Fashion – Pike & Hurricane

The horror of fast fashion industry in the globalized world

Elena Wasserzier — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 13:04:14 +0000

The “I want it, I got it” mentality

We shop it, we toss it. Only after a couple of years, or in some cases months. But do we, as the consumer, really consider the working conditions under which our acid-washed denims or cosy coats have been produced? How little money can be spent, without any second thoughts, on numerous pieces of clothing in stores like Primark compared to how little money is received on the other end by the seamstresses?

What is fast fashion?

The term “fast fashion” depicts the speed, at which clothing designs are drafted, come into product and are available for purchase in stores worldwide and online. Fast fashion is mainly characterised by huge amounts, low profit margin, fast-paced production and extremely cheap and disposable items.

Globalisation contributes significantly to the rise of the acceleration of fast fashion, because open markets are existing all over the world and industrialisation is on its peak. Furthermore, the consumer is also responsible for the well-known “I just want that, so badly” mentality, following weekly trends which of course give us instant satisfaction but also lead to mass consumption and an unreasonable shopping of items, we do not need. In most cases the clothing is produced cheaply, hence, it does not last long which then again sends us in an infinite spiral of shopping and tossing.

Developing countries as financial remedy?

We have to ask ourselves why our everyday life clothing is produced in developing countries such as Bangladesh, China or Vietnam. It would make so much more sense for huge apparel companies like Zara or Primark to produce the clothes in the countries they sell it to, right?

Many people would like to believe so, but the EU labour law regulates working conditions that are ought to accomplish high employment and social protection, improve the living and working conditions and help to build a healthy work community. Therefore, the payment for seamstresses is way higher and more expensive for fashion companies in European locations.

Here, globalisation comes into play: To avoid having to pay their workers reasonable salaries many fast fashion companies set up their manufacturing business in Bangladesh. Production there is even cheaper than in China, the previous number one for cheap fashion production, because wages in China have started to rise due to the country’s overall increase in wealth. The minimum wage for Chinese garment workers fluctuates between 100-200 USD whereas Bangladesh’s seamstresses may earn as little as 38 USD per month due to the country’s general lack of regulations.

And of course, the low wages it pays its garment workers make it really attractive to fashion companies giving them an opportunity to reduce their costs and make more profit. The minimum wage in the garment sector, remains one of the lowest in the world, even though the government in Bangladesh raised it as a result to the Rana Plaza collapse.

Mass consumerism and its results

The irresponsible cheap prices of fast fashion clothing brands promote mass consumption solely by their price tags. An obvious example would be the clothing store Primark, where people often leave the store with ten or more items in a huge shopping bag, bragging about their yields. And this word-of-mouth recommendations clearly work for Primark.

Often in our society, clothing and “shopping” is considered a hobby without second thoughts regarding the consequences globally, economically or the exploitation of the seamstresses. After all, it is always a question of demand and supply and the more people that fall for “unethical cheap thrills” the more seamstresses suffer under bad conditions and get exploited for an inhumane minimum wage, often not even able to care for their families. “A report by Sabina Dewans Just Jobs network found that the typical wage in Bangladesh was just 14% of a living wage that would provide for the basic needs of a worker“

Labourers life as commodity: the Rana Plaza collapse

The tragedy of the collapse Rana Plaza which was housing five garment factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh that happened in the year 2013. The collapse of the building killed over 1,132 people and injured more than 2,500. As a result of the disaster, the world finally noticed the poor labour conditions of workers in the garment sector in Bangladesh where millions of low-paid people, most of them children and women, are working in an unsafe work environment with a high occurrence of work-related accidents and deaths, as well as diseases caused by toxic chemicals. Most of the factories are not meeting international standards required by building and construction laws. Therefore, deaths from fire incidents and buildings, which are caving in happen on a regular basis. The worker and their labour are considered disposable and convertible, a commodity to reach fast production under cheap salary.

