Stitched Up: The Anti-capitalist Book of Fashion

by Tansy E. Hoskins

Delves into the exclusive and alluring world of fashion, to expose class division, gender stereotyping and wasteful consumption.

Genres: Fashion, Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, Feminism, Sustainability, Art

265 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 2, 2014

About the author

The Anti-Capitalist Book Of Fashion is out now.

This is a book about fashion and capitalism, destruction and resistance, billionaires, workers and revolution. Above all it is a book that reveals fashion as a performance of deeper social issues.

What started as an update of Stitched Up escalated when I found I couldn't stop writing. The book ended up being about 60% new text. I see it as the same skeleton with brand new flesh on its bones.

There is a lot of new material in the text, covering so many of the things that have happened in the past decade - social media & communicative capitalism, influencers and digital activism, the rise of slash fashion brands, and Covid to name just a few.

I also got to interview and collaborate with some exceptionally talented and interesting people. I seriously love the Foreword by Andreja Pejić. She is a fiery revolutionary as well as an actress & supermodel so it is a dream come true. I am also really pleased to have worked with Indigenous Fashion scholar Riley Kucheran who is a brilliant and inspiring thinker.

You can also check out my book 'Foot Work – What Your Shoes Are Doing To The World,' an exposé of the dark origins of the shoes on our feet. [The paperback launched March 2022!]

My first book 'Stitched Up' was selected by Emma Watson for her ‘Ultimate Book List’ with Emma saying “By the end of the book, she makes a strong case for nothing less than a revolution.”

In between books, I work as a journalist. This work has taken me to Bangladesh, Kenya, Macedonia, and the Topshop warehouses in Solihull. She also lecturers across Europe on the politics of the fashion industry.

I can also be found reading awesome Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction literature.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I reserved 'Stitched Up' at the library as soon as I discovered its existence, because it combines two major interests of mine: clothing and criticising capitalism. Unfortunately, the single copy in the library catalogue appears to have been lost two years ago, so I waited in vain. Then during lockdown I learned that my local radical bookshop was taking orders online and delivering them by bike, so I bought myself a copy. I enjoyed 'Stitched Up' very much, as it neatly dissects the many environmental, social, economic, and cultural problems caused and/or exacerbated by the fashion industry. The subtitle really isn't messing around; Hoskins consistently blames capitalism for fashion's failings and repeatedly cites Marx. The book's message is that capitalism must end for the fashion to overcome its dysfunction and destructiveness. This is very refreshing given the maddening pervasiveness of greenwash in the sector. Hoskins firmly rejects neoliberal solutions like buying fewer more expensive items or making polyester from recycled bottles. While she doesn't deny that some fashion choices are more damaging than others, we should know by now that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

The premise of 'buy less, spend more' is that people who buy expensive clothes buy fewer than other people. In fact, the wardrobes and carbon footprints of those who can afford haute couture vastly exceed those of everyone else.
[...]
The ability to buy something should not be confused with freedom. This cheapens freedom by narrowing it to the right to choose between different styles in the shops. Imagining that the right to buy limitless clothes at whatever cost to the planet equals freedom is to lose sight of what freedom actually means. Fast-fashion is not pro-working class; it must be critiqued as a product of corporations' drive for profit, not as the fault of the poor.

Hoskins suggests that we'd appreciate our clothing much more if we had a role in its production and design, in a postcapitalist world of worker-owned factories. I found that a very pleasant scenario to contemplate. If I was freed from the necessity of selling my labour for subsistence, I would definitely want to participate in the design and manufacture of clothes.

'Stitched Up' is a short book, yet covers a great deal of ground. Fashion's fixation on thinness, its racism, and ways that it has been used for resistance are all covered, as well as its destructive impacts and attempts to alleviate them. Admittedly, there wasn't a great deal that I hadn't come across before, mostly via online content. It was nonetheless satisfying to read such a thorough and uncompromising synthesis. I haven't seen this point articulated so clearly before:

Dress can be an act of resistance and a powerful force in resistance movements, particularly amongst women. Its significance, however, depends on whether there is a movement behind it. Fashion and clothing should be seen as simmering dissent not as a decisive and final revolutionary act.

The only critique I'd offer is that the text could have benefited from stronger editing in places to improve its flow. Nonetheless, Hoskins writes clearly and she crystallised a lot of thoughts about fashion that I've long been mulling over. A particular emphasis is placed upon there being no truly ethical fashion choices at present:

There is no escape from planet fashion. You can refuse to participate in the system but unless you overthrow it, it will still be there when you open your eyes. Regardless of how you dress, you are still living in a capitalist system. Even the most covered-up woman will still encounter thousands of fashion messages telling her she is too fat, too dark, or too ugly. Committing to wearing a boiler suit for the rest of your life does nothing to help the oppressed women in China who made that boilersuit. Home-made or second-hand clothes are still produced using materials made under capitalism. It is impossible to refuse to participate.

This brings me to a personal dilemma. I have a long-established sequential approach to acquiring clothing to minimise social and environmental impact (complete with flow diagram). As a result, my wardrobe is small and the vast majority of my clothing comes from charity shops or second hand off eBay. The residual items that I can't get second hand (underwear, mostly) I buy from small so-called ethical brands with supply chain transparency, so I can have reasonable confidence that their production isn't exploitative or excessively polluting. I really try to avoid fast fashion retailers, although I make an exception once or twice a year for something I'll wear a lot and repeatedly failed to find elsewhere.

