the district

Every couple of years some non-profit organization (War on Want) comes along to make allegations of sweatshop abuse against a major clothing retailer to call consumers’ attention to the deplorable plight of the global garment worker. This rounds’ target is Banana Republic, which is surprising for two reasons; first BR is part of the Gap group which is generally regarded as one of the better companies with regards to their labor compliance following changes made after their own sweatshop scandal. The second reason I was surprised to see the new complaints regarding Indian factories get headlines (in the UK’s Independent) is slightly more cynical. In the year 2008, is anyone in the US or UK really surprised that working in an Indian garment factory is probably a pretty lousy endeavor? Every time new complaints come forward, that particular brand’s sales drop for a quarter or so, and a few embarrassed corporate officers hold a press conference and say “We had no idea, its all our sub-contractors fault, we promise to get better.” Life goes on and other retailers pray that they will not be the next sacrificial lamb of the industry.

Now I should take a moment to clarify here, that I am well aware of the difficulties of overseeing a supply chain that spans dozens of countries and several continents, with contractors doing their best to hide problems. This is not say that North American apparel brands are free from blame, but rather that the very model of how apparel is produced does not work if you are concerned with labor and environmental standards. The fundamental problem is that treating workers (and the environment) better takes money, and buyers (at the wholesale and retail level) are not willing to pay it. Competition is so fierce amongst factories and even countries to win garment work, that there is very little incentive for factory owners to raise the bar. In other words, when companies squeeze every penny that they can out of their suppliers, than it shouldn’t be a surprise when those same suppliers spend less on things like taking care of their workers or processing wastewater. The fact that Wal-mart is the most successful retailer in the history of retail based on their delivery of the lowest prices, places significant guilt on consumers themselves.

Ultimately, its a circular question to try and place blame for sweatshop abuses in the garment trade. Is it the factory committing them, the American companies paying them, or the end consumers turning a blind eye and buying the products? In my opinion, it doesn’t matter, its a ‘none of us, but all of them’ kind of problem. Luckily encouraging a fix is much easier than assigning the blame. The best thing that any one individual can do is to be responsible for their own purchases, and know where they come from. Just as retailers respond quickly to price sensitivity, so to do they respond to ethical concerns, as the recent green-craze has demonstrated. If customers are vocal and vote with their dollars, than retailers have no reason not to want to improve their reputation.

Apparently it’s footwear week here at the District, and so today I bring you Simple. I once had a pair of bright red Simples that I bought on a beach in the middle-of-nowhere Australia for $10. They may have been my favorite shoes ever, but thats not what I am going to write about today. Instead, it’s ecoSneakers. And while trying to squeeze the word ‘eco’ into every environmentally friendly product offering is more than a little cliche, thats about the only thing I don’t like about this website. In list format here is what I do like:

1. Ingredients. They tell you how they make the stuff and whats in it.

2. Make your own shoe kit. Kind of reminds me of the anarchist kids I used to live with in Boston that ate out of dumpsters just to prove that they could, but the shoes are still pretty damn cool. One might even say, they still get mad DIY street-cred.

3. Slip-ons that aren’t Vans:

4. The use of the word “vulcanized”.

5. Stylish Vegan footwear options for my friend Ben so he can throw out his white hemp booties.

Thinks I don’t like:

1. No new Red Shoes.

As a guy who wore Chuck Taylors (aka Converse All-stars) when they were cool, then when they were not cool, and then still when they were cool again, lately I kind of feel violated by the hipsters’ collective adoption of the footwear as their own. Granted sometime in my mid-twenties I finally got sick of having cold and wet feet and gave them up, the sight of a guy in skin-tight black jeans and a pair of Chuck high-tops still kind of makes me cringe on multiple levels. Well, at least one good thing has come as a result of the re-re-resurgence of their popularity; the introduction of Fair-Trade Chuck Taylor knock-offs. Now, not to sound too much like a curmudgeony old coot, but I still look back fondly at the days when Chuck Taylors cost $20 and were made in America. Well, guess what, times have changed: Made in Indonesia, $47, owned by Nike. And silly me, I thought shipping jobs overseas was about saving consumers money.

(AP pictured on left, No Sweat pictured on right)
Anyway, the Autonomie Project has recently unveiled their own version of the sneaker made fairly and retailing for $54 (lows) to $56 (highs). Now granted I am pretty hopped-up on Dayquil right now, AP’s shoes, although available in a wider range of colors do look suspiciously similar to No Sweat’s footwear offerings only with a significantly larger price tag. As far as who has better Fair Trade street-cred, you can read up on that yourself. Rock on hipsters.

