Hi, I'm Cait Munro and I'm a senior editor
at Refinery29
and I have a few questions about fashion and capitalism.
For as long as I've been alive I've been obsessed with clothes,
dressing up and collecting pieces and putting together outfits
is a huge part of our express myself
and how I feel good every day.
I'm totally one of those people where
if I don't like my outfit, it can ruin my whole day.
But over the past couple years especially,
I've
been thinking a lot about the things
I see around me that are wrong.
And when I think about these problems
and get down to the root cause of them, it always
comes down to capitalism and fashion is a
huge part of that.
Capitalism is why we're the
richest country in the world.
And it's why the top 1% owns
almost 43% of the wealth.
It's why 44 million people don't even have
health insurance.
It's why CEOs make an estimated
278 times what their employees do.
It's why, if we're going to apply it to fashion,
a designer handbag can cost up to 20 times
more to buy than it does to make.
All of that is just insane to me and I think
a lot of other
people are waking up and realizing
that it's insane to them too.
And yet, in the middle of a global pandemic
and all of this other stuff going on,
I'm still out here trawling the internet for
cute work from home clothes.
I'm totally part of the problem.
So I wanted to find out, could the fashion
industry
even exist in an economy that doesn't
prioritize the bottom line at the expense
of everything else?
And what can we as fashion lovers do to shop in a way that's
more in line with our politics
and hold the industry to a higher standard?
Tansy Hoskins is the author of the book on this
topic, Stitchd Up The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion.
So I thought that she might have some answers.
Hi, Tansy.
How's it going?
So anti-capitalist sentiment is
growing, especially in memes and tweets and on
the internet about like how to reconcile
a belief that capitalism is wrong and a desire
for a different way of doing things with a
genuine love of fashion and esthetics and
a desire to own
and wear beautiful things.
So I wonder if you have thoughts on
whether or not it's possible to do both?
And if so, how?
For me, capitalism is what is ugly
about the fashion industry.
Capitalism warps fashion and design and makes
it not about the best of human creativity
but it turns into just providing for the market.
For me, there is no contradiction in really,
really
disliking capitalism, but also wanting
to participate in creativity and joy and beauty
when it comes to what we wear every day.
So what might the fashion industry look like
in an anti-capitalist marketplace?
Or is that just sort of an oxymoron?
Like, how can the fashion industry be less capitalist?
This is really for me, this is about democracy
and it's about stopping fashion being owned
by a tiny group of basically white, global,
north
shareholders and opening it up.
And so that would be the first thing that
an
anti-capitalist form of doing fashion would change.
It would transfer power.
Who owns the factories?
Who decides how the factories run?
Who decides what's made in the factories?
It take it away from a tiny group of factory
owners and giant corporations and transfer
it into the hands of the workers.
It's impossible to talk about capitalism without
talking about Karl Marx.
He predicted that it would cause a lot of
the
problems we’re dealing with today like
globalization, wealth inequality,
monopolies and recessions.
When people say late-stage capitalism,
they're referring to the period of time when the system
starts to break down, which is right now.
A big part of reforming capitalism is ensuring
that workers are treated fairly.
That means living wage, access to health care,
sick days and paid time off, maternity and
paternity
leave and safety on job sites.
It seems pretty basic, but a lot of garment
workers,
especially those who make clothes
for fast fashion brands, don't have access
to this stuff.
One thing that Marx argued was that the means of
production should be in the hands of the workers.
So that would mean the people making the clothes
would own the factory and the people working
in a brand's HQ would own part of the brands.
When activists and progressive politicians
talk about reforming the capitalist system,
they talk about strengthening the social safety net,
empowering workers, closing the wealth gap and
ensuring equity for all.
But how can we apply all of that to fashion?
For one thing, we can vote with our dollar
and only support brands who have ethical labor
and manufacturing processes or who uphold our
ideals in other ways, like offering a
full range of sizing.
I've loved fashion all my life, I love to
shop,
I do spend money on clothes and sometimes
I wonder if that instinct is at odds with
my beliefs about capitalism and my beliefs
about the flaws of the industry.
What I would say to someone like you,
or indeed to someone like myself, is that
not to get caught in a cycle of guilt about
this kind of thing.
Because, I mean, really, you are up against
an absolute
machine, like a machine that is
spending billions and billions and billions
of dollars
every single year to make you go and shop.
Take it from Jhánneu Roberts, a low waste
and sustainability blogger who knows all there
is to know about shopping consciously.
Fashion is an industry of excess.
We're always trying to keep up
with the new trends and brands are coming
up with new products left and right and this
leads to a ton of textile wastes that just
sits in landfills.
And so one of the things that you can do is shop
second hand and you can also upcycle
the clothes that you already have.
I'm uplifted by the knowledge that the world
is changing for good.
And the fashion industry, if it wants to stay
relevant, has to change, too.
I think for me it also means reassessing how
I think about style.
For example, I've always wanted to Chanel
Flap Bag and now I'm like, why?
Why do I even want that?
Is it just because I can't afford it?
Is it just because it's this carrot being
dangled
in front of me by this industry that
needs me to keep wanting that in order to
keep getting paid?
And can I just decide to opt out of that narrative
entirely and do my own thing and define my
own path when it comes to style?
As long as we're living under capitalism,
especially as women there, there's always
going to be a push-pull between wanting stuff,
which is what we're constantly being conditioned
to do, because that's how this system functions.
And recognizing that buying shit doesn't bring
happiness no matter how many times
we're told it will.
The whole system's gotta change and that's a
lot to process, especially at a time
when there's so many other things going on.
But the fact is, a lot of these issues are
interconnected.
So it's time to get to work.
