Over-Dressed

March 26, 2012
The good news for shoppers, notes Brooklyn journalist Cline in her engagingly pointed, earnestly researched study, is that cheap knockoffs of designer clothing can be found in discount stores almost instantly. The bad news is that “fast fashion” has killed America’s garment industry and wreaked havoc on wages and the environment, especially in China, where most of the cheap clothes and textiles are now made. A self-described shopaholic of low-end stores H&M and Forever 21, which emerged from the first budget retailers in the 1990s like Old Navy and Target, which marketed cheap fashion as chic, Cline traces the phenomenon soup-to-nuts from the sad consolidation of the big department stores and depletion of New York’s garment district, once supplying the massive labor needed for making clothes. From there, she takes her narrative to the factories overseas where workers are paid a fraction of what Americans earn. Cheap imports flooded the U.S. market, for example, shutting down textile mecca Inman Mills, in Greenville, S.C. Cline visited the root of inequity at massive, state-of-the-art factories in China where millions of “flavor-of-the-month” garments are manufactured for export, creating a new middle class for some Chinese while locking the lowest paid workers (also in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Vietnam) in nonunion, slave-like poverty. As the fabrication of artificial fibers takes a walloping environmental toll, Cline urges, in her sharp wakeup call, a virtuous return to sewing, retooling, and buying eco-friendly “slow fashion.”

May 15, 2012
The era of socially responsible clothing is upon us. Certainly, thanks to media sensationalism, most American consumers are aware by now of exposes of underpaid factory workers here and overseas and the sincere attempt by U.S. corporations to ban such treatment. Yet just as many readers would be fascinated (in the worst way) by the industry itself and the waste that our clothing habits engender. Journalist Cline chronicles the excesses from every angle, beginning with the YouTube shopping hauls, in which young consumers provide reviews of garments from the likes of H&M, Zara, and Target. She probes previously underreported segments of fashion, such as what it costs to manufacture different items and how retailers shave costs; the composition of man-made fabrics, such as polyester (oil dependent and not biodegradable); and the behind-the scenes disposition of donated articles by the Salvation Army and Goodwill. Most important is her discovery and adoption of ethical fashion, in which quality pieces triumph through the patronage of local designers, by a return to sewing and hand-embellished garments, and by the decidedly unfashionable notion of wearing clothes unique enough to not care about trendiness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)