Believe it or not I actually read the occasional book on real printed paper, just like in the old days. When I came across Rachel Louise Snyder’s recently published Fugitive Demin, and its obnoxiously long sub-title: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade, I knew this was a book for me. I don’t know when it happened (I’m guessing grad school), but the archaic and often impenetrable world of the international clothing trade fascinates me. While given the title, I certainly did not expect a scholarly review of the subject, Snyder’s snarky and irreverant tone throughout caught me a little off-guard. Starting from the obscure cotton fields of Azerbaijan Snyder takes the reader through the strangely convoluted journey of pant production across the globe. Despite some early stumbles on the difference between thread and yarn, and a foggy explanation of the quota system, Snyder paints a deeply personal portrait of a handful of characters involved in your pants from Italian fabric designers to Cambodian factory workers. At the core of Fugitive Denim, Snyder attempts to break-down and examine some of the many complex issues affecting the international garment industry, specifically unpacking the traditional causes of social and environmental problems associated with apparel manufacturing. While far from a corporate apologist, Snyder does not take the easy road of blind criticism and finger-pointing at industry giants like Gap or Wal-mart.Instead she does an excellent job of simplifying many of the complex factors involved such as international trade policy, fierce retail competition, and long political agendas. Fugitive Denim can be at times mildly annoying in its informality, but does provide a service in making an often dry and overlooked topic significantly more accessible to the general pants-wearing public.

You can buy it here.

More picts when i get back to the office tomorrow.

Organic was the magic word this year at ISS East, the trade-show for the screen-printing world. Despite the triumphant let down of the “Green Pavilion”, which was actually more like the “green bookcase”, there were quite a new green offerings. First of all, everyone sells organic t-shirts now, so I am not even going to list them all. The word on the street however, is that the demand (at the production level) has finally outrun the supply and there is a serious yarn shortage in the works right now. While every manufacture I spoke with admitted the yarn shortage, none seemed to be willing to say that their supply-chains would be affected, only everyone else’s. Apparently, when Wal-mart and Target decide they want to start buying up something, it starts to get scarce. Unfortunately, this really puts the hurt on the smallest of producers (with the least buying power) who are actually the most progressive.
Despite everyone jumping into the game, the gap between those who believe in and understand the product versus those who just know their customers want it is vast. As one unnamed sales-rep put it, “At this point if you start getting picky about the dyes and origin, you will get nothing. Its too competitive, just be happy you are able to get something stamped organic and don’t worry about the rest.”

Some show highlights (for me anyway) were getting a free barney-the-dinosaur colored organic T from a unibrowed American Apparel model, getting to watch the giant embroidery machines stitch eagles in front of flags, and learning how to say “phthalate” and why they are bad. Continental’s new reduced carbon t-shirts from Turkey were also quite impressive and feature by far the most informative and complete literature I have ever seen from an apparel manufacturer. Lastly, while it may have been short I was totally stoked to meet my screen-printers face to face.

By the way, if anyone knows how to turn this Greyhound voucher I got on the bus down into $20 please let me know, I am still down ten bucks from the nickel slots.

Firefox announced a t-shirt design contest a few days ago for their official new t-shirt. It will be printed on 100% organic cotton, and will not harm any actual or cartoon-like firefoxes. After having just spent the better part of the day trying to restore this site after some sort of hosting disaster, I am going to leave you with the contest details, and step the hell away from my computer.

For details click here.

Yesterday the LA Times ran a story on the plethora of candidate Tees circulating the web this primary season, including the Hillary shirt pictured above from Marc Jacobs. (the obama shirt is an official campaign shirt, pict borrowed from Tcritic)  While the article doesn’t report anything shocking, it gives me pleasure to read about Clinton losing at things, even if it is petty.  Having worked briefly in electoral politics, I learned two things: Alaskans like guns, and the “t-shirt” indicator is just about as accurate at predicting election results as the yard-sign count.  For the under 30 set, ordering a t-shirt online and pontificating at parties is somehow a much easier task than actually dragging one’s lazy ass to the polling station every 4 years. Anyway, speaking of being lazy here are the highlights:

So, I don’t know how I missed this one last week, but American Apparel founder Dov Charney’s Sexual Harassment lawsuit began trial last week. Efforts to arbitrate the deal (I am guessing ‘pay-off the accuser’) have fallen apart and court hearings are underway. No details yet on how long the trial is expected to last, but I will keep you updated on any news. While this is the third (or fourth?) such formal suit filed against Charney it is the first one to make it to the courtroom. Does paying your machine-operators arguably more than anyone else in the garment industry compensate for being a misogynistic douche-bag? Consumers, You decide.