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Quick recap: I assigned myself a summer reading book, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, to help me learn more about ethical fashion.  I’m jotting down some notes and thoughts as I read through it this month and sharing them here.  Maybe it will inspire you in a new way too!

I’ve divided the book into four sections.  (Find my notes on Part One here.)  Part Two contains Chapters 3 and 4.

Chapter 3: High and Low Fashion Make Friends

Every season another mass-fashion retailer announces a buzzy new partnership with a famed designer…growing sales by drawing hysterical early morning queues and stampedes that clean out stores in the blink of an eye. (p.70)

Consumers once bought the best clothing they could for their money, which started with an intimate knowledge of fiber content.  When clothes were more expensive and kept for years and worn year-round, we were naturally more invested in what they were made of. (p.83) 

   Notes and takeaways from this chapter:

• This chapter explored the vast difference between high-end fashion and their cheaper counterparts.  The section on high-end designers and the way retailers like Target, H&M, and Gap have partnered with them to create fast fashion copycats was eye-opening.  This quote was thought-provoking: “Where girls once would have paid at least some attention to the craftsmanship of the product, or even might have sat behind a sewing machine and created their own Missoni-inspired or Karl Lagerfeld look-alike, they can now line up passively to buy disposable versions of it.” (p.71)
• There are two types of man-made fibers, plastics and cellulosic:
• Cellulosic are fibers like viscose, rayon, Modal, and Tencel and are produced from naturally sourced by-products like cotton scraps and sawdust
• Plastics are fibers like polyester, acrylic and nylon
• As I read through this book, I’m reminded so much of my grandmother.  She was a talented seamstress and would intensely inspect my clothing – what the fabric was, how the seams were sewn, how the lining in a skirt was connected.  I’m so sad that I never sat down with her and had her explain the construction of a well-made piece of clothing.

Chapter 4: Fast Fashion

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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