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We Are What We Wear: new Guardian Shorts ebook extract We Are What We Wear: new Guardian Shorts ebook extract
(4 months later)
Fast Fast fashion is the dominant force in the fashion market, especially for consumers of high street brands. Defined by short lead times, enormous orders, a near-constant flow of new designs and often low prices, fast fashion was pioneered in the late 1990s. Since then, this has been the model preferred and championed by domestic brands and retailers, as well as other huge transnationals from Zara to Walmart.
fashion is the dominant force in the fashion market, especially for consumers It has therefore been the model, however unwittingly, also preferred and championed by consumers, as we’ve bought into fashion produced by this system with increasing enthusiasm and appetite. And, if anything, the global recession has served to accelerate fast fashion’s rise even more. Even in 2011, at a time when venerable chain stores were going bust on both sides of the Atlantic, articles on Primark in the Financial Times could only report on a slowing of growth. By 2013 sales growth was back to double digits, and in 2014 the company was being valued by analysts at an astonishing £19bn. Individual fortunes have been made too, at least at the retail end of the supply chain. Fast fashion has famously created its own set of moguls – from Sir Philip Green of the Arcadia Group to Amancio Ortega Gaona of Inditex (the parent company of Zara) who has an estimated personal wealth of over $60bn (£36bn).
of high street brands. Defined by short lead times, enormous orders, a Fast fashion as a business model has thrown out the fashion industry bible – and shoppers love it, if not for its economics then for what it offers them in the stores. It has turned six-month lead times into days and got consumers hooked on 30–50 micro-seasons a year – a far cry from the two-season autumn/winter and spring/summer showings that still exist in the haute couture world of global fashion weeks. An ally of globalisation and free market economics, fast fashion has seen the outsourcing of production to low-waged economies, predominantly in Asia. It is reliant on a vast supply of low-cost labour. This is provided by the garment workers who perform the Cut, Make and Trim tasks in the global production line: the CMT army, a force comprising some 40 million workers worldwide. All together, they stitch and sew 1.5bn garments every year, for a garment and textile industry worth some $3tn (£1.8tn).
near-constant flow of new designs and often low prices, fast fashion was It’s not just the low price of labour that has forged the relationship between high street brands and the inhabitants of Bangladesh’s slums. Without the garment workers toiling to produce stacks of inventory to meet what sometimes seem like impossible deadlines, fast fashion would simply not happen. Fast fashion and the CMT army have grown symbiotically. In 2004 there were two million Bangladeshi garment workers working in 4,000 registered factories. Fuelled by, ultimately, a never-ending queue of happy customers handing over their credit cards in European and US stores, this number has exploded to today’s four million workers and 5,600 factories in just nine years.
pioneered in the late 1990s. Since then, this has been the model preferred and A workforce growing at a rate of 8% year after year requires hundreds of thousands of new recruits to replace those who leave and to provide the increased supply of ready hands demanded by the clothing brands. Many of this constantly renewing and enlarging workforce are rural migrants. They leave a subsistence agrarian existence for the bright lights of Dhaka and the nation’s influential Ready Made Garment (RMG) industry.
championed by domestic brands and retailers, as well as other huge The industry has always preferred rural migrants, the impoverished and desperate for whom joining the CMT army is a route out of an otherwise luckless existence. It also prefers women, and specifically young women, who in many ways hold the key to Bangladesh’s meteoric rise in the RMG industry. Women are said to account for around 70% of all workers in Bangladesh’s RMG trade. They dominate the roll call of staff on the production line for woven apparel (distinct from knitwear, for which more men have been traditionally employed and are paid per piece they produce, with wages usually higher as a result). By Bangladesh’s conservative, patriarchal standards, such a number of economically active women is extraordinary.
