第 1 章
The Fabric of Our Lives: Fashion's Dark Side and Bright Future
When First Lady Melania Trump visited migrant children wearing a Zara jacket emblazoned with "I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?", she unwittingly showcased fashion's existential crisis. This single garment-made by the world's largest fashion brand, produced cheaply in developing nations, crafted from environmentally damaging cotton, destined for brief use before disposal-perfectly encapsulated the industry's fundamental problems. Each morning as we select our clothes, we rarely consider their origins or impact. The average American now purchases 68 garments annually, five times more than in 1980, with global acquisition reaching 80 billion items yearly. By 2030, if consumption continues unchecked, we'll buy 63% more fashion-equivalent to 500 billion T-shirts. Despite occasional scandals like Ralph Lauren's Chinese-made Olympic uniforms in 2012, consumers consistently choose lower prices over domestic manufacturing, with 67% preferring $50 offshore-made pants over $85 American-made ones. Meanwhile, fashion has made its titans enormously wealthy-in 2018, five of the world's fifty-five richest individuals owned fashion companies-while devastating both people and planet.
第 2 章
From Cottonopolis to Fashionopolis: The Evolution of an Industry
The fashion industry's troubled history began with Richard Arkwright's industrial revolution in textiles. Described by historian Thomas Carlyle as "a plain almost gross, bag-cheeked, potbellied Lancashire man," Arkwright transformed production by stealing and improving others' inventions. In 1771, he opened the world's first water-powered textile mill in Cromford, where workers endured thirteen-hour shifts in cotton-filled air while living in company housing and attending company churches. Manchester soon became known as "Cottonopolis," the world's first major manufacturing center, where tycoons essentially enslaved workers-a system Fritz Lang later critiqued in his film Metropolis.
The American Civil War catalyzed ready-to-wear clothing when both armies suddenly needed standardized uniforms. After the war, soldiers' preference for convenient garments sparked civilian demand. New York's Lower East Side became a garment hub due to the city's position as America's busiest port, financial center, and primary immigration point for skilled Jewish needleworkers. By 1931, New York's Garment District contained more apparel factories than anywhere else globally, serving America's flourishing retail market.
American retailing thrived throughout the 1930s despite the Depression. People dressed formally for every occasion, shopping at grand department stores like Macy's and specialty retailers like Hattie Carnegie, who sold Paris originals alongside her knockoffs priced between $79.50 and $300. The postwar economic boom revitalized American manufacturing, with the Garment District alone employing two hundred thousand women's wear workers producing 66% of all US clothing.
By the late 1950s, Manhattan's apparel jobs began migrating to outer boroughs and neighboring states-a domestic version of offshoring driven by economics. Companies that remained adopted a fragmented production model: cutting fabric in Manhattan, trucking it to outlying factories for sewing, then returning finished goods to city showrooms-the nascent version of today's global supply chain.
Despite these changes, by 1980, 70% of American-bought clothing was still made domestically-until politicians intervened with trade deals that accelerated offshoring. Reagan's free trade agenda particularly impacted the industry, though unions fought back by developing "quick response" manufacturing to compete with imports by reducing inventory and placing smaller, more frequent orders based on sales data.
第 3 章
Fast Fashion's Global Takeover
In Spain, Amancio Ortega Gaona adapted quick response principles to transform his clothing company Zara. Starting as an errand boy for a shirtmaker in 1949, Ortega eventually opened his first Zara store in 1975. By merging speedy production with retail, he created "instant fashion"-constantly dropping new styles rather than seasonal collections. This frequent updating drew customers in more often, increasing sales. As demand grew, Ortega outsourced to nearby Morocco where labor was cheaper but still close enough for quality control and rapid delivery.
Throughout the 1990s, fast fashion grew steadily, but by 2000, global retail spending on clothing hit $828 billion. Zara revolutionized the industry by shrinking production cycles from six months to just five weeks. Following its 2001 IPO, Zara expanded aggressively, opening nearly 1,700 new stores by 2018 across 96 countries, strategically positioning them near luxury brands. Twice-weekly shipments of new items drive customers to visit Zara seventeen times yearly compared to four visits for other brands. Styles that don't sell within a week are pulled immediately; successful items are quickly manufactured in small batches in nearby factories. This nimble approach has made Zara four times more profitable than competitors and Ortega one of the world's wealthiest people.