Alternatives

After all these bloodcurdling news we should ask ourselves how we, as consumers, can change these circumstances. Well, after all it is in our hands: Do we want to act based on laissez-faire principles and just continue to mindlessly consume, or do we want to try and alter the conditions for seamstresses and rebel against this exploiting, inhumane system that treats labourers as commodity and only sees the product and not the person behind it?

To be more political and set strong examples one can always use the streets as a form of protest. Demonstrations against working conditions in third world countries are highly common and frequently made use of. Many seamstresses in Bangladesh, their families and families of the deceased used the uproar after the Rana Plaza incident to protest against their working conditions and to express their mourning.

Another method would be to boycott the fast fashion industry and brands like Primark or Zara that produce their disposable items in countries like Bangladesh under inhumane labour conditions. Thrift shopping in second hand stores is a great, and budget-friendly, alternative. This way we will not support the fast fashion industry and its huge money-stacking, capitalist companies.

Slow fashion brands like Reformation try to set a new example with ethical clothing which, however, does come with a price tag. Reformation sets their aims in using eco-friendly materials and reducing its carbon footprint by manufacturing many of its products close to where they are sold. This means the production, manufacturing and designing takes place close to the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles

Along with every item, their website shows how many gallons of water were used to produce it. Additionally, they are working towards paying 100% living wages extensively. About a third of Reformation’s management team are women, people with a disability or minorities.

Another improvement towards conscious clothing and shopping is the German green button, which since 2018 stands for ethical work conditions, fair fashion and better payment. It is also known as the “world’s first government sustainable textile label” drafted by the federal government in Germany and will make it easier for buyers to recognise ethical fashion. The seal is only awarded to vendors that comply with social and economic minimum standards, for instance minimum wage and sufficient health protection. Certified by external institutions, companies have to prove that they align with those standards to obtain the green button for their clothing.

And if one still cannot resist to buy the cute top presented on the mannequin in the next forever 21 store, one should be aware of the true cost of that little piece of polyester and cotton. There should always be a regard towards the buyers consciousness. In the end, it is always a question of demand and supply.

by Elena Wasserzier

Photo credits

Dhaka Savar Building Collapse, Jaber Al Nahian, CC BY-SA 2.0

BANGLADESH-BUILDING, coolloud,CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Fast Fashion Industry

Eligija Rukšytė — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 19:16:31 +0000

The “glory” of fashion

Sometimes a big sign that says “SALE” in capital letters blinds us from thinking about what lies beneath the process of making and promoting clothes from big well-known companies that we wear every day.

Well planned marketing strategies

The clothing industry is one where everyone around the world participates every day- whether you wear clothes, buy them, work in a clothing store, a factory which produces them or even as a designer. It has been this way for many years but recently this production went from simply making and selling clothes for everyday wear to a dangerous and manipulating one. This is where the term of Fast Fashion comes along. Worldwide companies, that create inexpensive clothes modified from high end designers, have created an illusion for the average person to have a need to buy new clothes more often than needed.

Big brands went from introducing new clothing items every season to bringing new collections every two weeks. Their marketing campaigns trick us into thinking that we need to have those new clothes in order to fit into society. Commercials broadcast empowering, confident personalities with clothes from certain brands in order to paint the picture that with these clothes you could be the person from the advertisement. Through this, companies play with consumers’ emotions. Everyone is seeking happiness and, according to their model, you can achieve it by simply buying a new T-shirt.

The “affordable prices” that fast fashion endorses make regular consumers believe that they are able to buy more and even enjoy an elite status. But the truth is that it makes people spend excessively and the ones with all the profit are the owners of the companies.

All in order to make profit

The paradox of buying clothes in order to feel better, confident in existing society is that, in reality, the people who make these clothes are not happy at all. A large part of fast fashion clothing is made in low-income countries. A person might often see that majority of garments from brands like ZARA, H&M, Mango, Benetton state on the back of the item that they are made in countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, India. Why do well-known clothing companies produce clothes in countries in which their market is a lot smaller compared to USA or Europe? Wouldn’t it be easier to make them in places where these clothes are actually sold?

