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 are 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 ( a type of "externality")
- 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, given this?
- 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 punk 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 those 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
- Notice how many of Schor's values fit with Wendell Berry's criteria for technology and consumption
- 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