Clothing Poverty

The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-Hand Clothes

Andrew Brooks

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786997388
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Fashion & Textile Industry
• Index: Business

Have you ever stopped and wondered where your jeans came from? Who made them and where? Ever wondered where they end up after you donate them for recycling? Following a pair of jeans, Clothing Poverty takes the reader on a vivid around-the-world tour to reveal how clothes are manufactured and retailed, bringing to light how fast fashion and recycling are interconnected. Andrew Brooks shows how recycled clothes are traded across continents, uncovers how retailers and international charities are embroiled in commodity chains which perpetuate poverty, and exposes the hidden trade networks which transect the globe. In this new and updated edition, Brooks retraces his steps to look at the fashion industry today, and considers how, if at all, the industry has changed in response to mounting consumer pressure for more ethical clothing. Stitching together rich narratives, from Mozambican markets, Nigerian smugglers and Chinese factories to London's vintage clothing scene, TOMS shoes and Vivienne Westwood's ethical fashion lines, Brooks uncovers the many hidden sides of fashion.

1

A BIOGRAPHY OF JEANS

Jeans are one of the most popular items of clothing. From their humble origins as the quintessential American workwear to their present status as among the most ubiquitous garments, denim is worn every day around the world by women and men, young and old, rich and poor. Most people own a pair of jeans or at least one related article of denim. Jeans therefore provide a good universal case study that it is easy to relate to. However, a T-shirt, a sweater or a pair of socks could equally be scrutinized. This chapter maps new clothing production and explores where jeans are designed, where cotton is grown and denim is woven, and where jeans are sewn together before being marketed and retailed; it is a biography of jeans. Starting with design in San Francisco and cotton fields in India, travelling via factories in Bangladesh and Mexico, to retail in New York and London, this narrative illuminates how an everyday clothing item has a rich history and passes along a geographically diverse commodity chain.

The aim of this biography is to understand the ‘systems of provision’ which bring jeans to consumers. This means charting how jeans have become a default clothing choice for millions of people, and understanding where manufacturing takes place and who profits from – and who is exploited by – the global denim industry. The economist Ben Fine coined this approach as a way of understanding why people buy certain goods and how choices are shaped by history, culture and geography. The system-of-provision approach maps the ‘chain of activity that attaches consumption to the production that makes it possible’.¹ So, before discussing the manufacturing process, we examine the social history of jeans, to reveal how they became such a popular clothing choice. Complex relationships linking people around the world are involved in the manufacture of a simple pair of jeans. A brief account of the different work of farmers, factory workers and shop assistants shows what is involved in making jeans. The production process, or system of provision, is divided into six main stages: origin, design, cotton growing, denim milling, manufacturing, advertising and retail. This biography examines different labour processes from across the globe to provide a broad description of trade patterns, rather than following the same raw cotton from farm gate to department store rail.

JEANS: A SOCIAL HISTORY

The birthplace and early heritage of denim jeans are disputed. France and Italy as well as the United States lay partial claims to their origins. Sailors from Genoa (from which the name ‘jeans’ is supposed to derive) were said to have spread hard-wearing Italian cotton fabric. Alternatively, the name ‘denim’ can be translated as de Nîmes, ‘of Nîmes’, the Roman city in the south of France famous for its textiles. Where there is consensus is that the history of modern blue jeans began with the weaving of denim fabric and the use of indigo dye, a natural colour easily fixed to cotton. Blue jeans material is made from weaving cotton threads: the diagonal weft thread passes under two or more dyed warp threads. The characteristic blue jean colour and diagonal pattern are produced as the warp threads are coloured blue and the weft left white, which makes for a strong twill fabric and also gives the inside of jeans their lighter colour. In the 1870s Levi Strauss made the critical contribution of riveting the denim, which prevented tearing, and subsequently added five pockets and belt loops. These early models inspired the standard jean style, elements of which are seen in most contemporary designs. Levi Strauss’s developments were so influential because they brought together a range of useful parts: copper rivets provided long-lasting toughness; rugged twill fabric offered robust protection; the blue denim colour was simple to reproduce, first using indigo and later synthetic dyes; blue also proved a popular neutral colour; and finally the five-pocket design was functional and later augmented by various combinations of belt loops, buttons and zippers to aid fit.²

