from their closets. Secondhand stores like Goodwill have moved online, too, selling the growing pile of goods they get on the Internet.

But the ability to easily get rid of stuff may be making people feel a little better about buying things they don’t need, and motivating them to buy even more. On a recent weekday, I stopped by the massive warehouse where workers from Goodwill of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin sort donations to Bay Area stores. Some of the stuff that’s been donated has never been used. Near the front of the warehouse stands a rack of clothes with their original tags on--a $245 blue Nicole Miller cocktail dress, $88 Kit and Ace pants, a pale green J. Jill blouse. “We are seeing items that have been barely used or not used, because when people shop online, it’s a lot of work to return it,” William Rogers, the president of the Goodwill, told me. Rogers himself is guilty--when we met at the warehouse, he dropped off four wall sconces he’d bought a year ago on Amazon. He had tried to put them up, decided they didn’t look good, and brought them to donate.

Secondhand shops can’t resell all of the donations they get. Cline estimates that 85 percent of the clothing that is donated to secondhand stores ends up in landfills every year. Just nine percent of plastic that ends up in the municipal waste stream gets recycled, according to the EPA, and only 15 percent of textiles get recycled. It can be difficult to take apart clothes and re-use the fabrics, Cline said, so lots of clothing in the waste stream gets sent to the developing world, used for rags, or sent to a landfill.

Fifty years ago, the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick coined a phrase for these “useless objects” that accumulate in a house: “kipple.” In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for the movie Blade Runner, he theorized that “the entire universe is moving toward a state of total, absolute kippleization.” Kipple reproduced, Dick wrote, when nobody was around. The ubiquity of mobile devices and the ease of online shopping have made Dick’s prediction come true, with one small tweak: Our kipple does not just multiply on its own, every time we turn away. We grow it ourselves, buying more and more of it, because we can.

[realsamcalloway]

3/27/17 - Interview With Author Elizabeth Cline, “Still ‘Overdressed’ In 2017″ (www.regardingstyle.com)

Originally posted March 27, 2017 and appearing on www.regardingstyle.com.

© 2017 TRSB (Sam Bone)

Still “Overdressed” in 2017: Catching Up with Elizabeth Cline

By Sam Bone

Most standard format written articles (whether in print or digital) begin with the author of the article talking about the interviewed subjects’ past accomplishments and also plugging upcoming projects. A lot of times, there are behind-the-scene motives as to why a person is being interviewed, like say, because there is a product to be pushed or an agenda.

Well, this is not your mother’s format here.

Not when it comes to Elizabeth Cline.

For all of us who are thinking of, or already have begun an ethical fashion journey and also for those who are currently heavy influencers, Elizabeth really needs no introduction. So I won’t give you one. I will rebel against journalistic standards slightly and begin with what Elizabeth has done for me, the previously-found-guilty, and what she can do for you.

Before I go any further, I just need to say that I am thrilled to have Elizabeth Cline for this interview! Thrilled isn’t even a big enough word to describe my feelings about it.

I’ve been hugely impacted by Elizabeth’s speeches and also by her hard-hitting, slap you in the face then pull you in for a hug book, Overdressed. I am impacted and thankful for Elizabeth Cline because, aside from the sickening realities that she speaks of very bluntly in her book, she also has a way of reassuring you that you’re not a terrible person or consumer. Before I dove into the pages of the book, I was somewhat scared because I, like Elizabeth and so many others, fit the profile of that person who shopped at Forever 21 Men’s and H&M. When I think of all of the times in my life I’ve said to someone inquiring about what I’m wearing, “..and it only cost me ten dollars!”… it makes me cringe.

In the Church of Elizabeth Cline, she preaches that it is okay to have been a consumer of fast fashion—What truly matters is understanding the repercussions and changing our buying habits for the better. Amen.

Now, aside from all of that, Elizabeth Cline was the poor person who first received my panic. I had spent a few weeks watching YouTube videos; anything and everything that came up as a result of my search of “fast fashion.” I obsessively read and tried to grasp all of the statistics I was hearing and reading about. I, at one point, realized that some of the stuff I had read was maybe a little too outdated (2014 is like 10 years ago!), so I quickly filtered my results. I was in a total tail spin and whirlwind of information. My whole life, I’ve also dove straight into the depths of the unknown, in an attempt to take in as much information as quickly as I can.

I was freaking out. I had a Winona Ryder in “Stranger Things” panic attack. Then suddenly… I hit a wall. I needed to know more, needed someone who would maybe understand me, and the first person I thought of was Elizabeth Cline. To my shock and awe, she replied and we began a dialog.

I know that was a tad long-winded, but in your reading that, Elizabeth, I want you to know that no matter how far I go in my journey, even if nowhere at all, I will forever remember your kindness, accessibility and generosity. Indebted indefinitely.

