Dana Thomas - Fashionopolis: The Secrets Behind the Clothes We Wear

Walk into a fast-fashion storea Zara, an H&M, an Urban Outfitters, a Gapand what do you see? A cool space with cool music and cool sales assistants who are eager to help you. But most of all you will see racks and racks of cool clothes. Dresses, shirts, pants, jeans. All affordableeven cheap.

What you dont see is how these clothes were made. Where they are made. Who makes them. You dont know what the factory looks like. Is it clean and safe? Or a dirty, illegal, falling-down building, known as a sweatshop?

You dont know how the cotton was grown. Or how the sheep that were raised for the wool were treated. Or what it takes to make synthetic fabricsmeaning non-natural fabricssuch as polyester, nylon, spandex, or rayon. What is rayon anyway?

And you dont see where all those cool design ideas came from.

What Im about to lay out for you here are the basics of mass production, or the supply chain: the system of companies and people making and delivering an item. For a T-shirt, the supply chain begins with the cotton farmer, followed by the mill where the cotton is spun, the dye house where it is dyed, and the factory where it is sewn.

And while Ill be explaining how clothes are made, I could be talking about anything that is manufacturedfrom toys to electronics. Ill show how the system has been corrupted by greed, and how that greed has hurt people and the planet. I will spotlight some heroes who have fought against this dark system, and have come up with a cleaner, safer, more honest way of making and selling clothing. And Ill show you some of the amazing inventions that can take it all forward in a better way.

Lets start by looking at how the fashion business is structured.

Picture a pyramid.

In the small triangle at the top are one-of-a-kind, made-to-measure clothes for elite customers. For women, its known as haute couture (pronounced oat co-CHURE), a French term that translates to high sewing. For men, its bespoke (bee-SPOKE) tailoring. These clothes are primarily sewn by hand, and require several fittings on the customer. For women, fittings are usually done in Paris, since thats where most haute couture houses are based. For men, its traditionally in Londonthe best tailor shops have long been located on a street named Savile Row. Haute couture prices are about the same as for cars: $25,000 and up for a suit or dress, and $100,000 or more for an evening gown. Bespoke suits cost around $6,000, and easily can run up to $10,000, depending on the choice of fabric.

Haute couture designers, known as couturiers (coo-TUR-ee-ays), traditionally present their new designs during fashion shows in Paris each January and July. Bespoke menswear shows are usually staged in Florence, Italy, in January and June. When actors and actresses walk the red carpets at awards shows like the Oscars and the Golden Globes, they are often wearing haute couture and bespoke creations lent to or made for them by brands to generate publicity. Thats why red-carpet reporters always ask stars: Who are you wearing?

Haute couture and bespoke are the most creative and beautifully executed clothes in fashion, and serve as inspiration for the next level on the pyramid: ready-to-wear, the factory-made clothes you find in department stores, nice boutiques, and online. (Think of it this way: Couture and bespoke is made just for you, and requires several visits to get the fit just right. Ready-to-wear is exactly as it sounds: When you buy it in a store or online, it is ready to wear. You can put it on and walk out the door!) Ready-to-wear covers a broad range of qualityfrom luxury brands such as Gucci and Prada, to mall stores like Ann Taylor and Brooks Brothers. Even casual wear brands Patagonia and Levis are, officially, ready-to-wear. Generally, ready-to-wear is well made, in good fabrics. Solid, nice-looking clothes of value. Clothes you keep and wear for a while.

The wide slice on the bottom of the pyramid is fast-fashion: cheap, trendy clothes produced in vast amounts at lightning speed, and sold in thousands of chain stores worldwide.

Fast-fashion is a new addition to the pyramid, born in the 1990s. But it has grown rapidly, and is the cause of many of the problems that plague the clothing business today.

For designs, fast-fashion companies tend to copyor knock offwhat they see in the ready-to-wear shows. A fast-fashion brand may tweak the outfit it copieschange the color, or fiddle with the print designto avoid being accused of outright stealing. But it is theft, no question about it.

To make clothes that they can sell not only for a lower retail price than ready-to-wear, but an extremely low price, fast-fashion brands reduce the production cost at every turn. Production price is what the brand pays to have the garment madeand includes materials, labor, shipping. Retail price is what you pay in the store.

Fast-fashion brands squeeze production costs wherever they can. They use the cheapest fabric availableusually a synthetic, like polyester or rayon, even though those fabrics create a lot of pollution both when theyre made and when theyre eventually thrown away. (Most never biodegrade, or break down, in landfill.) They have the clothes sewn by workers in the worlds poorest countriesplaces like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, and the Philippines. When I visited Bangladesh in 2018, the minimum wage for workers who make clothes, or apparel, was $68 a month, or less than $3 a day. Generally, if a fast-fashion shirt costs $10, the person who made it was paid ten cents.

The factory owner gets paid a bit of the remaining $9.90. Shipping costs a portion of it too. There are the tariffstaxes charged by governments on products imported, or brought in, to their countries. And there are distribution costs.