That post about veganism and infant diets is coming. Just not this week.
I’m thinking about fashion this morning.
I’ve cared about clothes for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories of my father — before he and my mother divorced — was of watching him get dressed in the morning. Like many small boys, I idolized my daddy, and wanted to look just like him (I am pleased that with each passing year, the resemblance does seem to get stronger and stronger.) My Dad was never a clotheshorse, but he wasn’t a rumpled professor either. He did have some pretty splendid cardigan sweaters with elbow patches, and I do remember trying to fit into one when I was very small. It resembled a mumu on my tiny frame. (After my father died last year, my stepmother offered me some of his clothes. Alas, my Dad was all of 5’7″, and I’m 6’1″. Very little fit.)
In my high school years, fashion really started to matter. I was never happy staying with one particular clique; though I liked preppy fashion, I quickly tired of it. Honestly, in high school, I liked the cowboy look (very popular in my school) much better. Levis or Wranglers, often carefully pressed, with the obligatory Skoal ring on the back pocket. I soon found that cowboy boots didn’t mix well with my desire to walk everywhere.
In my adult life, I’ve gone through brief periods where I spent a fortune on clothes. I read GQ and W, and for a while, tithed my income to Bloomingdale’s. Becoming a serious Christian brought that portion of my life to an end, particularly when it became clear to me that God would rather I give 10% to building His Kingdom than to Neiman-Marcus. I still have a number of items in my wardrobe that I bought between 1996-1999, the years in which I spent the greatest amount of money on staying fashionable. If I spent that kind of money on these things, I’m going to wear them out.
Today, of course, I find that my fashion choices are increasingly limited by ethics. My goal is to buy sweatshop free, sustainably-produced clothing; I don’t want to buy any more clothing sourced from animals. (Farewell leather, farewell silk.) As I’ve written before, I’m still wearing old silk and leather products; I don’t intend to throw them away, as that would be wasteful. But as they wear out, they are being replaced. And trying to make buying decisions that honor both animals and human workers is, well, time-consuming and at times tiresome. But my wife and I have turned it into a game. We’re doing pretty well so far. (And thank God, there are so many excellent running shoes on the market that are made of synthetic rather than real leather.)
I’m thinking about all of this because of Jill’s post yesterday about her friend Kate Goldwater, who runs AuH2O (goldwater, get it?), an environmentally and socially conscious clothing company in New York. A lot of what Kate designs is recycled, which I really appreciate. And some of her men’s shirts (one in particular) really appeal to me.
Jill tells us about Kate’s two unsuccessful attempts to get on the hit show, Project Runway. Here’s Kate’s letter to the producers of PR. While there may have been other reasons not to take Kate, it’s fairly clear that her vision of careful hand-crafted fashion that is environmentally responsible was too disconcerting for the Project Runway folks to accept. Having Kate on Project Runway would be like having a strict vegan cooking on Top Chef; no matter how talented, a designer who refuses to use sweatshops and exploitatively sourced cotton would, like someone who cooked delicious meals without any animal products, stand as an obvious rebuke to those who produce their food and their fashion without regard for the impact on other living creatures and the earth.
I’ve given myself a three-year deadline to rotate all of the animal products out of my wardrobe. I want to know where every single pair of boxer briefs, each pair of socks, each shirt, each baseball cap was made — and by whom (I don’t need names, just working conditions). This will be tough sometimes; I often rent tuxedos, for example,and I may have to bite the bullet and find complete black-tie (and white-tie) outfits that I know were made by well-paid workers without the use of animal products. (And I haven’t yet seen the vegan version of patent leather tux shoes, but I’m sure they can be found.)
Is this Pharisaism? Is this an obsessive legalism? No. My grandfather always said “Every dollar you spend is a vote.” I remember that more and more now, as I gradually have more dollars to spend. Every time I pull out the credit card or pass over the bills and coins, I’m voting on what kind of world I want to live in. The fact that most of us can’t afford to live with radical purity doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to move in the direction of greater justice, greater kindness with each dollar we spend and each bite we eat. When we support the Kate Goldwaters of the world, we match our language with our life choices, and when we match our language and life choices, we move closer to the Peaceable Kingdom.