 What’s up and how are you doing today? Where in the world are you (Los Angeles, Brooklyn, etc.)?

I live in Brooklyn! We had a snowstorm today and everything was mostly shut down. So I did what any normal person would do and bought a bottle of whiskey and turned on Netflix. 

I was listening to a September 2016 radio interview you did with Heritage Radio Network yesterday and learned about your new journey in film making. I am so excited for the documentary! How did this happen for you?

When Overdressed came out, I knew that the story of fast fashion would be best told visually. Even as a print journalist, I could see that it would have so much more impact if it was presented as a movie. After several years, I eventually came back around to the idea of making a documentary and started looking into how I, as someone who's never really worked in documentary film, could pull this off. Right now I'm filming two separate projects, one on fast fashion and one on textile waste. I've got my own gear, shoot with a couple of different camera people and producers, and have an editor I work with. It's a lot of fun. 

The interview I heard is now a few months old… have you come up with a title yet and how is that process going?

Since the podcast, I have been mostly working on a follow-up to Overdressed, which is an ethical style and shopping guide. I do have some ideas for a title but nothing is set in stone. 

As a slight curvature, I discovered that you were in a heavy metal band called Mortals out of Brooklyn! I could tell you were a bit punk rock when I first saw you speak at the April 2016 Chicago Humanities Festival and it was certainly an allure for me, as my background is also musical (music promotions and I’ve been the vocalist of a few bands myself). My question is how did you manage to pull of separating the two “jobs?” I was shocked when I found this out and thought “how did I NOT know this?” I am sure it would surprise quite a few people as well.

That's awesome! I've been in the punk and metal scene since I was 14, and it's a huge part of who I am. I got into activism and social justice through the punk scene. For a while, I kept those two parts of my life very separate -- playing music and working in the sphere of Overdressed and journalism.  You'd think that it would be impossible to hide anything about yourself given the Internet, but somehow most people don't find out if you don't want them to. Ha.

Sadly, I quit my band last year so I could focus on my documentary and writing more books. Sigh. It certainly wasn't an easy decision but it was the right one for my life.

Since 2012’s release of Overdressed, what have you been up to in regards to your delivering a message about sustainable and ethical fashion?

The book was a little ahead of it's time, so I haven't been doing ethical fashion related stuff full-throttle since 2012. I mostly promote the book through public speaking -- it's the best way to bring what's on the pages to life and get people thinking. I have given dozens upon dozens of lectures and talks at universities, high schools and community groups over the years, and I am slated to do at least six talks this spring. There's real momentum behind the ethical fashion movement now, so I feel like this year and last were probably my most active since the book's release. I try to stay engaged on social media with the ethical fashion community as well. In addition to the documentary and the follow-up book, I am also running a secondhand designer clothing business via eBay and a textile and fashion reuse lab in Brooklyn. I have a lot of irons in the fire. Too many, on most days.

In your eyes, how has the fashion industry changed since 2012?

I think perceptions of the fashion industry have changed a lot. There's now a broad popular understanding of fast fashion, and why it's problematic. There's a general sense that the global fashion industry is bad for the environment and often for human rights as well. I was filming recently with some activists in front of a Forever 21 in Los Angeles, and a college student immediately walked up to us and said, "Yeah, fast fashion is bad. I work at Forever 21 because I need a job, but I know it's not a good company." That would have never happened in 2012! Of course, there are also thousands of ethical fashion companies around the world now, many of them small but growing. Everlane and Reformation have made the concepts of transparency and sustainability cool or accessible for Millennials.

Within the fashion industry, I'm most excited about how digital technology is changing and will continue to change the way we consume. You follow me on Twitter, so you know how much of an advocate I am of resale and rental sites / apps. I think the future of fashion is shared, in the sense of circulating items from user to user until their useful life is over. We will have to continue to shift consumer behavior to fully realize the sharing economy's potential within fashion -- Americans tend to think of wearing someone else's clothes as dirty or something poor people do. That's really got to change, and I think it's finally beginning to do so.  

Speaking of change, with the new Trump administration here in the United States; what are your thoughts on his trade executive orders and the overall reception (or lack thereof) of his ideas and rhetoric from the fashion industry?

As someone who's written extensively on global economics and studied and researched trade in the U.S., China and Mexico, I can say with confidence that Trump's view on global economics and trade is dangerously inaccurate. He sees globalization as a zero sum game where the U.S. lost and China and Mexico won. The U.S. is of course still the world's largest economy. Growing inequality and a lagging middle class is a phenomenon that's playing out around the world, not just here, and it has as much to do with technology and automation as it does with the way trade deals are structured. I don't think it's a bad idea to renovate NAFTA, but only if the goal is to build environmental and worker protections into the agreement (the original does not include anything like that) but that's not Trumps's intention. So my guess is he'll change it in a way that's devastating to the U.S. economy and makes us less competitive and less innovative. Trump just wants us to go back to the 1950s or 1980s when manufacturing employment was a significant portion of the population, but the world he's trying to recreate no longer exists.

