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| Unraveled / Maxine Bédat Portfolio, c2021. 336 p. |
Today's book is about fabric in a way, but really more about one specific garment made with one specific fabric -- it uses one pair of jeans as a way to travel through fashion's supply chain and follow a ubiquitous garment beginning to end to reveal so much about the fashion industry today.
Since it is Fashion Revolution Week this week and also my local Trashion Week, I thought it was a perfect time to talk about this book.
The author began as an entrepreneur in the fashion world, but realized fairly soon that her attempt to create a responsible brand was stifled by so many suppliers not knowing their own supply chain. So she pivoted to education and work on that end of things. In this book, she is educating readers on the worldwide production of fashion and all the steps in it that are not necessarily following the same regulations.
From growing the cotton in Texas, to weaving and dyeing in China, to sewing in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, then shipping from warehouses like Amazon ones in North America, all the way to a pair of jeans being discarded after just a few wears and ending up in landfill or shipped off to African second-hand markets. So many issues to discuss at each step! She does have an American perspective so her examples are grounded in the US, but much it is the same across the world.
Each chapter takes on one of these steps and discusses the problems jeans can cause. From massive water use to grow monocrops of cotton, to the chemicals (most banned in North America) that are running into the water systems across China, to the terrible working conditions for mainly female seamstresses sewing your clothes (yes, all clothing is handsewn by someone), to demanding warehouse jobs with poor pay and outrageous expectations for employees, to the shopping habits of consumers who will toss something after a wear or two, to the conditions in landfills and the economic and environmental effects of massive piles of used clothing dumped into African markets, it's all here to read and learn.
I found her style perhaps a touch dry at times, but overall very readable. She brings in personal stories to enlarge on the facts she is sharing (some of them quite shocking) and the central concept of following a pair of jeans along a production path is relatable to most people; she notes that American women own an average of 7 pairs of jeans. I don't really wear jeans, and only have some I thrifted a few years back for when I might need a pair -- but I can see the thousands of pairs out there! I thought this was a great way to make these ideas understandable to general readers. If you've been reading on this topic for a while, you will be familiar with the facts shared here. But it never hurts to get a new perspective, and this one might be a good choice to hand to someone interested in the ideas but who hasn't read everything yet. Jeans are kind of in your face fashion, and so this might hit home in a strong way. This one is worth checking out!
I see fewer jeans now. In my college neighborhood, the kids all seem to wear looser, lighter-weight pants made of cotton or synthetic fibers. I wonder why hemp fabric clothing is not more popular. Cotton is environmentally costly but hemp is not. Maybe hemp requires more costly processing? I've read that is true of hemp paper.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting Carol! I am not a big jeans wearer so it's interesting to hear that younger people have a different vibe where you are. It would be practical to use hemp textiles but I do think that there is still that weird connection in many minds between hemp and marijuana so perhaps that is holding back the industry a bit? And of course it's not at the scale of cotton production so costs are higher. But I'd love to see more of it!
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