Well, the answer to that is simple. For them it is cheaper to outsource production to other countries around the world instead of producing them in the country they are sold. Since low-income countries have low minimum wages, there are unclear collective, labour, child, maternity rights. This serves as an ideal environment for garment production in the textile industry.

Modern slavery

In Bangladesh, eighty percent of clothing factory workers are young women who get paid from 20 to 50 cents per hour. Not only that, some employees get yelled at, or if they are complaining, even beaten. Let’s not forget to mention that employees work in bad condition buildings which often have poor ventilation systems that cause people to inhale chemicals and work in excessive heat. They breathe serious toxins which are used in order to make or die a clothing item.

In addition to already working minimum 10 hours per day, high temperatures make workers more tired and weak. In Cambodia – a country which massively produces garments for fast fashion companies – there are no temperature limits settled that factories have to follow. There have been many reports of people, mostly women, fainting. In this modern textile industry people are exploited as they are treated as slaves. A well known example of poor working conditions is when Rana Plaza, an eight-story commercial building contained clothing factories collapsed in 2013. This incident is considered to be one of the deadliest in the fashion industry. It took away 1134 lives and got approximately 2500 people injured. All of this happened because the building was in critical condition, but no one bothered to do anything about it. Survivors of this tragedy say that they had informed their supervisors about the cracks in the walls several times. In this case production seemed more important than human lives.

Whose fault is this?

Overall, the reality is that this is how fast fashion brands manage to supply new clothes fast and at an affordable price. A study done in 2014 shows that approximately from 60 to 75 million people work in the textile, clothing and footwear sector industry. It is safe to assume that this number is even bigger today. In order to gain the most profit with the lowest cost, companies do not invest into adequate working conditions. On one hand, it could be said that it is good that clothing factories give jobs and opportunities for people to earn money in low-income countries. However, the environment and the salary these workers are receiving is not acceptable. The only reason why governments are not stepping in is because companies relocate production sites to other countries if they make some drastic changes. However, society, by being ignorant and drawn into this circle of constantly buying new items contribute to the fast fashion industry. Even though being mass consumerism is an outcome of well planned marketing campaigns, a person ultimately still has a choice on how he wants to spend his money. The question, then, arises whether we should we blame companies, the government or each one of us.

Let’s try to fix this mess!

As this topic is slowly becoming a discussable issue, new movements, NGOs and private companies are eager to improve the whole clothing industry. Livia Firth is a founder of EcoAge– a consultancy firm that advises clothing brands how to run their businesses in a sustainable way. She is an activist herself who criticizes fast fashion industry as she hopes for justice. In her speeches she blames fast fashion companies stating that if there was no fast fashion, humanity would not have to face environmental issues and people who work in this industry would not be treated as slaves but with the same respect as everyone else. As companies are operating in a capitalist system, their main goal is to make profit and to be compatible among others and they reach their goal through cheap labor.

With people like Livia Firth and NGOs who openly speak about problems arising from extreme consumer capitalism, there is hope that radical consumerism and exploitation of people could be stopped.

by Eligija Ruksyte

Photo Credits

Banksy black friday, John Jones (CC BY-ND 2.0)

L, ZARA (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Trades Union Congress, Rana Plaza disaster anniversary action on Oxford Street (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

2013-07-09 05.26.46, NYU Stern BHR (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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Fashion, Trump and Other Stories

Ana Carvalho — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 19:15:50 +0000

Fashion is often undermined and labeled superficial, concepts such as trends and style are considered temporal and inconsequential. But if clothes transmit a message, shouldn’t they be as important as words? In that case what kind of messages are we buying? And what kind of messages are we transmitting?

We often hear: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Indeed, there is a lot more that can be said by reading it rather than by only looking at it. Nevertheless, excluding the importance of the outside appearance would be a mistake.

Everyday we wake up and prepare ourselves to go out in the world. This decision might be conscious or unconscious, but a decision nonetheless. Occasions and people are carefully considered in order to obtain the perfect outfit. A blazer means professional, red sensual or confident and even those Sunday lazy pants, that we are all so embarrassed about, are telling others something: we couldn’t care less.

