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As you may know, I’ve been selling secondhand clothing on Poshmark for almost a year now. Looking critically at clothing has opened a whole new world to me! I’m asking questions like, What kind of fabric is this? How is this garment constructed? How in the world can they sell a brand new knit sweater so cheaply?! In the past year, my fashion self-education has taught me a lot, but I know there is still so much to learn.
So to help me out, I assigned myself a bit of summer reading: Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. Like last year, I thought it would be fun to jot down some notes and thoughts as I read through it this month and share them here. Maybe it will inspire you to look at your closet in a new way too!
The book is divided into nine chapters. Today’s Part One will look at the Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2.
Introduction
That clothes can be had for so little money is historically unprecedented. Clothes have almost always been expensive, hard to come by, and highly valued; they have been used as alternate currency in many societies. Well into the twentieth century, clothes were pricey and precious enough that they were mended and cared for and reimagined countless times, and most people had a few outfits that they wore until they wore out. How things have changed. We’ve gone from making good use of the clothes we own to buying things we’ll never or barely wear. We are caught in a cycle of consumption and waste that is unsettling at best and unsatisfying at its core. (p.4)
Clothes could have more meaning and longevity if we think less about owning the latest or cheapest thing and develop more of a relationship with the things we wear. Building a wardrobe over time, saving up and investing in well-made pieces, obsessing over the perfect hem, luxuriating in fabrics, and patching and altering our clothes are old-fashioned habits. But they’re also deeply satisfying antidotes to the empty uniformity of cheapness. If more of us picked up the lost art of sewing or reconnected with the seamstresses and tailors in our communities, we could all be our own fashion designers and constantly reinvent, personalize, and perfect the things we own. (p.9)
Chapter 1: “I Have Enough Clothing to Open a Store”
Cheap fashion and off-price chains have come to occupy a significant part of the retail market. Their dominance, paired with the majority of department store clothing now being sold on sale, has fully reset our expectations about how much clothes should cost and what they are worth. This constant chipping away of the price of apparel has shifted the concept of what is “affordable,” with once-reasonable prices now seeming expensive to us. (p.31)
Target and Old Navy initially needed marketing to redefine cheap fashion as chic, but today cheap fashion needs no endorsement. Whether we’re buying from off-price stores, department store sales, or from pure discounters, landing clothing deals in the realm of $30, or often much less, is ingrained in our culture. It’s simply the way most of us shop. (p.33)
Notes and takeaways from this chapter:
- This chapter was an overview of the history of fast fashion. Surprisingly, the roots go back to the Gap!
Chapter 2: How America Lost Its Shirts
To understand why fashion is so beguiled by overseas production, consider that even after outsourcing almost our entire clothing industry to low-wage countries, labor is still a huge part of the cost of garment production. According to recent estimates, raw materials account for 25 to 50 percent of the cost of producing an item of clothing, while labor ranges from 20 to 40 percent. “Fashion is a labor-intense industry, not a technology-intense industry. You need someone to sit at a sewing machine,” DiPalma says. Clothing, even when produced in a factory, is really a handmade good broken down into assembly-line steps. The sewing machine is more a tool than a machine, as it really just facilitates and speeds up manual work. (p.42)
Low wages don’t just affect immigrants and garment workers…Long before the recession began, jobs were becoming increasingly polarized in the United States, with The New York Times reporting in 2010 on a number of economic studies that showed high-paid occupations that demand higher education and advanced skills growing alongside low-wage, entry-level, service or retail jobs. This trend is intimately related to the loss of manufacturing in the United States. Skilled middle-income jobs, those once populated mostly by factory workers, are the ones that have disappeared, and they have evaporated even faster since the start of the current recession. (p.56)
Notes and takeaways from this chapter:
- To make cheap clothes, you need cheap labor. These stats are unsettling: “Garment workers in the United States today, although poorly paid by American standards, make more than four times as much as Chinese garment workers, 11 times Dominican garment workers, and 38 times Bangladeshi garment workers.” (p.43)
- Fun fact: Nike has never made their shoes in the United States; they have always been made in Japan and Taiwan.
- Another fun fact: Levi’s was one of the last major garment manufacturers to give in and source from overseas, closing its last last factory in 2004.
This book sounds so interesting, Ashley! And when I started to really look at labels in thrift stores, it was amazing to see so many clothes from other decades made in USA; I'm so used to seeing made in China etc.
I immediately thought of you as I read this book! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the quality of vintage clothes you find and how that differs from more recent, trendy pieces.
I have noticed a difference in quality in make and materials- especially when compared to super cheap fast fashion brands that I've purchased from in the past!:-/
I loved this book. Clothes are so hard to shop for! I try to do mostly second hand but then I have seasons like right now when nothing fits and I need summer clothes like right now. Also, tall person problems.
I hear you. I still don't know what my new normal/post-six-kids size is, so I'm shopping almost exclusively secondhand right now.