The hard-wearing nature of jeans meant they became the trousers of choice for the American working man and were readily adopted by the iconic cowboy. Later, they provided part of the uniform of industrial workers during the emergence of mass-manufacturing industry in the early twentieth century. In the 1950s and 1960s jeans became more than utilitarian workwear. Denim offered a casual and subversive mode of dress for women as well as men. Screen icons like Marlon Brando, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe adopted jeans as part of a costume which exuded characteristics such as youth, freedom and sex appeal. Hollywood colour films projected aspirational images of blue jeans, and young people in America as well as overseas imitated these dress styles. Denim gained both popularity and notoriety in youth culture. However, jeans were not just passively taken up by other societies imitating America; they have grown to have their own local meanings and significance. In the United Kingdom they were associated with transgressive and rebellious youth. Further east in Poland they became politicized garments. Behind the iron curtain jeans were a symbol of rebellion in communist societies. Brazilians have modified the basic design to reflect desires for a particular body image. In Japan jeans have a unique social history, which is discussed later. Towards the end of the twentieth century jeans began to lose their subversive qualities in most of Europe and the Americas and became something closer to a default wardrobe item. What you chose without thinking about what to wear. Wearing jeans has become a way to escape making a decision, and putting them on is an act of conformity. They no longer demark a particular social group and instead offer anonymity. Wearing jeans is part of an entrenched clothing system of provision. The previously rebellious connotations of denim have disappeared and they are a part of mainstream society. Buying and wearing jeans means participating in the market and they are retailed at every price point from designer lines to bargain basement. Jeans are the dress-down uniform of presidents and prime ministers as well as the street outfits of punks and protesters.³

Blue jeans have spread across the world and are worn in nearly every country. In many places they are among the most common item of dress. Although the USA is the largest market, with up to half a billion pairs sold each year, sales in Asia, particularly China, Japan and India, are also huge and expanding. Jeans have become a default item of clothing because they can be easily manufactured and meet the practical and cultural needs of modern lives. Their popularity is not simply due to customers’ desires nor demand stimulated by producers. Rather, production and consumption influence one another.⁴ They both also shape the ‘use value’ of jeans. Use value means the worth of a thing in relation to what humans both need and want. The ‘usefulness’ is influenced by their original design as the garments for American agricultural and industrial workers. Hard-wearing denim trousers were practical, reliable and very useful. Mass-manufacturing made the trousers affordable and they satisfied basic needs. As they grew in popularity various social groups – from movie stars to teenagers – found that these robust and affordable garments could be tailored to convey different cultural messages. New denim styles emerged for women and men around the world. They became something that people wanted. Jeans are a product of early US industrial development and in turn have shaped how globalized culture developed, leading to the emergence of jeans systems of provision.

Denim has a life and lives with the owner. If wearers stretch to climb over fences the fibres will be pulled as they extend their legs; if they work bent over fitting carpets or scrubbing floors the knees will thin out and split; if they sit cross-legged the denim will stretch across and pull around the thighs. These daily movements will exercise the twill fabric and leave the imprint of the rhythms of each wearer’s life. Old jeans can induce powerful feelings of warmth and reassurance. When someone wears their own familiar clothes they can rekindle memories of past events, soothe, and provide emotional as well as physical protection. Despite the lively nature of denim any associations the owners might have are a result of the social relationships that the jeans embody, and this only has meaning in a given social context. When used jeans are transported somewhere new and taken up by a second owner they will be valued differently depending on the local culture.

Think about the ways in which ripped jeans are valued and excluded in different places. This idea is important to understand in the context of the second-hand clothing trade and does not concern just our individual relationships with jeans, but also how they are perceived in a broader cultural context in a particular society. As anthropologist Daniel Millar has discussed, ‘the first core semiotic marker was the association of jeans with the United States. But this is now seen as merely historical. People do not wear jeans in London today to appear more American even if that association is essential to understanding how jeans first became ubiquitous.’⁵ America played a vital role in establishing denim systems of provision, but now wearing jeans is a global phenomenon. There is a world market in which the United States is one of many players.

At the level of individual garments, the same pair of jeans will affect people differently. When a second-hand buyer re-wears someone else’s old jeans they will feel differently about them. Just as their body will move in a different manner and stretch and work the threads in new ways, so will they also form new associations with the jeans, born of their own social interactions.