transnationals from Zara to Walmart. Workers’ rights organisations are happy to elaborate on the type of environment these women find themselves in. Factory bosses, they claim, prefer women because they are more patient and have nimble fingers (two qualities much needed in sewing). But, perhaps more ominously, it is also said that they are preferred because they are more controllable and less mobile within the traditionally patriarchal confines of Bangladeshi society and, crucially, less likely to join trade unions. Newly arrived from the rural areas, disbanded and ill-informed, they are less likely to know their rights or do anything about enforcing them. Usually bosses also prefer their female, compliant worker to be unmarried, widowed or abandoned, on the assumption that she’ll have fewer commitments and/or distractions. For a factory owner the motivation is plain to see. Their battalion of the CMT army is engaged in line work, with up to 25–30 workers performing tasks in turn to make a single unit of product. Time is always of the essence. Anyone staying at home to tend for a sick child, or spending time away to have a baby, or refusing to work overtime because they’re expected to keep house threatens to bring that line to a halt. And that simply cannot be tolerated.
It And yet, so many of these migrant workers are desperate to come to Dhaka. For all its undesirable aspects – as might be viewed by a privileged customer wearing the clothes produced in Bangladesh’s factories – a job at a facility like the Rana Plaza complex represents a precious chance of escape. There is a constant and steady flow of fresh workers. When new jobs come up, usually on the bottom rung as a ‘helper’, the factory bosses rarely need to advertise; instead, a rural migrant already in their employment will bring more contacts or relatives from home.
has therefore been the model, however unwittingly, also preferred and The brands and retailers are inclined to talk up the CMT army as taking a route out of poverty, and to stress the need for keeping the industry economically viable and competitive. Others trumpet the old adage that the textiles industry has always been a stepping-stone to economic prosperity, citing transformations such as Britain’s industrial revolution that started in the mill towns of Lancashire. This might be summed up as the ‘no-pain-no-gain’ argument. But how much pain must the CMT army undergo, and do the gains really stack up?
championed by consumers, as we’ve bought into fashion produced by this system Activists, NGOs and workers’ rights organisations think not. They have long been adamant that what this model does, and its essential raison d’être, is to reduce prices for the consumers, slash costs for the brands and, as a consequence, shift the pressure down the supply chain, funnelling it into the CMT processes and placing all the risk squarely on the shoulders of the lowest paid and most vulnerable people in the fashion industry. CMT workers like those who made clothes at Rana Plaza.
with increasing enthusiasm and appetite. And, if anything, the global recession
has served to accelerate fast fashion’s rise even more. Even in 2011, at a time
when venerable chain stores were going bust on both sides of the Atlantic, articles on Primark in the Financial
Times
could only report on a slowing of growth. By 2013 sales growth was back to
double digits, and in 2014 the company was being valued by analysts at an astonishing £19bn. Individual fortunes have been made too, at least at the retail end of
the supply chain. Fast fashion has famously created its own set of moguls –
from Sir Philip Green of the Arcadia Group to Amancio Ortega Gaona of Inditex
(the parent company of Zara) who has an estimated personal wealth of over $60bn (£36bn).
Fast
fashion as a business model has thrown out the fashion industry bible – and
shoppers love it, if not for its economics then for what it offers them in the
stores. It has turned six-month lead times into days and got consumers hooked
on 30–50 micro-seasons a year – a far cry from the two-season autumn/winter and
spring/summer showings that still exist in the haute couture world of global
fashion weeks. An ally of globalisation and free market economics, fast fashion
has seen the outsourcing of production to low-waged economies, predominantly in
Asia. It is reliant on a vast supply of low-cost labour. This is provided by
the garment workers who perform the Cut, Make and Trim tasks in the global
production line: the CMT army, a force comprising some 40 million workers
worldwide. All together, they stitch and sew 1.5bn garments every year,
for a garment and textile industry worth some $3tn (£1.8tn).
It’s
not just the low price of labour that has forged the relationship between high
street brands and the inhabitants of Bangladesh’s slums. Without the garment
workers toiling to produce stacks of inventory to meet what sometimes seem like
impossible deadlines, fast fashion would simply not happen. Fast fashion
and the CMT army have grown symbiotically. In 2004 there were two million
Bangladeshi garment workers working in 4,000 registered factories. Fuelled by,
ultimately, a never-ending queue of happy customers handing over their credit
cards in European and US stores, this number has exploded to today’s four million
workers and 5,600 factories in just nine years.
