The article in the url below is a review of a new book, Unraveled, by Maxine Bédat. The book highlights the devastating amount of waste (and overall harm) generated by the global clothing and fast fashion industry. This particular book explores the industry's supply chain using the example of a pair of jeans – how they are made and find their way to consumers across the world. As the review notes, however, the punchline is not necessarily news – there is now a growing library of books that take a similar approach to highlighting the mess we are getting ourselves into:
"In [highlighting 'the pretty awful reality' of the global fashion supply chain, the book] joins Lucy Siegle's To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World?, Elizabeth Cline's Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion and, most recently, Dana Thomas's Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes (along with documentaries like The True Cost)."
Beyond the great harms that are identified in the review, however, it is the final four paragraphs that caught my attention. The writing is tight and the points damning, but the idea that our concern about sustainability has become part of the problem is what I took away:
"Because now, much in the way a sale price tag can seduce us into thinking we should buy a garment we might otherwise pass up, the fact that a dress is made from, say, recycled polyester or orange peel has become part of its allure.
Just as the opportunity to recycle an old garment becomes part of the rationale for replacing it, because in doing so you will not be adding to your closet — even though, as Ms. Bédat makes clear, you will still be adding to the volume of clothes in the world, which adds to the problem. Personal math and public math don't always equate.
And one of the unforeseen, ironic results of the genuinely valuable conversation and consciousness raising that books like 'Unraveled' have spurred is that sustainability itself has been transformed into a selling point.
That may be the most horrifying development of all."
To me, this speaks to the superficiality with which we continue to approach the core problem. Our economic system is unsustainable, so what are we going to do about it? 'Buy more stuff,' even if it is more sustainably produced than before (while still being fundamentally unsustainable), is clearly not the answer. The idea of 'sustainability' can only be 'fashionable' in a society that has completely missed the point. If that is our proposed solution to this existential problem, then all the issues the books quoted above have raised in recent years have clearly fell largely on deaf ears.
Take care
David
David Chandler
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Jeans Are the Villain of a Horror Story
By Vanessa Friedman
June 3, 2021
The New York Times
Late Edition – Final
D3