As competitors followed Zara's model, new technologies streamlined operations and increased output. Between 2000 and 2014, global garment production doubled to 100 billion annually-fourteen new garments per person worldwide. The supply chain fractured further, with fabric, cutting, sewing, and finishing often happening in different countries. By chasing the lowest bids, fast-fashion companies slashed retail prices without sacrificing profits. While US consumer prices rose 50% between 2000-2014, clothing prices actually dropped, encouraging consumers to purchase 60% more garments.
Some argue fast fashion democratized high design, but it also exploits insecurities and short attention spans, targeting 18-24 year olds who buy frequently, wear items briefly for social media, then discard them. This "hamster-wheel cycle" has forced even designer collections to adopt industrial pacing, leading Jean Paul Gaultier to abandon ready-to-wear in 2015, lamenting: "Too many clothes kills clothes."
第 4 章
The Human Cost of Cheap Fashion
In Los Angeles's Fashion District, organizer Mariela Martinez confronts wage theft in domestic sweatshops. After studying at Brown and working with United Students Against Sweatshops, she returned to LA to advocate for exploited garment workers. Most complaints involve employers paying far below minimum wage, with Martinez negotiating directly or involving government agencies in more severe cases. The fractured supply chain enables brands to deny responsibility, with subcontractors often closing shop or reopening under different names when caught.
Despite reforms following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, sweatshop conditions persisted globally after NAFTA. When manufacturing moved offshore, companies like Leslie Fay abandoned domestic production for cheaper labor abroad. In response to mounting scandals, American apparel companies began drafting voluntary "codes of conduct" for suppliers. Independent monitors were hired to enforce codes, but with announced visits, factories could prepare and workers could be coached.
Bangladesh represents the most harrowing example of the garment industry's exploitation. With 168 million citizens and a quarter living below the poverty line, Bangladesh became the world's second-largest apparel producer after China, generating $30 billion in exports in 2018. The industry employs 40 million workers and provides 83% of the country's foreign currency. Factory owners erected thousands of shoddy facilities without permits or basic safety precautions, while maintaining tight security to keep workers in. Government oversight remained minimal, with 10% of parliament members owning garment factories and 30% having family connections to the industry.
Between 2006 and 2012, more than 500 Bangladeshi garment workers died in factory fires. Despite these tragedies, most brands refused to sign safety agreements until the horrific Rana Plaza collapse in 2013, which killed 1,134 people and injured 2,500. When the building began showing cracks, workers were sent home but ordered to return the next morning. Mahmudul Hassan Hridoy, a newly married 27-year-old quality inspector, went to work as did everyone else, including Shila Begum who feared losing her monthly pay of just $38. When the power went out and generators started, the building began to collapse. Begum's hand was trapped under concrete and her hair caught in a sewing machine for sixteen hours before rescue. Hridoy found himself pinned under a concrete pillar face-to-face with his friend Faisal, whose skull was shattered.
Five years after Rana Plaza, legal proceedings against factory owners moved slowly. Industry standards had improved somewhat-brands now routinely published supplier lists and paid compensation when workers died. However, Bangladesh's garment industry still faces significant problems: government opposition to unionization, rampant sexual and physical abuse in factories, and violent suppression of worker protests for living wages. As labor activist Gearhart noted, the industry remains "obsessed with quarterly returns" rather than investing in workers' wellbeing.
第 5 章
The Environmental Toll of Our Denim Obsession
Blue jeans embody all that is good, bad, and awry in fashion. Half the world's population wears them at any given moment, with six billion pairs produced annually and Americans owning an average of seven pairs each. Cotton, denim's foundation, has been used throughout history from Alexander the Great's army to Roman awnings. Today, about sixty billion pounds are grown annually, with India, China and the United States as leading producers. Despite its comfort, conventional cotton is environmentally devastating-using one-fifth of all insecticides and 10% of pesticides worldwide while growing on just 2.5% of arable land. It's also extremely water-intensive, requiring 2,600 gallons to grow one kilo and 5,000 gallons to process enough for a T-shirt and jeans.
