Fashionopolis. The Secrets Behind The Clothes We Wear by Dana Thomas

Shopping for clothing is a favourite activity the world over. So it's not surprising it is a three trillion dollar industry which produces about one hundred billion items every year. But as you walk through stores with racks of clothing, have you ever wondered how and where the clothing you buy was made? Do you ever think about who made that garment you just purchased? 

In Fashionopolis, Dana Thomas describes how our clothing today is made by a manufacturing process that has been corrupted by greed causing harm to people and the environment.  The fashion business is constructed like a pyramid with haute couture and bespoke fashion at the top, ready-to-wear clothing that is found in department stores and boutiques (Gucci and Ann Taylor) in the middle, and fast fashion - cheap, trendy clothing found in H&M, Zara, and Joe Fresh (a Canadian retailer).  It is fast fashion that most of us buy and it is the most problematic. 

To understand the modern fashion industry, Thomas begins by going back to the Industrial Revolution in 1771 with Richard Arkwright's opening of the world's first water-powered textile mill near Manchester, England. Arkwright combined two inventions, the carding machine and the cotton jenny to spin cotton into yarn and then made yarn into fabric. The factories employed poor men, women and children for low wages in dangerous working conditions. Shifts were long, the air was filled with cotton fibres and workers lived on factory property in brick houses. The mills were so profitable, that by 1790, Arkwright owned nearly two hundred mills in Great Britain.  At this time, clothing was still hand-sewn.

This factory model was imported to the United States by Francis Cabot Lowell in the early 1800's and it was profitable because Black slaves planted and harvested the cotton. After 1830, the invention of the lockstitch sewing machine meant clothing could now be made faster. Eventually large factories were located in the Eastern United States, in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania where underwear and work clothes were made. In New York, in the late 1800's clothing copied from couture designs in Paris were made by European immigrants who knew how to sew. Eventually, there were so many garment factories, that whole sections of cities became known as the "Garment District". Until 1980, most clothing worn by Americans was made in the United States, but that would change with the coming of free trade.

Thomas then moves on to explore tariffs, protectionism and free trade. In particular, she  focuses on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Those who supported NAFTA believed that without tariffs, good would cost less, and there would be more jobs in the U.S. However, opponents believed that factories would relocated to the country where the cost of production was the cheapest, in this case Mexico. As it turned out, opponents were correct. As the process of globalization continued, manufacturers relocated factories from North America and Europe to Southeast Asia, China, Turkey, India and Pakistan. While the prices of other goods we purchase increased, this was not the case with clothing. In fact, prices dropped, leading consumers to buy more, wear them less and throw them out faster.

From this point on, Thomas goes on to outline the cost of fast fashion to workers in illegal sweatshops in the United States which employ illegal immigrants, as well as workplace abuse in factories in the developing world. She also traces the history of fashion's abuse of workers, the use of slaves and child labor in factories both in the Great Britain and in the United States. 

There is a fascinating chapter, titled Dirty Laundry which explores the making of blue jeans, both the history of jeans, the use of indigo dye and a revealing look into the jeans finishing industry in Vietnam and China. Thomas recounts the history of the Levis Strauss company to show what can happen when a business loses its conscience and becomes focused on profit.

This leads into Part II of the book which focuses on how the fashion industry can be reset, producing clothing in an honest way that doesn't damage the environment or harm workers. Thomas profiles many different people who are trying to do fashion differently such as designers Natalie Chanin and Billy Reid. Chanin and Reid are doing "slow fashion", that is slowing down production of fashion, using locally produced textiles and dye for their designs. In this chapter readers are introduced to many new concepts related to slow fashion such as reshoring which is bringing back the manufacturing that moved to other countries after NAFTA and rightshoring which is the reopening of those abandoned factories that were closed due to NAFTA and installing the newest technology to produce clothing. 

In Part III, Thomas highlights designed Stella McCartney's  efforts to change the fashion industry for the better. Many of McCartney's materials are vegan based, produced and sold in buildings that are environmentally friendly. Fashionopolis also explores the work to recycle fabrics of discarded clothing. Thomas writes that since "...the Industrial Revolution, we have been consuming mass-manufactured products in a linear manner, like a timeline. The product is made; we buy the product, we use the product; we throw away the product. Then we start again....It's a straight line, with a beginning, a middle and end...In a circular system, products are continually recycled. reborn, and reused." To do this we need to figure out how to recycle fashion which is predominantly made from some combination of polyester and cotton. Stacey Flynn states that "we fail to innovate on so many levels because we've been reliant on nineteenth-century equipment' - spinners, looms, sewing machines - 'and the way we think about that equipment is with a twentieth-century mindset - that resources are infinite, that cash is the only thing that matters."

Discussion

Fashionopolis: The Secrets Behind The Clothes We Wear is an eye-opening look into the world of fast fashion, how it all began, and what might be done to change the industry so that it is more sustainable and ethical.

In this young readers edition, Thomas describes how with the Industrial Revolution, the making of clothing moved out of the home and into the factory, becoming fast fashion, and an industry filled with questionable practices. The fashion industry has become a "business obsessed with profits, corrupting the supply chain, from raw materials to labor. That greed has given us offshoring, layoffs, poorly paid and treated workers, shoddy factories, tragedies."

Fashionopolis also features those designers and insiders who are trying to change the industry and its practices, restarting the fashion and textile industries in the United States by sourcing locally, ethically produced textiles and dyes and "slowing" down fashion. Thomas explains new terms such as "false economy" and "right shoring" in an easy-to-understand way and offers readers ways they too can help to change the fashion industry by purchasing fewer new clothes, wearing vintage and secondhand, by washing and repairing the clothing they currently own, as well as learning to sew and knit. There are some new ideas such as renting clothing too.

 

Hopefully, Fashionopolis will encourage young readers think twice before they shop at Ardene, Old Navy or the many other fast fashion outlets. Fashionopolis is persuasive in its presentation, filled with interesting details about how our clothes are made and offers concrete suggestions for a more sustainable, ethical fashion industry, if we all do our part.

 

Book Details:

Fashionopolis: The Secrets Behind The Clothes We Wear by Dana Thomas
New York:  Dial Books For Young Readers       2022
196 pp.