This is the shirt Kate made that I want. And darn it, it was one-of-a-kind, and it’s gone now.
If we can’t get Kate Goldwater on Project Runway, can we at least have the designers who do get chosen asked to do at least one project that uses recycled, justly-sourced vegan materials? And can we get the folks on Top Chef to make one incredibly awesome vegan meal? Can we start a campaign to make it happen?
Hugo,
I’ve been reading your blog for quite some time, courtesy of Figleaf’s links to several of your posts.
The fact that you had recently celebrated your fortieth birthday and can reflect on the change in your attitudes towards consumption is not a coincidence, IMO. I think that certain spending patterns of American consumers change as we age, from a more expansive consumption in our 20′s and 30′s to the frugality of the 40′s and 50′s. These age-based patterns are also affected by “the company we keep,” i.e., the type of work we do, where we work and our social milieu.
For example, if you just passed the bar exam and now work for a major law firm, you may be in a high-gear spending mode, just because you feel you deserve it and to take away the unpleasantness of working 60 to 80 hours a week. If you decided to work for a not-for-profit legal assistance organization, you may want to splurge but will earn less so you will probably spend less, and you will be surrounded by people who chose to earn less and feel better about what they do.
The wake-up call for me came during the 1990′s when I travelled to both Western and Eastern Europe, and saw the economic hardship imposed on countries that had been major suppliers of the newly collapsed Soviet Union. With unemployment approaching 25%, these countries were ill-equipped to become “entrepreneurial,” despite the enthusiasm of Western free market advocates. The few citizens who owned television sets would see reruns of “Dynasty” and marvel at the Western fashions and our selfishness.
I agree that “every dollar is a vote,” and now, older and poorer, I would rather have a job that allows me more time for volunteer work than than a high paying position and a wardrobe from Needless Markup, as NM is known in these parts.
Find a tailor, and have one made using fabric you know the history of. If you’re renting them that often, a bespoke tux will pay for itself in the long run.
Whenever I hear feminists say something against sweatshops I have to ask: Don’t you know how much sweatshops have contributed to female empowerment across the developing world?
Are you anti-sweatshop out of gut instinct? Or is it something you’ve researched? Me, I used to be anti-sweatshop out of instinct. I think it would be heartless not to oppose the idea at first glance.
At second glance, after reading works about globalization like Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom or Paul Krugman’s amazing piece “In Praise of Cheap Labor” http://www.slate.com/id/1918 or the more recent book “Travels of a T-Shirt” by Pietra Rivoli, I began to realize that sweatshops often give women in the developing world their first chance at economic independence. It puts them into the labor force which is a very important part of the development of gender rights. They earn money for themselves. Women who work tend to get married later in life and have fewer children.
I’m really curious if this is something you’ve looked into or not. I find it to be a very interesting issue because I see both sides. I see countries like South Korea, Taiwan, and China that have gone through phases of sweatshops, have developed farther and have moved on. Have you ever noticed that the place where clothes are made have changed over time? It used to be places like Taiwan and China. Now it’s more often Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. This as the process of development at work.
On the other hand, I see that people who advocate for labor rights and corporate responsibility are necessary. They accelerate the pace of change. I think that workers would get more rights eventually anyway as a natural process of economic empowerment, but I can see how labor rights groups speed that up.
I like to support socially responsible corporations who pay their workers more. Yet, I also don’t feel bad when I buy something that was made in a sweatshop. When you are buy a sweatshop-free shirt, you are most often buying a shirt that was made by more educated workers, in a more developed country. Just look at the tags! You’re taking away jobs from the poorest people in the poorest countries. Companies cannot afford to set up a business in a poor country lacking infrastructure AND pay their less educated, less productive workers more.