Modern denim was likely developed in Manchester, New Hampshire textile mills during the nineteenth century. The fabric's distinctive construction features dark blue warp threads and white weft threads, creating its characteristic appearance. Originally dyed with natural indigo, denim remained niche until the 1870s when tailor Jacob Davis partnered with Levi Strauss to patent riveted workpants. Their May 20, 1873 patent launched what would become one of fashion's most successful brands.
Until the 1970s, jeans were typically stiff, unsanforized denim that required months of wear to properly break in. The 1980s changed everything with the popularization of stonewashing-throwing jeans into industrial washers with pumice stones until sufficiently abraded. "Finishing" in "washhouses" became standard practice, with thousands of jeans processed daily using acid, sandpaper, rasps and files to mimic natural wear. While some facilities follow strict safety and environmental standards, many don't, as witnessed in Vietnam where workers labored in sweltering 100-degree heat with poor ventilation, handling chemical-soaked denim without proper protection.
In Vietnamese washhouses, older machines use twenty liters of water to wash just three pairs of jeans, while newer ones still require five liters per kilo. The distressing process is equally alarming-workers sand jeans by hand at breakneck speed, processing 400 pairs daily without proper masks to protect against denim dust. But Vietnam's operations pale compared to Xintang, China's "jeans capital of the world," where 200,000 workers in 3,000 factories produce 800,000 pairs daily. With closed water treatment plants, factories dump dye waste directly into the East River, turning it opaque and toxic with high levels of lead, copper and cadmium.
第 6 章
Slow Fashion: Revitalizing Communities Through Local Production
In Florence, Alabama-once the Cotton T-shirt Capital of the World-designers Natalie Chanin and Billy Reid are revitalizing a community devastated by NAFTA. Chanin's slow fashion movement focuses on creating items with inherent value, curating customer experiences, reducing environmental impact, and improving quality of life for their communities. Her approach champions localization over mass production, honors craftsmanship while embracing modern technology, treats workers well, and supports buying locally.
Chanin grew up surrounded by cotton fields and textile traditions in Florence. Her grandmothers worked at Sweetwater Mill producing military underwear and taught her self-sustainability through sewing. After studying fashion at North Carolina State University, she worked briefly in New York's fashion industry but was disturbed by overseas manufacturing conditions, including seeing dye houses polluting rivers where children drank. Rejecting conventional fashion, she eventually returned to Alabama to work with local quilters when New York manufacturers couldn't execute her vision.
Chanin established her operation in Bldg. 14, part of the former Tee Jays Manufacturing complex. She sources organic Texas cotton jersey from South Carolina's Signet Mills and works with local artisans for indigo dyeing. Her production model employs about two dozen independent contractors who bid on projects, pick up pre-cut "kits," complete the garments at home, and return them signed and numbered. These seamstresses earn 25-50% of retail prices ($800 for dresses, nearly $4,000 for coats). Though producing just 120 garments daily (compared to Tee Jays' 35 million annually), her $3 million annual revenue keeps her on track toward her $10 million goal by 2023.
Like Chanin, Billy Reid discovered that small-town slow fashion was his path forward after initial setbacks. Born in Louisiana in 1964, Reid grew up around his mother's boutique before launching his William Reid label in Dallas in 1998. After moving to New York in 2000, he gained celebrity clients and won a CFDA award. But the September 11 attacks devastated his business when his financial backer withdrew a $10 million pledge. After losing everything, Reid retreated to Florence, Alabama with his family. In 2004, he partnered with Katy and K.P. McNeill to launch Billy Reid with a business model focused on direct-to-consumer sales rather than wholesale. This vertical integration allowed Reid to design what he pleased, avoid redundancy, control distribution, and pocket 60-70% of retail prices instead of the 30-40% from wholesale.
第 7 章
Rightshoring: Bringing Manufacturing Home
The "rightshoring" movement-bringing back manufacturing that went offshore during post-NAFTA globalization-has gained momentum in fashion. In the US, textiles and apparel was the third-most-reshored sector in 2014 and second-fastest-growing in 2016, employing 135,000 workers and producing 10% of America's fashion, up from 3% in 2013. In Britain, apparel production jobs increased 9% from 2011 to 2016, reaching 100,000.
