From Rags to Riches
From rags to riches
Sara Marsico
We have certainly all heard about fast fashion and its scandals. How unethical their processes are, from the very beginning of the manufacturing of clothes to the discarding of millions of tons of clothes in landfills every single day. Mass consumerism started growing in the 70s/80s, and from there, once deregulation policies started to kick in, practically every fashion company turned to outsourcing. For context, in the 1960s 95% of the clothes sold in the United States was produced in the United States, while now that number is down to 2 or 3% maximum. It was just cheaper for them to produce clothes in countries where they were legally allowed to, unfortunately, pay barely liveable wages while letting people - both adults and minors - work in deplorable, often life threatening conditions. The quality of clothes decreased, while their consumption increased exponentially around the world.
However, we are more or less all aware of the unethicality of fast fashion: cheap clothes will most likely not be made with ethically sourced, high quality and sustainable material, and there will most likely be some form of human and capital exploitation involved. Not that this should happen, but we sort of expect the quality of fast fashion to be poor, we think, oh, this piece was probably made in an outsourced factory in horrible working conditions, but well, it’s so cheap and bad, it’s obvious. What we often don’t think about is when a piece of clothing starts becoming high quality, almost excellence, when it is produced in a richer country. When we see, for example, “Made in California”, “Made in Italy”, our mind feels more at peace. We don’t think about the exploitation it took to produce the piece anymore. We think that it’s not possible, it’s such good material, there’s regulations in these countries, it’s not that easy to exploit workers, right? To some extent, we might think correctly. The exact purpose of outsourcing was finding a cheaper way to produce something in bigger quantities, and this applies to anything, not only clothes. It must be hard for “local” companies to keep up with the competition, right? How are they able to still be giants in the fashion industry, while still producing in “better” conditions, allegedly? Well, the answer is that they don’t. Because, at the end of the day, the regulations are easy to deceive. It’s easy to prove that workers are well paid, if they are forced to sign payrolls with amounts they have never received. In areas where it is not possible to find a better job, it is easy for these fashion giants to set up a small illegal factory, pay miserable wages. But the quality is amazing, excellent, as are the high prices. “Worth it”, for such a valuable piece, except the richness and value of the clothing is only perceived by authoritarian figures of the company.
The “System” that controls all this, that has seen in the fast growth of the fashion industry an opportunity for easy profit, has understood that the model to follow to become as rich as possible is to hide everything that is possible to hide, while the world firmly will believe certain pieces were made by renomated, well treated and paid, fashion designers. There is one episode, described in Roberto Saviano’s economic analysis of the Italian Mafia, “Gomorra”, that surprised me to a point that I thought I was probably too naive to not have thought of this before. We all know the American actress Angelina Jolie, and in 2001, she attended the Oscars wearing a stunning white suit by Dolce&Gabbana, renomated Italian fashion brand. It would seem hard to understand, especially these days, that during such an important event, watched by millions of people, Dolce&Gabbana would dress Jolie in a suit made in one of those illegal, poorly maintained “factories” in the south of Italy - if you can even call them factories, since they are basically just the first floor of an apartment, hosting the entrepreneurs and CEOs of the factories in the higher floors, as if they were aristocracy. And yet, that suit was not made by the hands of a well paid seamster, in a huge, well lit studio. It was made by the highly talented and professional hands of Pasquale (if that is even his real name), a casual man working in those factories, who never knew to whom or where the beautiful suit he was making - for, again, a quite disappointing salary - was directed. If he hadn’t turned on the TV that one day when, casually, the Oscars were airing, he would have never seen the actress wearing his suit. And, from the point of view of the actress, she probably had no idea who he was, who made it, she probably met the designer, and did not suspect a thing. That is how the fashion industry works, leaving a buzz of confusion everywhere it goes, while it is working under our eyes, without us even noticing.
Sources:
https://tpzoo.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/angelina-jolie-the-tailor-and-the-mafia/
https://www.popmatters.com/114889-schmatta-rags-to-riches-to-rags-2496111770.html
“Gomorra”, Roberto Saviano, Chapter II