Fashion is often undermined and labeled superficial, concepts such as trends and style are considered temporal and inconsequential. But if clothes transmit a message shouldn’t they be as important as words? In that case what kind of messages are we buying? And what kind of messages are we transmitting?

Thinking of fashion as an act of language, we can analyze the process of dressing oneself as a discourse and as a performance. As if the act of using clothes is indivisibly telling and being. Each moment is a different play where we choose who we want to be and what we want to say, just by the way we dress. For instance, a knight wouldn’t be a knight without his shiny iron armour and pointy, lethal sword.

Susanna Schrobsdorf pondered Hillary Clinton’s clothing choice : ”You can trace her rise and fall in white pantsuits. She wore white to accept the Democratic nomination, at her last debate and then, finally, at the Inauguration of Donald Trump, where it was anything but the white of surrender”––the conscious use of a contrasting colour in a, usually, “all-dark-suit” environment portraits Hillary as daring and brave, poised and calm. However the story behind the outfit is not only about who’s wearing it or the combinations of elements and colours but, also about how the combination of the entity and the outfit are interacting with the surrounding environment.

This means that, especially in a political environment, fashion discourses can also be manipulated and altered to the benefit or detriment of an idea or of someone. An example of this is the research done by Cambridge Analytica during Trump’s presidential campaign. People buy clothes which they identify themselves with. So through algorithms on social media, based on fashion and music preferences, a personality estimation chart was made. Wrangler, Hollister and Lee buyers were linked to low levels of openness and mistrust and, therefore, easier to engage with pro-Trump advertisement. They were, then, targeted and bombarded with such. In the end “customers and voters are the same”, either wearing a specific brand or voting for someone, they are buying into the same (identification) message.

The president of the United States wasn’t the first to use fashion as a resource of power. Long before him, Louis XIV gave France the fashionable image by which is still known today. While before, Spain had been the European hegemon, the king of France took that place investing in art, theater, music, innovation and fashion, role that he legitimized around the court of Versaille. About 3,000 to 10,000 people were present at the palace everyday, including nobles and artists from all over the world, both eager to know the latest trends as well as be part of the class of influencers, which made them perfect foreign affairs audience.

Le Roi Soleil was indeed the first to introduce fashion templates portraying the ridiculously lavish noble attire, crafted with silk, velvet, pearls, ruffles and vivid colours. Attires and accessories would change according to season and to the occasion, which meant that in the same day a noble would have changed a minimum of four times. Even the act of dressing and undressing the king was ritualized as symbol of status and power. Fashion journalist Alexander Fury stated: “His courtiers spent so much time dolling themselves up, chasing after the rights to wear red heels and remove the king’s chemise at night, that they couldn’t think about overthrowing him”

By showcasing Versailles as the cultural European centre, Louis XIV re-enforced and spread the discourse of a new and glorified French identity, nationally and internationally.

Another example of enhancing political power through fashion is set by Queen Victoria during her reign. The strict moral values of the time were a blueprint of every outfit composed of tight corsets, high turtle necks and long sleeves. Due to the queen’s grief for the loss of prince Albert, even the mourning period had a dress code, especially strict for the women, composed of first mourning, up until one year of being a widow, second mourning (nine months) and third mourning which lasted three months. The fashion was black and progressively more adorned and by the end of the two years women could follow a more fashionable model of dress in mauve, white or gray. In the case of not following the convention, the widow would be socially shunned. Soon enough the whole world was dressed in mourning with the Queen.

Since the beginning of times human beings have used adornments and markings on their bodies both to differentiate and identify themselves. We could go as far as the cave man’s age and argument on someone’s wealth and status based on which kind of fur they would use. Clothes, even though ordinary, or maybe because of that, play an extremely important role in the way we see ourselves and in the way others see us.

