It is a mild spring evening, and I’m wearing a pair of black leather Paraboots (made in France), a pair of stonewashed A.P.C. denim jeans (made in Macau), a black Stone Island hooded sweatshirt (made in Italy) and a black Noah baseball cap (made in America). I’m a socialist, and I love clothing, and this means that my relationship with clothing and politics is complicated.
Of course, my interest in fashion didn’t begin with politics. I was just a teenager concerned with how I was seen by others, and I wanted to look good. I discovered that three hundred-dollar jeans fit better than fifty-dollar jeans, and to my delight, lasted longer. But the more interest I took in how my jeans fit, the more curious I became about where my well-fitting jeans came from. In my late-night Internet fashion research binges, I learned that the best denim comes from Japan, where a traditional focus on small-batch, higher quality materials meant less impact on the environment with less exploitation. But with the staggeringly high number of chemicals already being used in the denim industry, did my fancy jeans actually net any change? Something like 300 million pairs of jeans are made annually in China’s Xintang province, and as environmental journalist Kathleen Webber notes, their manufacturing involves “a staggering…brew of toxic chemicals and hundreds of gallons of water it takes to dye and finish one pair.”
With numbers this staggering, it’s hard not to get cynical about the industry. Yet, my cynicism, tempered by my wish to keep wearing my favourite jeans sans guilt, led me to dig deeper into how my favourite pair of jeans are made–and at what cost. The oft-repeated but distressing detail that fashion is a massive contributor to climate change is essential when we remember that clothing is, in essence, political—in the collective sense.
The perfect pair: cotton and chemicals
Making one pair of jeans has potentially toxic effects on the environment, factory workers, and farmers. Cotton production indentures farmers deforests vast swaths of land and displaces animals globally. Factories use chemicals like cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead, and copper to dye the jeans; they stay in the water and float around. And this is just the denim industry.
My favourite pair of jeans are 100% cotton. And cotton is a thirsty crop. According to environmentalist Jennifer Hermes, cotton production is responsible for 2.6% of global water usage, and more than a quarter of the total pesticides used in the U.S.A. are on cotton crops. The same 100 companies create like 75% of pollution. Like most people of my generation, I push to recycle my cans and juice bottles, but it’s sobering to remember that our personal consumption and waste is just a drop in the bucket compared to pollution by larger multinational corporations. Sustainability specialist Adrian Desbarats has written that an average of 350,000 tonnes of clothing are thrown out every year in the U.K., and 12 million tonnes of textile waste is generated in North America alone—the equivalent of over 1.7 million adult male elephants. We must be prepared to curb mass over-consumption, and that starts with our individual behaviour, but we must be ready to modify what we consider imperative to our enjoyment, and we must be prepared to organize the masses. Without at least questioning the structures of production, consumption and capitalism, our individual consumption habits will not matter.
Capitalism (and it’s not just fast fashion)
The hard truth is that the fashion industry—from sourcing, manufacturing, transporting, and selling—is inherently exploitative. Buying new clothing contributes to the contamination of water and resources, reinforcing low wages and unacceptable working conditions. Capitalism is like a juicer for the fashion industry; it allows companies to squeeze as much labour as mechanically possible, leaving behind the husk of low wages, unsafe working conditions, and over-consumption. Yet, so much of our focus is on fast fashion, we forget that the same problems are woven into the items behind the glass windows of the most rarefied boutiques.
In fact, high fashion is no less exploitative than fast fashion and the idea that higher prices mean higher wages for workers and better working conditions is a myth. And while it’s true that scale plays a role–fast fashion’s heaps of t-shirts and underwear have a huge and increasingly disposable place in anyone’s wardrobe–but to think that brands like Prada, Burberry, Valentino, and Givenchy do not engage in exploitation is a myth. Criticizing fast fashion is easy. But allowing Fashion (with a capital F) to get off scot-free is harmful. Moreover, it implicitly scapegoats working-class consumers by suggesting that they do more to individualistically fix the problems capitalism exacerbates, starting with labour conditions.
Labour power and struggle
Garment workers hold immeasurable labour power, and solidarity with them, past, present and future, can drastically shape the industry. Over two centuries ago, garment workers in North America began organizing. The history of the garment industry’s labour movement has roots in the dawn of industrialization; it starts with slavery. Slaves were given a meagre fabric allowance for the manufacture of their own clothes, but by the mid-1800s, slave owners began contracting out to Northern cities for ready-to-wear clothes for their slaves—cheap and shoddy uniforms on a massive scale—which allowed more time spent in the fields, and new mass factories in the North to keep up with the demand.
By the 1840s, Francis Cabot Lowell had nearly 8,000 women working in the mills in the North, and by 1843, the “Lowell Girls” united to form the Lowell Female Labor Reform Organization—an unprecedented first step towards the betterment of garment workers—who petitioned for a 10-hour working day. Later in the 19th C, labour federations began forming to protect workers’ rights, but they were predominantly tailored to white male workers; however, strikes by black laundresses and the formation of the United Garment Workers of America marked another significant step in the advancement of labour protections. The International Lady Garment Workers Union is regarded as one of the most important unions in American history, and their first success was in 1907 with the conclusion of a child’s coat makers strike in New York City, wherein the manufacturers’ agreed to hire union workers and shorten the workweek to 55 hours.
