The cost of fashion
The face of a young woman, wearing what looks like woven plastic wrapped around her body, peers from the magazine lift-out promoting the Melbourne Fashion Festival, on this month.
The festival has been greeted with much fanfare and free lift-outs in all the major metropolitan newspapers, and much has been made of the visit of that role model for women, the woman-next-door Naomi Campbell.
The impact of fashion industry dictates on women's psychology and hip pockets is, of course, ignored. And, as the campaigners in Fairwear, which is demanding rights for the fashion industry's outworkers, have correctly pointed out, the fanfare also ignores the lot of the workers who produce the clothes.
In January, sportswear and equipment manufacturer Adidas posted a record profit of $US501.8 million. The increase in profit was attributed to "very positive development of net sales and gross profit" — itself attributable to the company's low labour costs in China, Vietnam and Indonesia, and its aggressive marketing campaigns using highly paid sports stars.
Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney, another giant which uses cheap labour to make its garments, earns $US200 million in salary and stock options per year; that's $97,600 per hour. An Haitian worker who makes Pocahontas, Lion King and Hunchback of Notre Dame T-shirts and pyjamas for the company would have to work for 325,000 hours to earn that amount.
The exploitation of the poor doesn't end there. Fashion house Dior's latest collection, launched in January, has been described as "hobo-chic". Its inspiration is said to be the layers of clothing worn by the homeless of Paris, who Dior designer John Galliano encounters on his morning jogs along the banks of the Seine.
The Paris Committee for the Homeless protested outside a Dior store in Paris and demanded an apology for causing offense to the poor, who have no choice in their attire.
Fashion columnist Lee Tulloch, in Melbourne's Age newspaper on February 2, implored readers not to castigate the designer, who "has been down and out himself", but to aim their wrath at rich women who patronise Dior's collections. She proposed two solutions: that the homeless patent their look and gain royalties from it and that the Dior patrons fork out money to clothe a "hobo"!
Consumer-focused campaigns have made the use of sweatshop labour distasteful for many people, who have withheld their dollars. Stung by this, a number of businesses have begun to distance themselves from the use of sweatshop labour, and more and more garment manufacturers and retailers in Australia are signing the Fairwear campaign's Homeworkers' Code of Practice.
That's a step in the right direction. But how do we stop altogether this industry's exploitation of workers and break the image industry's grip on women?
The same economic and social order that enslaves the workers who produce the image enslaves the women who consume the image. Just as workers in First World countries can fight together with workers in Third World countries to improve the living conditions of the latter, the producers and consumers in the image industry need to fight together to break that industry's relentless grip on them.
Campaigns like Fairwear are a good beginning — and it is no coincidence that the majority of its activists are women. But we need to go further than putting pressure on companies to reform their practices.
We need to create a society which enables and values women's contribution as people, not as walking advertisements for Dior, Revlon, Tommy Hilfiger or some other big-profit label.
We need a society which holds the interests of poor people above those of an exploitative industry trawling the world for "inspiration". Companies that make their top managers and shareholders wealthy at the expense of workers' living standards need to be brought under the control of those who produce that wealth — the workers themselves.
Their bottom line should not be ours.
By Vannessa Hearman