Fashion can be frivolous, but it’s also serious business because in New Zealand people spend an astonishing amount on clothes – billions of dollars a year.
You can pick up a T-shirt these days for less than $10, on sale even less. A vast slice of the retail clothing market is held by the many chain stores selling fast turnover, fast fashion.
But do you wonder: If I’m paying this much for a piece of clothing, how much does the worker get? Where did it come from? Who made it?
“Basically fast fashion is instant gratification. It’s when you don’t think about what you’re consuming,” says World designer Francis Hooper. “Nothing’s wrong with fast fashion but what I see of course – I’m an advocate against fast fashion – is the consumer isn’t aware of the supply chain and what is involved in delivering fast fashion to you.”
In business for 25 years, high-end brand World is one of the survivors in New Zealand fashion. So yes, you could argue Mr. Hooper has a vested interest in advocating for people to buy fewer, but better clothes.
“It’s very rampant and right now we’re in a stage in business where fast fashion and global consumerism is at its most extreme; it’s on steroids right now.”
Price is a huge motivator in people’s decisions about clothes, and the big, cheap international fashion houses are seeing market potential down under.
H&M has recently opened in Melbourne and UK mega-chain Topshop has announced it’s about to open in New Zealand – more chains, more clothes, more choice. Mr. Hooper has explored having World’s clothes made in Asia, but his own investigations put him off.
“Well, what I saw was just hell. That’s what I saw. The conditions were disgusting. The workers in the factories, I mean, they were being paid, don’t get me wrong, and of course everyone needs to work, but that’s my point is that we’re in a global village and that women or men working in Bangladesh or in China or Jakarta or Bali, they’re our cousin, and would you allow your daughter, son or cousin to work in those conditions so that you could look hot for the evening? I think not.”
In the past year the NZ customer spent $3.3 billion in clothing shops and millions more in department stores. By far the majority of the clothes are imported. The biggest source is China but last year imports from Bangladesh, which has the lowest paid workers in the world, increased 37 percent.
A year ago, the eight-storey Rana Plaza collapsed in Dhaka. The building housed several unpermitted garment factories for global brands. When the building fell, 1133 people were killed and 2500 were injured.
“We saw last year that horrific factory collapse in Bangladesh and you’ve seen the footage come out of there – the conditions are diabolically bad,” says Mr. Hooper.
“My point, to make it even worse, is that was one disaster that was picked up by global media and the story was thankfully told so that we as consumers got to see an insight behind the veneer of glamorous fabulous fashion, the underbelly. But that was just one factory disaster. They happen every week.”
Not to that same extent in terms of numbers, but it’s true there are frequent, deadly episodes in the clothing manufacturing business.
Just six months before Rana Plaza, a fire in the Tazreen Fashion factory, also in Dhaka, killed more than 100. There have been 1800 deaths in the Bangladesh garment industry in recent years.
The catch-cry question international campaigners are asking is: Who made your clothes? Many businesses too are trying to do the right thing by signing the Bangladesh Accord set up after the Rana Plaza collapse. It is a legally binding, independent agreement designed to make all garment factories in Bangladesh safe workplaces. There are nearly 170 clothing company signatories from all over the world.
Here is where the Just Group needs to be introduced. It is an Australian company (owned by Solomon Lew and The Kimberly Family) with a dominant presence in New Zealand, including chain stores Portmans, Just Jeans, Dotti, Peter Alexander and JayJays.
The Just Group turns out to be an interesting player because, for one thing, it hasn’t signed the Bangladesh Accord. Instead, it signed up to the rival Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, with mostly big North American apparel companies and retailers like Walmart and Target.
What’s the difference between the two agreements? We asked Oxfam Australia, which campaigns for the rights of garment factory workers.
“What we’re concerned about is that the alliance is not legally binding in the same way that the Bangladesh Accord is binding,” says Oxfam corporate accountability advisor Daisy Gardener. “If a company under the accord doesn’t fulfill their obligations, they can actually be taken to court back in their home country, so for example taken to court back in the home country, so for example being taken to court in Australia. This is not the case for the alliance and we’re concerned that this will mean that companies will not take their obligations as seriously under the alliance programme. I think they are trying to do the right thing but we don’t think it’s going far enough and the accord goes a lot further. At the moment where their (the Just Group) factories are is secretive so we’re not able to independently verify conditions, and it’s not good enough for companies to say ‘sorry that information is secret and we can’t release that information”.
There are chains such as Kmart taking the lead and publishing a full list of their Bangladesh factories, so it is possible. Why then isn’t the Just Group being transparent? Where does it stand on the conditions and safety of workers in the factories that supply its clothes? Oxfam believes the Just Group can’t ignore the public.
“We know that many customers are now asking companies like Just Jeans where the factories are. We know now where a lot of our eggs come from, the specific farms, we know where our pork comes from. I think that the next step a lot of customers are asking is where is my clothing made? It says it’s made in Bangladesh, but which exact factory and who and what are their conditions? Are they receiving a decent wage rather than a poverty wage? Are the conditions safe at the factory? So we think that there’s a growing consumer awareness and we think that companies like the Just Group really need to start responding to their customers,” says Ms Gardener.
Maybe fast fashion could slow down a bit. As Coco Chanel would say, fashion changes but style endures.