Fashion excess

According to a recent article in the Financial Times, 2013 was a frustrating year for Bangladeshi garment manufacturers.

While their exports have grown dramatically, political unrest and uncertainty has increased their costs, depriving them of the opportunity to achieve even greater increases. According to their trade association,

"In November, [garment] exports rose over 29 per cent but our target was about 40 per cent."

It's a fair bet that at least some of that 29% increase is now hanging on sale rails or languishing in warehouses, waiting for some shopper to succumb to the lure of a hefty sale discount; many major chain stores still have large areas of the shop floor devoted to sale garments nearly a month after they first began to cut prices.

The major supermarkets, too, have been left with unsold items clogging up their clothing departments - cheap and cheerful their wares may be, but when the high street giants have slashed their prices to similar levels, the discerning customer is likely to head for the mall.

The clothing retail industry seems to have bought wholeheartedly into the belief that growth is infinitely sustainable, and, with a finite customer base, this means expecting everyone to buy more - the reasoning behind a major retailer's boast that its website has 'hundreds of new arrivals every week'.

Many of these new arrivals will be marked down within a few weeks to make way for the next shipment. The trouble with this strategy is that it ignores the inherent conservatism of many shoppers and the financial and storage constraints that place a natural ceiling on almost everyone's purchasing.

Prices are the lowest they have ever been in real terms as retailers compete in a race to the bottom, but much of this has been achieved at the cost of low pay and appalling working conditions for workers in the industry. Somehow it makes it worse to think that the results of their labours now sit neglected on a sale rail amid a glut of unwanted merchandise.

Meanwhile, other countries are getting in on the act, with India planning the kind of factory and dormitory combinations that have allowed China to undercut the rest of the world in manufacturing costs. Even allowing for new markets opening up in developing countries where second-hand clothes are currently big business, it's hard to see how these millions of garments will find a home.

Clothing sales surely cannot continue to grow indefinitely, whatever the manufacturers of Bangladesh may wish for.

Cheap fashion - the untold cost

I apologise to those who have turned up at the Tavern recently hoping for a tankard of virtual ale and a chat.

It's been a busy week at work, but there's more to it than that; the collapse of the clothing factory in Bangladesh last week was too big a story to ignore but raised so many points it was impossible to decide what to say about it.

The scale of this disaster made it a global story, but it is only the latest in a series of catastrophes that can be directly attributed to the developed world's desire for cheap fashion; a succession of fires and lesser building collapses has claimed thousands of lives since the giants of the British high street began a price war with the supermarkets.

In 2008, BBC3 made a series, 'Blood, Sweat and T-shirts', in which a group of young Britons were sent to India and Sri Lanka to find out how high street clothes were made, following the process from cotton harvest to garment finishing by living and working alongside the labourers and sewing machine operators.

At the manufacturing stage, they were initially sent into a large sewing factory, where they complained about the long hours and low wages compared to what they were used to back at home. This was a top factory, they were told; the air conditioning, modern amenities and relatively good pay meant that jobs there were prized. The factory supplied, among others, Marks and Spencer, who were presumably happy to be named in this context - the days when '99% of St Michael goods are British made' are long gone.

Their next task was very different; they were given piecework to complete on generator-powered sewing machines in a roof-top workroom, where suffocating heat combined with fumes from the generator and the smell of the outside lavatory. The workers here eked out a precarious living, working long hours seven days a week to make ends meet; small wonder no British retailers were named this time.

But there was worse to come; for their final visit, the reluctant Brits were ushered along an alleyway that doubled as an open sewer and invited to climb a rickety ladder to a cramped upstairs room where young boys were sewing beads and sequins onto fabric destined for the UK fashion industry, their smaller fingers and very low wages making them desirable workers for such tasks.

I make no apology for recounting the content at length; I have tried several times in the past few years to find a recording of the series but it seems to have vanished without trace from the BBC website; BBC3, after such a promising start, is merrily cultivating a lowest common denominator ethos of reality shows and infantile humour. All that can be found are a handful of newspaper references and short clips.

Meanwhile, there has been surprisingly little media comment on the connection between the factory collapse and the British fashion industry, perhaps because one particular chain is involved. The same newspapers which chronicled the difficult and highly dangerous rescue efforts this week have, for years, been promoting Primark clothes in their fashion pages and even extolling their cheapness - "At this price, you can afford one in every colour!"