So when I buy my shirt that was made in Sri Lanka, I’m ok with it. I know that the woman who made it has a job that she wouldn’t have otherwise had and that working in a sweatshop is less dangerous than working in the field, which is probably her other alternative–besides begging in the streets.
This has been a really long post, I know, but I just had to ask and share the opposing viewpoint.
Zuzu, I suspect you’re right. Good point.
Larae, you’re also right. There is another side of the issue. I am open to buying clothes made in Third World countries by Third World women. But surely, not all sweatshops are the same — some are wretched hell-holes that abuse children, others don’t. What I insist on is that I be able to know the conditions under which a particular garment was made — and though Dov Charney makes my skin crawl, that is at the least one advantage of companies like American Apparel. And it’s certainly an advantage a Kate Goldwater can offer.
Hi Hugo,
I’ve never written before, but I’ve been reading your site a long time, and I cannot believe the words that I am reading from Larae. I find it inexcusably offensive on a personal level for someone to claim that “sweatshops are good” because they give people jobs that wouldn’t be there otherwise. I can tell you from personal experience that sweatshops are no picnic, and you don’t have to go to a Third World country to find them, either. I would much rather that people actually get paid a decent wage and have healthcare, rather than have them get fired at the first sign of illness, get paid below the minimum wage under the table, get no breaks, bring work home and get paid pennies for that, and have no chance of a raise or promotion, or ever see your kids because you’re working from six in the morning until six at night. I fail to see where sweatshops could be considered “good” in any sense.
it’s fairly clear that her vision of careful hand-crafted fashion that is environmentally responsible was too disconcerting for the Project Runway folks to accept
Well, no, it’s actually not at all clear from her letter that she was rejected because she made the bunny-killers feel ashamed of themselves. The first two people at Project Runway she talked to were not “disconcerted”–one of them smiled when she explained her commitment to cruelty-free design. The ‘final’ judges also didn’t like her youth and inexperience, and the fact that she hadn’t gone to design school, but apparently they would have forgiven all that if only she hated recycling and used fur in her designs.
In her letter she whines that she was “personally offended” that she wasn’t selected, never mind that thousands of other people weren’t selected (should they be ‘personally offended’? were none of those thousands also socially-conscious designers?) and that we don’t know how many went to whatever the final round was. And sending a nasty e-mail to everybody involved she could think of was supposed to persuade them that, wow, this is a professional, and what were we thinking when we passed her over?
You’re wallowing again in the pride of being one of the chosen few who Get It, misunderstood by the selfish hordes who are angry at you because your choices make them think.
Kim, sweatshops can be considered “good” in any sense when the alternative is no job at all, starvation and death.
As Karae notes, even lefty economist Paul Krugman agrees that as long as all participants in a third world job do so willingly there’s no problem. Working 16 hours in a factory for dreadful pay, while not sounding like much fun to our western sensibilities, is probably preferable to working 16 hours for even less pay at a plow behind an ox. Where the view never changes.
The secret to improving sweatshop worker’s lives is not to make Nike close their factory in a third world village where they pay ten cents an hour. It’s to let Adidas put a factory in there as well and pay 15 cents an hour. Then Reebok comes in and pays 25 cents an hour. Nike, seeing that they’re losing the best workers, will start paying a whopping 50 cents an hour and makes the hours more flexible. Rinse, repeat.
Free markets competition works, when you let it.
Having been a plus-sized teenager in the 80s, I’ve had all interest in fashion beaten out of me. It’s only in the last few years, when my income allowed me the occasional pass through Lane Bryant, that I’ve paid the slightest attention to it — and then mostly to complain about the low necklines, the low waistlines and the cropped pants legs. I just want a decent pair of work pants, OK? I’m not advertising anything.