In the end, no matter the period, fashion will always be bias. So we might want to ask: What kind of message am I wearing today?

by Ana Carvalho

Photo Credits:

Fashions in hair, 1788 – The Academie de Coiffure, Paris

Pussy Riot (video – make America great again) – in The 405

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It’s fast, it’s cheap, it’s fashion

monta.nitisa — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 22:28:39 +0000

“Look what I bought, it was such a bargain!” and “I heard that the sales season is starting tomorrow, we must go shopping” are just some harmless phrases that we as a consumer society have gotten used to. The fashion industry might seem mundane especially in today’s world when clothes are so cheap and easily available, but in fact the fashion industry has grown into a 3 trillion dollar industry with a profound impact on environmental sustainability, economic inequality and various other aspects of our everyday lives.

We are constantly reminded about all of this, but we are not really given any options on what we might be able to do about it. Recycle? Turn lights off when leaving the room? I found myself feeling powerless against this issue.

But what if I told you that we actually hold the power? That power is what we wear every day – our clothing. What we are not told about is the fact that the apparel industry has actually become one of the most polluting industries in the world, moreover this is the industry were child labour and forced labour is assembling.

Industry worth trillions

Over the past several decades globalisation has continued at an accelerated speed, trade barriers have softened, enabling major brands to outsource the production in pursuit of cheap materials and even cheaper labour. This is the rise of a system in which fashion is produced at low cost, high volume and incredibly high speed in terms of time taking from design to hitting the shop floor. In other words; this is fast fashion.

How does this cycle work? People find new trendy clothes, they fall in love with the design and buy them at extremely low cost. Then either when the low quality clothing falls apart or there is no longer a use for it (because, hey – it is already out of fashion, right?) it is been thrown away and people go buy more items. According to EPA (The United States Environmental Protection Agency), 13.1 million tons of textile are trashed every year and only 15 percent or 2 million tons are recovered to reuse or recycle.

Aftermath of consumerism

Often, the products are cut in one location, assembled in another and have to cross multiple oceans before they end up in our hands. Your super trendy shirt had a long trip across the world in a container ship, which was fuelled up by fossil fuels. That is an often forgotten aspect of globalisation. Comes to no surprise that it has been estimated that fashion industry itself is responsible for 10 percent of the world’s carbon footprint. But the story does not end here.

The manufacturing processes is where things get distressing. Firstly, each kilogram of cotton (did you know that cotton is the fourth largest pesticide consuming crop?) leaves behind 3.3 kilos of carbon emissions. Thus, it takes 2700 liters of water to make just one cotton shirt and that is enough for one person to drink for 900 days. Secondly, 90 percent of dye houses in the developing world release the dye directly into local freshwater sources, and that eventually infers the industry of apparel as the second greatest polluter of fresh water globally. Finally, polyester, a polluting plastic made from fossil fuels, is now in over half of our clothing and is used four times as much as cotton.

Consumer capitalism

The whole fashion industry connects millions and millions of people all over the world – starting from agriculture and manufacture and ending with retail. It is no secret that today in 2017 we have some of the highest levels of inequality and environmental destruction the world has ever experienced.

As much as global capitalist economy depends on extensive consumption in the well-off countries, it also depends on extensive cheap labour in less developed countries. Therefore, there is no such a thing as individual or personal consumption – your consumption affects us all.

Consumption is a tool for maintaining the global capitalist economy. We must find an approach to continue to work in a globalised world that appreciates our planet and people, which are the fundamentals for growth.

Buy or not to buy?

Wearing the same clothes over and over again does not sound that charming, does it? What to do then?

- Try to take better care of the products that we own already.

- Be adventurous – go on a gem hunting in secondhand shops.

- Choose ethical brands.
- Buy less. It is worth asking yourself a few questions before making the decision. Do you really need the item? Is it good quality and durable? Is it made from sustainable material? Was it made fairly and humanely?

By Christiana Nitiša

Photo Credits:

Venere degli stracci, Morry39, CC BY-SA 4.0

Mannequins, SofiLayla, CC0

Fashion shopping bag, webandi, CC0

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