Unlike the nostalgic "Make America Great Again" vision, rightshoring represents a tech-driven, sustainable reboot of domestic production. UBS economist Paul Donovan calls it "a reversal" of globalization, predicting trade will "revert to something like the old 'imperial model' of importing raw materials and processing them close to the consumer." Technology is transforming textile manufacturing into something more ethical and personal-clothes produced in vertically integrated communities on clean, quiet factory floors by well-paid tech-trained workers.
In New York City, the challenge isn't just rightshoring but preserving what manufacturing remains. Maria Cornejo exemplifies this commitment, having established Zero + Maria Cornejo in 1998 with a Mott Street shop and back-room atelier. Rejecting the "false economy" of overseas production she witnessed at Jigsaw, Cornejo wanted to "make everything in one place" and know the people making her clothes. Starting with a tight international team-Jiang Huang from Shanghai, Tonya from Russia, and Lynn from China-she built a business producing "interesting, easy clothes" with labels proudly stating "MADE AT 225 MOTT STREET."
Andrew Rosen, third-generation garmento and former Theory CEO, envisions relocating Manhattan's Garment District to Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Despite resistance from designers like Yeohlee Teng who see the district as "an incubator" and industry leaders calling the plan "a deportation," Rosen believes in "reimagining what the Garment Center should look like twenty years from now." Brooklyn already hosts fashion incubators like Manufacture New York, Pratt Institute's Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator, and the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center.
第 8 章
Sustainable Innovation: From Natural Dyes to Biofabricated Materials
Sarah Bellos secured a contract with Cone Mills in 2015 to supply natural indigo for up to 50,000 pairs of jeans. Her operation resembles a microbrewery, where indigo is processed into paste or powder for manufacturers. While natural indigo initially appears more expensive than synthetic dyes, Bellos argues that synthetic costs don't account for environmental "externalities" like fracking and oil spills. Most synthetic indigo today comes from Chinese manufacturers using aniline, classified as a probable human carcinogen that largely ends up in waterways, on workers, in the air, or embedded in denim products.
Spanish consultants Jose Vidal and Enrique Silla developed Jeanologia, a revolutionary three-step system that transforms denim finishing: lasers replace hazardous sandblasting and chemicals; ozone fades fabrics naturally; and e-Flow washing uses "nanobubbles" to cut water usage by 90 percent. Traditional jeans finishing consumes 70 liters of water, 1.5 kilowatt hours of energy, and 150 grams of chemicals per pair. Jeanologia reduces energy by 33%, chemicals by 67%, and water by up to 71%-to just "one glass per pair."
Stella McCartney's commitment to sustainability extends throughout her entire supply chain. Her wool comes from open-range sheep ranches in New Zealand, is cleaned sustainably in China, and woven in certified factories in Italy. For viscose, she sources from responsibly forested trees pulped with recycled water in Sweden, processed into filament in Germany using chemistry-safe systems, and finally woven in Italy. Her garments are manufactured in Hungarian factories where workers earn living wages in safe conditions.
McCartney's most significant sustainability contribution may be her support of disruptive startups like Modern Meadow, an American biofabrication company growing animal-free collagen protein for leather-like materials. The company's process resembles brewing beer but produces collagen instead-DNA is coded to program yeast cells to become "collagen-producing factories." The resulting material undergoes sustainable tanning processes to create various textures from elephant-like surfaces to fine Italian glove leather equivalents.
McCartney also partnered with Bolt Threads, whose lab-grown "spider silk" offered a solution to her ethical dilemma with traditional silk production, which kills silkworms. Founded by PhD students Dan Widmaier, Ethan Mirsky, and David Breslauer, Bolt Threads uses a process similar to Modern Meadow's: DNA is designed to create silk protein, introduced to yeast, and fermented. The resulting substance is transformed into fiber that can be woven into fabric.
第 9 章
Circular Fashion: Creating a Waste-Free Future
Dame Ellen MacArthur, Britain's most successful offshore sailing racer, has dedicated herself to making circularity a common practice in fashion through her foundation. At the 2017 Copenhagen Fashion Summit, MacArthur launched the Make Fashion Circular initiative and later released a report with Stella McCartney revealing that 87 percent of clothing gets landfilled or incinerated while only 1 percent is recycled. Her three-point plan calls for safe, non-toxic materials; higher-quality, repairable garments; and designs that can be transformed into new clothing at end-of-life.