DESIGNING DENIM

Today, Levi Strauss designs jeans in San Francisco, drawing upon the heritage of the brand and the early connection with frontier livelihoods, like raising cattle in the Old West. The advantages of this location are not just historical; the proximity to an important contemporary core customer base – a hip youth market in a leading financial and cultural centre – allows designers to innovate and introduce fresh design details to the basic jean formula and target new consumers. For instance, Levi’s launched a ‘commuter’ series after observing the popularity of jeans among cyclists in the Bay area and then promoted this design nationally and internationally, demonstrating the web of feedback between producing for an established market, and cultivating new patterns of consumption. After a new design has been decided upon, a product developer, also in San Francisco, picks up the ideas and works out the details. They make prototypes, fit the jeans to mannequins and models, check denim finishes, communicate the final design to manufacturers around the world, and liaise with merchandisers so the product will have its correct home within the Levi’s brand.⁶

Elsewhere, Italian designer brands like Armani, Gucci and Prada have their headquarters in Milan, where the couture fashion sector can influence the designs of jeans. Milan also serves as a commercial hub connecting fashion houses to advertising agencies, distributors and the fashion press. Catwalk styles can be incorporated into denim designs and rapidly transmitted to overseas producers. Trend spotters and fashion bloggers are found on the high streets of London, New York and Paris identifying what is on-trend among key groups. Fashion scouts either purposefully or indirectly feed in to the creation of new and modified styles that will later be found in malls and on Main Street. These specialized professions also have an important role in determining how vintage clothes influence new trends and designs, which is discussed towards the end of the book. What all these activities in London, Paris, Milan, New York and San Francisco have in common is a location in the global North; this is skilled, technical, metropolitan work, undertaken at trade fairs and in design studios and downtown loft workshops. All the labour processes associated with this type of work are relatively well paid, often graduate-level jobs, which stand in stark contrast to the low-skilled, poorly paid and sometimes dangerous production work in the global South. The design process is physically separated from the manufacturing enterprise in a way which would be totally unrecognizable to Mr Levi Strauss, who in the 1870s produced jeans in San Francisco to clothe the Californian working man.

Despite the differences in design and the dispersion of manufacturing activities, the basic pattern of jeans is still fairly faithful to its early origins. A single design language is common to thousands of product lines drawn up around the world, and a whole lexicon of jean styles has emerged: baggy, boot-cut, boyfriend, carpenter, classic, cowboy, drainpipe, flared, hipster, low-rise, relaxed, skinny, straight. Each new subcategory has become established as a different genre of jeans with associated cultural values that wax and wane across social contexts. Details also matter in denim design; these include the type of stitching and the colours of thread, the use of a belt loop, the number and cut of pockets, the fly and stitching of the yoke. Jeans can be embellished with embroidery, glitter, rhinestones, bleaching and buckles. Some of the more minute details are only ever seen by the wearer, but a successful designer knows it is important to furnish jeans with the right stylistic notes to complement the familiar denim blueprint. Designs can allow you to be noticed or provide you with anonymity. Denim designers work to effect a balance between providing uniform and individual looks, which reflects societies own tensions between social liberty and conformity to prescribed patterns of behaviour. Aspects of design also live on to influence how jeans are valued in secondary marketplaces, like Mario’s stall in Mozambique.

One of the distinctive properties of contemporary jeans is the way in which millions of pairs are deliberately distressed. Bleached-out, faded and ripped denim is visible when one visits any branch of Gap, Macy’s or Topshop. Denim is given effects to show a worn-in look, which is the output of particular types of labour activity, discussed below. This designer’s trick establishes values of authenticity, which can relate back to earlier popular cultural history and a sentimental version of the past. Jeans can be made to look like the worn workwear of cowboys from the turn of the twentieth century or have the tears and fraying of mid-1970s punk style. Vintage fashions influence design; yet the designer is also trying to build a more personal association between the customer and the jeans. Designers play upon the ‘lived-in’ aesthetic, which can make denim more comforting and appealing. The clothes industry attempts to replicate the physical relationships our bodies forge with jeans, such as stretching, thinning and tearing them, to try to stimulate shoppers to buy them. The role of the designer is important in forming the symbolic value of jeans.

It is true that there is some correlation between relatively objective notions of quality and price, but the association rapidly falls away as the retail price point climbs towards $100. Differentiation then becomes increasingly important. Designers in all price brackets play a vital role, increasing the social value of jeans, so that the retail price no longer represents the cost of the labour and materials involved in manufacturing. Consumers buy jeans unaware of the conditions of production, and the most fashionable jeans become a major source of desire. Buyers covet new trends or styles, and the yearning to consume becomes a for...