…and to push boundaries a bit (because I am unafraid), what are your thoughts on his conflicting opinions about resourcing USA companies back to the homeland, while he keeps both his product lines and his daughter Ivanka’s overseas? I, personally, find this baffling and astoundingly hypocritical.

I feel like we've all taken the Made in USA worship thing a bit too far, myself included. Now we have an autocrat running the country because he promised to bring factories back to America. We need to take a long, hard look at what we hope to gain from on-shoring certain industries and evaluate how and if it's even possible and how and if it's going to meet our wider goals of higher employment and a stronger middle class. I think in a lot of instances, on-shoring is not the answer we're looking for, especially if it means making the U.S. uncompetitive by adding trade protectionism to our industries. 

Instead, I think the U.S. should continue to focus on building advanced manufacturing here, which is something Obama put a lot of money into. That's partially why the portion of U.S. GDP going to manufacturing is as high as it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Advanced manufacturing relies on technology, automation and advanced skills. And then we should continue to grow our boutique, artisan, small-batch manufacturers who represent quality and craftsmanship. I really don't want to see stores like Kohl's and Target make all their clothes here again. And if we start clamoring to see something like that here, we need to really ask ourselves what the motivation is.  

People like you and I work tirelessly to spread a message about the repercussions of fast fashion and the waste it causes and also by encouraging consumers to shop more ethically; how will this work when there are companies and world leaders who simply refuse to withdraw because the payoff is so huge? To these people, what would you say?

I don't want to see an end to outsourcing. Trade and globalization are a good thing. But with this global world we live in, we simply have to figure out how to regulate environmental standards and enforce living wages in garment factories that are currently generating huge, unprecedented profits. I also think it's fine to partially subsidize high-end, high-skilled garment factories in the U.S. that still have specialized tailoring skills for example -- we want those skills to survive. It's also important for the Garment Industry in NYC to survive as it's an important tool for design and innovation in the U.S.

When people take the problems with fast fashion into consideration and decide that they want to change their buying habits, a lot of people’s minds go straight into “I can’t afford that” mode. I’ve even heard arguments that go as far as saying that it’ll never work (ethical fashion as a first thought for consumers) because consumers are so engraved with prices offered by retailers like Target and Forever 21. What are your thoughts on this consumer mindset?

I think it's a challenge. American consumers in particular are trained to buy a lot of clothing over the course of a year, which makes them very sensitive to price. How could you spend $200 on a single ethical item if you're then going to turn around buy 68 items per year (the American average)? Who can afford that!

I think there are probably two different potential markets for ethical fashion. Women who are a little further into adulthood; they're making their own money and they're looking to build a wardrobe and buy higher-quality pieces. For them, ethical fashion is not as hard of a sell. For that person, it's about spreading awareness that buying higher-quality pieces that you truly love is really satisfying and such an incredible source of joy and happiness. That's part of the reason I'm writing the ethical style guide, as people aren't really given the skills anymore to shop well. It's a process and a journey going from thinking like a fast fashion consumer to thinking like someone who wants to build the wardrobe of their dreams. Those are two different mindsets and demand two different approaches to spending. 

For teenagers and college students, someone is going to have to come along and basically create a Whole Foods of ethical fashion, something that has enough buying power and economies of scale to keep prices down. Young people are either spending their parents' money or they don't have a lot of disposable income. And they are under a lot of social pressure to keep up with trends and shop a lot. So, yeah, whoever can figure that out will be hugely successful I think!

Thank you so much for your time! What can we all expect next from you?

Ethical style and shopping guide coming soon!

 To stay up-to-date with Elizabeth, you can follow here on Twitter here, bookmark her official website here and while you’re at it, purchase Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost Of Cheap Fashion here!

Certain elements, such as links and photos, may have been removed from the original version of the above article.

[fashionhistoryandsustainability]

Frameworks and background information for understanding sustainability:

Adams, W.M. (2009). Green Development (third edition). Routledge, Abingdon.

Cloud, J., & Jackson, M. (2016). Education for a sustainable future: Benchmarks for individual and social learning. Journal of Sustainability Education, 14, 1-29. Retrieved from http://www.susted.com/wordpress/content/education-for-a-sustainable-future-benchmarks-for-individual-and-social-learning_2016_04/

Elliott, J. (2012). What is sustainable development. In An introduction to sustainable development (pp. 8 - 56). New York, NY: Routledge.

Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032004003

Haraway, D.J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (1st ed.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.

Jackson, T. (2011). Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. London: Routledge.