Fashion industry veteran Stacy Flynn invented Evrnu, a molecularly regenerated fiber made from 100% post-consumer cotton garment waste, after witnessing the dark side of apparel manufacturing during a 2010 trip to China. The process consumes 98% less water than virgin cotton and produces 80% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than synthetic fibers. Flynn and her partner Christopher Stanev developed a method to purify old cloth, strip it of chemicals, and convert it to a cellulose "dope" that's extruded into new fiber.
While Flynn was transforming cotton waste, American expat Cyndi Rhoades in London tackled another circularity challenge: separating polyester from cotton in textile blends. Working with polymer chemist Dr. Adam Walker, they developed a process that strips dye from fabrics, dissolves polyester with solvents, and recovers both polyester tetraacrylate (PET) and cellulose from cotton at virgin quality and cost parity. By 2018, Worn Again received Cradle to Cradle certification, raised $6.7 million, and partnered with Swiss chemical giant Sulzer Chemtech to build their first industrial plant by 2021.
Several brands have pioneered innovative approaches to extending clothing life. Patagonia's Worn Wear program offers shopping credit for returned items, then cleans and resells them at discount prices. Their Reno repair facility employs forty-five technicians who complete fifty thousand repairs annually, while mobile menders travel in biodiesel trucks fixing garments for free. Eileen Fisher's Renew program has collected over eight hundred thousand garments, offering $5 credit per item. Three-quarters are reconditioned through overdyeing or decorative stitching, while damaged pieces go to their "Tiny Factory" to become new designs under the Resewn label.
第 10 章
The Future of Fashion: Technology, Automation, and Conscious Consumption
Technology promises to radically transform our relationship with clothing. Three-dimensional printing originated in the 1980s when Japanese lawyer Dr. Hideo Kodama invented a rapid-prototyping technology using photopolymers that hardened under UV light. Dutch couturier Iris van Herpen brought this technology to fashion in 2009, collaborating with architect Daniel Widrig to create a white 3D-printed bolero in swirling nautilus shapes. Since then, 3D printing has rapidly advanced in fashion, with major athletic brands now printing components of running shoes, some based on 3D scans of customers' feet.
Founded in London in 2013 by Ben Alun-Jones, Kirsty Emery, and Hal Watts, Unmade is disrupting two centuries-old manufacturing principles: that products must be produced before selling and that economies of scale dictate lower unit costs with higher volume. Their on-demand knitwear platform allows factories to produce one-off or short-run garments at industrial scale. Since nothing is manufactured until a customer orders it, there's no warehouse stock, no waste, and no markdowns.
The fashion industry's slow adoption of robotics accelerated when former Georgia Tech researchers secured a $1.26 million DARPA grant to develop sewing robots. Palaniswamy "Raj" Rajan transformed this "science project" into SoftWear Automation's commercial "Sewbots"-boxy contraptions that use computer vision to analyze fabric and replicate human sewing movements. These machines dart along overhead tracks, producing items with remarkable speed and precision-bathmats every twenty seconds and T-shirts every twenty-five seconds, with only 0.7% error rate.
While automation promises efficiency, it raises serious concerns about volume and employment. The International Labour Organization predicted up to 90% of Southeast Asian garment workers could lose their jobs to automation, potentially triggering civil unrest in countries like Cambodia. The fundamental concern remains: when production becomes invisible, do we lose our connection to what we wear?
The various players in Fashionopolis aren't fully aligned in their approaches. Rightshorers have different aims than slow-fashion advocates; high fashion will always involve seasons and creating new things, contradicting those focused on recycling existing materials. What we face is an "epic-sized mess" requiring multiple solutions to build a more just fashion ecosystem.
The revolution demands consumer participation too: buying less, washing clothes differently, repairing more, considering materials and supply chains, and supporting ethical companies. Renting may be the most environmentally conscious option currently available, allowing fashion currency while extending garment lifecycles. Whether wearing organic cotton, renting something special, or eventually recycling worn garments through innovative technologies, the future of fashion requires conscious consumption.