I’m not in an economic position to be fussy about where my clothes come from, but if I could be sure a pair of jeans would last ten years I’d be willing to make the investment. I did try buying some sneakers from No Sweat (http://www.nosweatapparel.com/ — a website selling clothes made by unionized Indian workers — only a few things in my size, though) and they have been hellish to break in. I have wide feet, and my usual strategy of buying slightly larger shoes didn’t work in their case. So that has not exactly encouraged me.
In her letter she whines that she was “personally offended†that she wasn’t selected, never mind that thousands of other people weren’t selected (should they be ‘personally offended’? were none of those thousands also socially-conscious designers?) and that we don’t know how many went to whatever the final round was. And sending a nasty e-mail to everybody involved she could think of was supposed to persuade them that, wow, this is a professional, and what were we thinking when we passed her over?
There’s a good essay that Paul Graham wrote recently on this type of process.
In summary, in a process like selecting a group, for Top Chef, Project Runway, any other reality show (or any other group, for that matter), rejections are very unlikely to be personal in nature.
Chacun à son goût and all that, but I don’t think the designs themselves are particularly appealing or innovative.
even lefty economist Paul Krugman agrees that as long as all participants in a third world job do so willingly there’s no problem
That’s not quite what lefty economist Paul Krugman says.
Free markets also don’t work so well when you have corruption and unfair dealing. For example, if Nike and Adidas agree that neither of them will pay workers more than fifteen cents an hour, because a wage war will eventually hurt them both; or if workers cannot bargain for a living wage because anyone who asks for a raise is fired; or if Upstart Sneakers, Inc., trying to compete with Nike and Adidas by paying better wages, finds that it mysteriously cannot get operating permits, and somebody keeps sabotaging its factory construction.
If Nike and Adidas agree that neither of them will pay workers more than fifteen cents an hour it’ll work for a while. Until one of them realizes that it’s well within their profit margin to pay just a few cents more in order to get the better, more loyal workers. Then the collusion is off. This is why price fixing cabals–whether of goods or of labor–never work for very long.
You’re right about Upstart Sneakers needing the fair distribution of operating permits and the rule of law to protect it’s factories, which is why I’m a free market capitalist and not a total anarchist. But on the whole the point remains: So called “sweatshop labor” is a normal step in economic development and forcing “sweatshops” to leave undeveloped areas will often leave those areas with no job at all.
Came here from Amber’s blog.
The Chief is saying what needs to be said as well as I could. As for Upstart Sneaker Inc. — do you mean these folks? Not seeing the collusion or the corruption, sorry.
As for whether Chief is fairly representing Krugman’s views, well, judge for yourself. Some choice quotes:
“The lofty moral tone of the opponents of globalization is possible only because they have chosen not to think their position through. While fat-cat capitalists might benefit from globalization, the biggest beneficiaries are, yes, Third World workers.”
“And yet, wherever the new export industries have grown, there has been measurable improvement in the lives of ordinary people.”
“The benefits of export-led economic growth to the mass of people in the newly industrializing economies are not a matter of conjecture.”
try american apparel, clothes made sweatshop free right in LA. they’re mostly plain, but they come in a range of fantastic colors. a bit more costly, but they last for a long time. no silk, leather, or any other animal products that i’m aware of-all cotton with a couple of shirts made 100% organic.
http://store.americanapparel.net/
Theverycold, I like AAs undergarments, not so much their tops and bottoms for men. And their CEO, Dov Charney, has some serious and well-documented problems with sexual harassment. (Google around). He’s also anti-union. That said, AAs workers are still much better treated than in most places in the apparel industry, and that makes them a good choice.
And trying to make buying decisions that honor both animals and human workers is, well, time-consuming and at times tiresome.
So true..it is tough. Swear to Bodhisattva I’ve tried to buy food from small farmers (Equal Exchange), no animal-testing, cruelty-free products but it is time-consuming not to mention more expensive t han regular ones for me as a student. For now i’m only committed to 10% or a little bit more to this lifestyle. Good enough.