A
workforce growing at a rate of 8% year after year requires hundreds of
thousands of new recruits to replace those who leave and to provide the
increased supply of ready hands demanded by the clothing brands. Many of this
constantly renewing and enlarging workforce are rural migrants. They leave a
subsistence agrarian existence for the bright lights of Dhaka and the nation’s influential
Ready Made Garment (RMG) industry.
The
industry has always preferred rural migrants, the impoverished and desperate
for whom joining the CMT army is a route out of an otherwise luckless
existence. It also prefers women, and specifically young women, who in many
ways hold the key to Bangladesh’s meteoric rise in the RMG industry. Women are
said to account for around 70% of all workers in Bangladesh’s RMG trade. They
dominate the roll call of staff on the production line for woven apparel
(distinct from knitwear, for which more men have been traditionally employed
and are paid per piece they produce, with wages usually higher as a result). By
Bangladesh’s conservative, patriarchal standards, such a number of economically
active women is extraordinary.
Workers’
rights organisations are happy to elaborate on the type of environment these
women find themselves in. Factory bosses, they claim, prefer women because they
are more patient and have nimble fingers (two qualities much needed in sewing).
But, perhaps more ominously, it is also said that they are preferred because
they are more controllable and less mobile within the traditionally patriarchal
confines of Bangladeshi society and, crucially, less likely to join trade
unions. Newly arrived from the rural areas, disbanded and ill-informed, they
are less likely to know their rights or do anything about enforcing them.
Usually bosses also prefer their female, compliant worker to be unmarried,
widowed or abandoned, on the assumption that she’ll have fewer commitments
and/or distractions. For a factory owner the motivation is plain to see. Their battalion
of the CMT army is engaged in line work, with up to 25–30 workers performing
tasks in turn to make a single unit of product. Time is always of the essence.
Anyone staying at home to tend for a sick child, or spending time away to have
a baby, or refusing to work overtime because they’re expected to keep house
threatens to bring that line to a halt. And that simply cannot be
tolerated.
And
yet, so many of these migrant workers are desperate to come to Dhaka. For all
its undesirable aspects – as might be viewed by a privileged customer wearing
the clothes produced in Bangladesh’s factories – a job at a facility like the
Rana Plaza complex represents a precious chance of escape. There is a constant
and steady flow of fresh workers. When new jobs come up, usually on the bottom
rung as a ‘helper’, the factory bosses rarely need to advertise; instead, a
rural migrant already in their employment will bring more contacts or relatives
from home.
The
brands and retailers are inclined to talk up the CMT army as taking a route out
of poverty, and to stress the need for keeping the industry economically viable
and competitive. Others trumpet the old adage that the textiles industry has
always been a stepping-stone to economic prosperity, citing transformations
such as Britain’s industrial revolution that started in the mill towns of
Lancashire. This might be summed up as the ‘no-pain-no-gain’ argument. But how
much pain must the CMT army undergo, and do the gains really stack up?
Activists,
NGOs and workers’ rights organisations think not. They have long been adamant
that what this model does, and its essential raison d’être, is to reduce prices for the consumers, slash costs
for the brands and, as a consequence, shift the pressure down the supply chain,
funnelling it into the CMT processes and placing all the risk squarely on
the shoulders of the lowest paid and most vulnerable people in the fashion
industry. CMT workers like those who made clothes at Rana Plaza.
This is an edited extract from Chapter 2 of We Are What We Wear: Unravelling fast fashion and the collapse of Rana Plaza by Lucy Siegle with reporting from Jason Burke (Guardian Shorts £1.99 / $2.99)This is an edited extract from Chapter 2 of We Are What We Wear: Unravelling fast fashion and the collapse of Rana Plaza by Lucy Siegle with reporting from Jason Burke (Guardian Shorts £1.99 / $2.99)
Get it from Amazon Kindle or directly from Guardian Shorts.Get it from Amazon Kindle or directly from Guardian Shorts.