Fashion's Ugly Secret

[only in English this time, desculpem-me!]

More than 400 people died after a building that housed five factories collapsed in Bangladesh. They were making clothes for brands like Primark, and the owners of the building were too greedy to do something about its poor condition. I don’t know about you, but I decided to explore my closet to find out the birthplace of my clothes. 

Made in Cambodia (Portugal in the back!)

 Made in China

 Cambodia... again

 A bit of Europe for a change - but is it any better?

If you open your closet right now, I’ll bet you the majority of your clothes will be made in Asia or North Africa. There has been some debate about child labour and the poor work conditions of those countries, but do you remember that when you buy that cute shirt in Zara? I certainly don’t. But is it our fault? If you buy a packet of cigarettes, endless warnings, some with horrific pictures, will try to dissuade you from smoking. None of that happens with these clothes. You never see a picture of a seven-year-old child making shoes for Nike to warn you about the harm of that product. It won’t harm you in the process of consumption, as in the case of a cigarette, but it most likely harmed others in the production process. So why does no one seem to care?

Business owners have a lot to gain with the cheap prices they offer in these countries, and in order to keep those prices low, there is no way they can spend money on improving their employees’ conditions. Governments should be aware of this and put their foot down, but passivity obviously pays off (bribes, benefits for the economy, etc.) and therefore do not act. The only party left in this equation are the brands that buy from those countries.

Primark has said it’s working towards fixing this issue, but will it really, after the media coverage of Dhaka stops? Realistically, and business-ly speaking, the only real motivation for a change would be the customers. If profit stops coming in because people are protesting against cheap labour, brands would obviously have to do something - I mean, we’re talking about loosing money here. The motivation will never come from 400 lost lives if the customers don’t care and the money keeps coming. It’s just human life, what can you buy with that?

Another thing that got me thinking after this horrible disaster was the unfairness of media coverage. I study media within my degree, and one of the most eye-opening things I’ve learnt (I’m not being patronising, it’s great if you were aware of this already but I genuinely never realised it before) was that someone out there decides what is reported or not and how much coverage it gets. The more coverage it gets, the more important it should be, right? Now add the pervert underworld of ambitions, politics, greed and money, and voilà, the picture is not quite that logical. How else would you explain the extensive coverage of the Boston events, and the less-than-one-minute news reports when similar, or even worse, events happen in Iraq? It’s sad, but it’s the truth. While doing my dissertation, I read this sentence in a book by Alan Bell:

‘News is what happens to one Englishman, 10 Germans, and 1000 Indians.’ *

He characterises it as an ‘oldtime, typically racist adages from newrooms walls’. It is definitely racist, but is it oldtime? Do newsrooms work any differently nowadays? I personally do not think so. Otherwise, the world should stop because of this building collapsing the same way it did when the bombs exploded in Boston. Or at least get the same coverage, letting people decide the importance they want to give to it, instead of attaching a degree of importance by covering it more and less.

(Since we’re talking about media coverage, I wouldn’t be surprised if brands were actually pressuring media outlets not to extensively cover the Dhaka events, so that they do not have to answer to us, the customers. Is this too much conspiracy for just one post?)

The blogging community could be one the most influential factors in this debate, not only because the high street is definitely the biggest consumer of cheap labour and that is the kind of fashion found in blogs, but also because of the quick and extensive spread of trends and ideologies through the internet.

From now on, I’ll be more conscious of where the clothes I buy come from, even if the lost lives in Dhaka did not make it to the front cover. Will you?

                                                                                            

I'd love to hear your opinion on this issue, so please leave a comment!                    

*in 'Language of News Media', p.204, 1991