The Uprising in 1909 helped the nation understand the inhumane conditions of garment work, but it would take the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire to enact any sort of change. The 146 deaths were unignorable, and basic safety laws exist because of the fire. The “Bread and Roses” strike in Massachusetts the following year—from an abrupt pay cut—led to the adoption of minimum wage laws. While the Roosevelt-era New Deal included the rights to organize and bargain collectivity, workers of all industries were fighting for their fundamental rights. The postwar era led to an influx of sweatshops opening in the U.S. in the 50s and 60s because Americans could suddenly afford to buy more clothing; the industry stepped up production to meet demands, and while sweatshops still exist in the U.S., the majority of manufacturing was outsourced to the global south in the 80s and 90s, so the companies could dodge the minimum wage laws.
The long struggle of garment workers, both at home and abroad, has ensured stability and safety in manufacturing. Garment workers today cater to clientele that are more accustomed to consumption, but we must not forget the human face and hands behind the clothes we purchase. Low wages and lax labour laws drive where our clothes are manufactured, and nearly a century after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing 1,134 garment workers.
Thinking about the people who make my jeans drove home the idea that the battle for living wages and safe working conditions is not individualistic but structural. Knowing what is in your closet is essential; knowing where it came from is necessary, but that’s where individualism ends. To make an interest in “ethical” fashion anything more than personal, one must understand that their activism is bravado without colossal labour reforms. There is a high cost to fashion, and the only way forward is to change how we view labour and organize around garment workers’ precise demands. But framing global garment workers as helpless victims will only widen the labour and wage divisions, and as we’ve seen recent fights for labour equality in places like the Philippines, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, and right here at home, change is possible. If able, we must undertake consumer activism that works in solidarity with global garment workers, farmers, and the like. Anything else is just an empty gesture.
Purchaser Power
Life is not easy for Canadian and American garment workers; there is still much work to be done in fair labour policy, and the progress at home is staggering, but we must advocate for progressive labour policies and direct our purchasing power to brands that support and care for workers—both at home and abroad.
I try to mitigate my impact: I check tags, learn where my clothes come from, who sources the materials and where they come from, and how the manufacturing process works. The good news is that consumer demand for ethical fashion has rippling effects. Many factories used by ethical companies are now subjected to more rigorous criteria, and companies display factory information on their websites with varying degrees of detail. This unequivocally connects clothing to capitalism and production to worker and consumer.
For instance, I know that my hat, made by Noah, was manufactured in America, thanks to its transparent production process outlined on their website. Alas, that transparency comes with a hefty price tag ($80 for a t-shirt and the same for a baseball cap, for example). Patagonia uses Fair Trade Certified organic cotton and works with U.S. factories. Kotn uses Fair Trade Certified organic cotton and has safe and fair labour standards; they have also drastically given back to Egypt (where they get their cotton) by funding farms and schools. We are also seeing an increase in brands upcycling and handcrafting: Bode from New York upcycles antique fabrics into tailor-made quality menswear. More and more, a range of companies, from the luxury to the basic, are trying to mitigate their impact on the environment.
But we mustn’t forget that they are brands under the sway of capitalism; money talks. And appearing to be ethical is good business. Corporations and politicians constantly greenwash us, the ones doing this damage, and they tell the working class that we must do our part to fix this, but by practicing “good” clothing habits, we only focus on one side of the coin.
The price of being an “ethical” shopper
Not all of us can afford the luxury of buying ethically sourced clothing; we all can’t buy local, fair trade, organic cotton. “Green brands” and environmentalists ask not to impulse buy, to know where our clothes come from, to fix the clothes we have instead of throwing them out, to swap with friends and family, to donate to charity, to reuse and recycle when and where we can. Shopping second-hand is always an option, but that too entails a complex system of diverting waste; we must be careful not to clog up the aisles at thrift stores and take away affordable resources from those who benefit most.
If we are to be critical and aware of how fashion works, we must criticize all facets of fashion, from sourcing to the system it exists under. If we reflect on our relationship with fashion—as consumers, socialists, sartorial individuals, and most importantly, workers—then we must reflect on how fashion allows the wheels of capitalism to keep turning.
Getting dressed and looking great in the clothes you enjoy should not come at the cost of exploiting the environment or other people. Nor should ethical consumer choices be available only to the elite or the advanced capitalist world. My politics have changed my perception of what fashion should be and can be, and my love for fashion has changed my perception of what politics should and can be. It’s easy to be cynical about production and consumption when we are sleepwalking towards complete ecological collapse. My relationship with clothing is no more complex than anyone else’s, but I will keep being curious about where my favourite pair of jeans come from; I will keep asking questions and trying to make informed decisions for the collective good, within my means. Perhaps one-day fashion and socialism can exist without tension.
I am left to chew over whether it is possible to be a fashion involved individual, a consumer, a socialist, and a worker; and right now, we all must do a lot of mental gymnastics to realize that these interests and ways of life are often incompatible with the way a socialist or a worker exist within the current system. Everything is inherently exploitative under capitalism; there’s no way around that. To avoid mental gymnastics, we must change how we view labour for the better. People want to—nay—need to work; we need work that is fruitful, important, and most crucially, non-alienating. People want to create and show off their creations, and clothing is undoubtedly something worth creating. The working class has every right to look and feel great in ethically made clothing, and that starts with how we view labour that is not ours, and it continues with whom we deem is “allowed” to wear fine clothing—everybody is if they so choose; I don’t think it’s utopian to believe in the mantra “champagne for all, not gruel for all,” but the fashion industry is not always conducive to this mantra. It is entirely possible to co-exist as a socialist and worker, with fashion, but we must be seriously ready to question and change the things that bring about worker exploitation, alienation, and irrevocably, we must change the way we view labour, as something we want to do, to see ourselves in, rather than something we must do to survive.