Juliet Schor, Clothes Encounters (October 2004)
(author of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, Scribner 2004)
● Schor loves clothes, enjoys shopping and likes to look fashionable
○ Won’t admit this to her env. friends who are fashion minimalists
● Fashion minimalism: Clothes are utilitarian objects whose presence in our lives should be tolerated grudgingly
● Americans buying (and throwing away) clothes at record rates
○ 2002 average am consumer acquired 52 new items of basic apparel (from 42 in 1996)
○ Entered era of disposable clothing
○ Average household throws away 1.3 pounds of textile waste a week
○ A billion pounds of used clothing exported each year
● Rock-bottom prices explain this in part
○ .99 cent shirts at Old Navy
● Price decline due to
○ Relentless pressure on wages now as low a seven or eight cents an hour in some Asian countries
○ Unaccounted-for env. costs
- Toxic chemicals used in nearly all dyes
- Commercial cotton cultivation is pesticide intensive
- overgrazing and desertification in Asia go along with falling price of cashmere
■ Is $40 dollar cashmere sweaters a good thing?
● She rejects fashion minimalism because it
○ Trivializes clothes
○ Fails to comprehend our deep fascination with them
○ Clothing has been key to class struggles for social status
- Individuals used fashion to construct own identity
- Form short skits in the 20s as a way of flaunting conventional morality
- 1980s punks style as a statement against hypocrisy of mainstream culture
● Nothing shallow about expressing values through what one wears
○ Depends on the values? Or if one expresses values other ways too
● Clean Clothes Movement (in Europe) aims to express values of sustainability, justice and solidarity via clothes
○ Has resulted in some leading apparel chains committing to principles of labor rights and env. accountability
● Schor is a fashion maximalist
● Has a vision for clothes industry that includes
○ Re-localization of production
○ Growth of small-scale, designer-run workshops
○ Anchored in communities
○ Shift to higher-priced
○ More aesthetic garments
○ Made from sustainably produced, nontoxic fabrics
● “Investment apparel” she owns
○ Nicely tailored pants with invisible double button to accommodate fluctuating waistline
○ Sumptuous wool scarf doubles as a shirt or headwear
○ Custom made linen tops and bottoms sewn by local producer
- Picks exact colors
- Clothes fit perfectly
- Repaired quickly and w/o cost
● Wants to show her friends can have personally expressive, ethically responsible wardrobe
● Not that contemporary consumers are too maternalistic, its that there not materialistic enough
○ When we choose disposability over respect, love, and commitment for the objects we fashion into our material world