While a higher price is no guarantee that the workers' pay and conditions are any better - in some cases, it simply means a bigger mark-up for a designer brand - it seems odd that no-one is pointing out that the extreme cheapness of some high street clothing today may well imply corners being cut somewhere in the manufacturing process.

While the retailers insist they are doing all they can to promote good employment practices, as long as they are buying in from third parties there is little they can do about infrastructure or the widespread practice of sub-contracting, whereby labour-intensive elements such as zips, buttonholes or beading are completed off-site at a cheaper rate. In a competitive market, there must be overwhelming pressure not to ask too many questions.

The jargon-laden ethical trading polices outlined on the fashion retailers' websites do little to address the concerns that should surely be raised by a pair of embellished jeans supplied cheaply enough to retail in the UK for less than £10. In a relatively short space of time, clothing has become so cheap that a t-shirt can cost less than a sandwich, yet little is being done to ensure that consumers are clearly informed about the origins of what they are buying.

It would, perhaps, be far-fetched to assume a conspiracy of silence, but it seems strange that, following the collapse of this factory, so little attention has been paid to the conditions in which clothing is manufactured, given the vast amount of space and attention the media devote to fashion on a regular basis.

Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger and dirt...*

Sometimes it's not much fun being right. Back in January 2009, I wrote this: With exchange rates signalling the end of cheap imported fashion and unemployment once more stalking the streets of our cities, there is a serious risk that sweatshops will multiply in Britain to fill the gap.

Today brings a press release (via the Independent) from Channel 4 ahead of tonight's Dispatches: Clothing on sale in the high street is being made in Britain in dirty, dangerous and “appalling” conditions.
 
An undercover reporter has found clothing made for New Look, Primark, Peacocks, Jane Norman and bhs being made by workers -  many of them working illegally - paid half the minimum wage in “dangerous, pressurised sweatshop conditions”.
 
We shouldn't be surprised, though; when a large cappuccino will set you back more than the cost of a T-shirt, there has to be something badly skewed in the economics of supply and demand. Disposable fashion has become the norm, with a rapid turnover matched by rock-bottom prices.
 
There's a powerful lobby that argues sweatshops are a necessary stage on the ladder of economic development and a poorly paid job is better than no job at all, but no worker should have to put up with this:
 
“The basement unit was cramped, over-heated and inadequately ventilated, with unsanitary toilets, dirty staircases and poorly lit corridors. With the greatest risk being fire, his only fire exit was completely blocked.” There were no clean facilities for providing drinking water.

The retailers involved have since launched their own investigations. Perhaps the first thing they should look at is the wholesale price charged by their suppliers - if the garments are cheap enough to be sold on at a profit for less than the price of a coffee, there should surely have been some questions asked.

We're in Dickensian territory here - according to a Sikh elder in Leicester, “It’s like slave labour, it’s like going back a hundred years in the way they treated. The people are so helpless they just got to do whatever they can... the bosses can shout at them or they can insult them, and these people can’t do anything about it.”

There's something monstrous about poorly paid men and women hunched over sewing machines for many hours at a time producing disposable fashion for the momentary amusement of an over-indulged generation conditioned to see cheap clothing as an entitlement.

It's bad enough when these workers are on the other side of the world out of reach of UK legislation - when they could be living in the next street to their oblivious customers it becomes downright immoral.

*The Song of the Shirt by Thomas Hood (1843) Plus ca change...

A Call to Arms

There has been much debate among the inmates of Newgate about the trend-bucking increase in profits at a certain budget high street fashion chain recently voted least ethical clothing retailer in Britain. Now the credit crunch is biting we can see just how much impact the welfare of third world garment workers will have on British shoppers and it's not a pretty sight!

The chain in question has created a website promoting its ethical record and attributes its low prices to to simple styles and economies of scale. However, much of the clothing on sale at the cheaper end of the market features hand-sewn beads and sequins - as seen in a BBC documentary being sewn on by children - which are highly labour-intensive.

While it has often been argued that buying sweatshop-produced clothing gives developing countries an economic boost, it seems likely that recession in Britain will put manufacturers under further pressure to reduce costs and lead in the long term to more outsourcing to child labour and unsafe or illegal factories. This applies even more to intricate embroidery and beadwork.

If we must have inexpensive fashion, we need a new 'austerity chic' featuring well-cut simple styles which can be made cheaply by skilled machinists - after all, who needs sequins on their pyjamas? Unfortunately we also need a better-educated public; consider this recent comment from a fashion website - '18 squids for a sequin shift?! I am *so* having it!'

Looks like we're facing an uphill struggle.