Jones, A., Buntting, C., Hipkins, R., McKim, A., Conner, L., & Saunders, K. (2012). Developing students’ futures thinking in science education. Research in Science Education, 42(4), 687-708. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-011-9214-9

Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Martens, P. (2006). Sustainability: science or fiction?. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 2(1), 36-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2006.11907976

Nolt, J. (2015). Environmental ethics for the long term. New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Ostrom, E. (2009). A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems. Science, 325(5939), 419-422. DOI: 10.1126/science.1172133

Sharma, A., & Buxton, C. (2018). A sustainability science-based framework for science education. In The Natural World and Science Education in the United States (pp. 169-206). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Sharma, A. (2020). Phronetic science for wicked times. Journal for Activist Science and Technology Education, 11(2), 7-15. https://doi.org/10.33137/jaste.v11i2.34532

Stephens, J. C., Hernandez, M. E., Román, M., Graham, A. C., & Scholz, R. W. (2008). Higher education as a change agent for sustainability in different cultures and contexts. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 9(3), 317–338. DOI 10.1108/14676370810885916

Sources specifically related to sustainable fashion:

Black, S. (2008). Eco-chic: the fashion paradox. London: Black Dog.

Black, S. (2015). Fashion and Sustainability. In Bibliographical Guides. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Retrieved July 27, 2021, from http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474280655-BG008

Clark, H. (2008). SLOW + FASHION—an Oxymoron—or a Promise for the Future ...? Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, 12(4), 427–446. https://doi.org/10.2752/175174108X346922

Cline, E. (2012). Overdressed: the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion. New York: Portfolio/Penguin.

Dickson, M., Eckman, M., & Loker, S. (2009). Social responsibility in the global apparel industry. New York: Fairchild Books.

Fletcher, K. & Lynda, G. (2012). Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change. London: Lawrence King.

Fletcher, K. (2014 [2008]). Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys. London: Earthscan.

Fletcher, K. (2016). Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion, London: Routledge.

Fletcher, K. (2018).‘The Fashion Land Ethic: Localism, Clothing Activity, and Macclesfield’, Fashion Practice, Volume 10, Issue 2, 139–159. DOI: 10.1080/17569370.2018.1458495

Fletcher, K. (2019). Wild Dress: Clothing & the Natural World, Axminster: Uniformbooks.

Fletcher, K. and Tham, M., eds. (2015). Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Gwilt, A. & Rissanen, T., eds. (2011). Shaping Sustainable Fashion: Changing the way we make and use fashion. London: Earthscan.

Holroyd, A. (2017). Folk fashion: understanding homemade clothes. I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.

Rivoli, P. (2005). The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of World Trade. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Slater, K. (2003). Environmental Impact of Textiles. Cambridge, U.K. and Boca Raton, FL: Woodhead.

Tham, M. (2015). ‘The futures of futures studies in fashion’ in K. Fletcher and M. Tham (eds), Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

[parresafmp]

Seasonal  Holidays

Figure One

Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion--and the Future of Clothes By Dana Thomas  

The book Begins with a historical overview of the textile industry, The author of the book Donna Thomas has made a clear blunt and direct attack on fashion industry,  Thomas  solely lays blame at the fashion industry's door step not the consumers, however she does invite the consumer to change their ways. The most interesting and relatable chapters were sweatshops in Los Angeles and Bangladesh. Interviewing workers, advocates, and survivors of sweatshop disaster. She also discusses better technologies within the industry, which can eliminate the worst jobs and limit the environmental impact,  as well as discussing in depth the new fashion technologies available within fashion industry these include printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling—even lab-grown material    The author Stella McCartney has long been a proponent of sustainability in the fashion industry: her company has been cruelty-free from the start, and in 2010 she banned known carcinogen PVC from her products. 

Figure one

https://wiip.co/New-Board.b-MMgl6W8l8YP5TPjVG1z/

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion By Elizabeth L. Cline

Cheap fashion has essentially altered the way most of us dress.  cheap fast  fashion chain stores such Primark and  H&M now offer the latest trends from catwalk at unbelievably low prices. Fast fashion retailers are producing clothing at large volumes which results in lower price production and higher sale profits, these chain stores have turn clothing into a disposable good. 

The author looks into the true nature of the fast fashion  and the force behind it,  she traces back the rise of cheap clothing stores,  and the death independent retail­ers, she also looks at the society obsession with cheap and shopping habits.

She finishes her book with three simple principles:

1. Buy clothes you 110% LOVE. 2. Don’t buy too much. 3. Make great use of what you do buy.

Slave to fashion By: Safia Minney

Figure two

A collection of interviews and micro-documentaries with the men, women and children caught in slavery, making the clothes sold on our high streets.  The author  also documents the history of sweatshops, looking into their decline, fall, and eventual return. This book also looked at sustaibale fashion brand.