Lockdown has presented me with a trivial yet troubling dilemma. My previous office uniform of pencil skirts is pointless and uncomfortable, as I now work from the dining table or sofa and my hips have expanded. After an initial urge to wear formal evening dresses for working at home, now I just want to keep my pyjamas on 24/7. To avoid the latter unhygienic scenario, I would like to acquire some comfortable trousers. Now I am puzzling over the least unethical way to buy black sweatpants that fit me (a non-trivial constraint). Charity shops are closed. Buying second hand on eBay obliges others to make non-essential trips out to the Post Office, which is seriously unethical during a pandemic. Buying new, my options are a £55 pair not available in my size (ethical brand) or £10/£12 pairs more likely to fit (brands that have been repeatedly exposed for exploitation and pollution in their supply chains, both of which are specifically mentioned in 'Stitched Up'). In addition to the usual concerns about how the garment was produced, there's now the additional question of how the retailer is safeguarding its workers from coronavirus.

Naturally, this has resulted in decision paralysis. My interim solution is putting on my coat while out for the daily walk, to conceal my not-really-outfit of faded leggings and a thermal base layer. I have even been tempted to resort to the boiler suit uniform that Hoskins mentions, as I found a ethical brand producing them in Brighton. However it is very unlikely their sizing would fit me as I'm so short. Capitalism really does ruin the pleasure of clothing and 'Stitched Up' dissects this with laudable vigor and acumen.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am totally interested in change and how change comes about over time, so while I’m not interested in fashion, I am attracted to books on fashion that purport to give insight into the phenomenon, and “Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion” seemed like a must read. The book itself essentially boils down to three points. Some people have made a lot of money from fashion, the magazines tell the people what to wear, and life would be better if people ignored the magazines and made their own clothes. Not exactly mind-blowing revelations. I found myself investigating whether there had been a misprint in the publication date. This seemed like something I might have expected to read in (19)81 and not in (20)18. Good for facts about the fashion industry, and some interesting insights, but not really what I was looking for.

[Skjam! · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway on the premise that I would review it.

Fashion…isn’t something I notice a lot. I buy clothes when I have to, and try to wear matching socks, but I don’t know a lot about fashion as a subject. This book may or may not have helped with that.

Early on, Ms. Hoskins defines fashion as “changing styles of dress and appearance adopted by groups of people” so that she can talk about the entire clothing and accessories industry, as opposed to just haute couture. She chooses to view the industry through an “anti-capitalist” lens, which yes, does take its roots from Marxism.

The book primarily deals with the modern fashion industry, from the Industrial Revolution on, and doesn’t dwell too much on the early history. The first few chapters provide an overview of the industry, from the wealthy owners through the fashion press to the exploited factory workers. It should be noted here that this is a British book, and this influences the examples given.

Then there is a section about the many problematic issues involving fashion, such as environmental damage, body image and racism. (The recent film biography of Coco Chanel cut off before World War Two for a reason.) There’s a fair bit in here that I already knew, but I had no idea of just how bad it actually was.

The final chapters of the book deal with ways in which people are resisting, and trying to reform fashion, but Ms. Hoskins believes that all the problems with the fashion industry are at their roots caused by capitalism. Therefore, revolution to smash capitalism is the only true solution.

The last chapter goes into some detail of what post-capitalist fashion might involve. The author points out the (sadly short-lived) blossoming of the arts and textile design in the post-revolution Soviet Union. However, the cautionary tale of Cultural Revolution China is also mentioned, where a simple outlawing of “reactionary” fashion led to nationwide conformity because the Mao suit was the only thing everyone could agree was not reactionary, and therefore safe to wear.

Ms. Hoskins is thinking that revolution should instead lead to more of a democratic socialism…or something. Anyway, smash capitalism, and everything else should work out okay.

The striking illustrations are by Jade Pilgrom. There are extensive end notes, a bibliography and index.

I’d recommend this book to students of fashion, budding Socialists and people who have always wondered what the big deal is with fashion, anyway.

[Stuart Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won a copy of this book from the First Reads giveaways programme.

Stitched Up attempts to pick apart the fashion industry to reveal the dark underbelly hidden underneath all of the glitz, glamour and surface flash. The result is a narrative which is compelling and at times horrifying. It generally seemed well researched, though I did notice that one citation referred to a review of a book rather than the original text itself which seemed somewhat lax, as it seemed to indicate that the author had not chosen to investigate whether the material had been accurately presented.

Throughout the book a Marxist perspective is adopted which could prove wearing to non adherents. The viewpoint is essentially Manichean with the fashion industry being described as the result of a capitalist system which is irredeemably bad. This did not always seem accurate to me, for example it is argued that notions of beauty are created by the industry, yet the concept goes back to the Ancient Greeks, and from a biological perspective there is evidence of an innate preference for certain features such as facial symmetry.

It was a little disappointing that the author did not speak to workers at the front line such as garment workers and retail assistants. This could have resulted in a more nuanced book, rather than one which seems to have been written by the process of the author seeking evidence to support a cherished ideology. In contrast to the wholly negative portrayal of globalisation found here for example, Fred Pearce's 'Confessions of an Eco Sinner' stressed that despite low pay and poor conditions garment workers in Bangladesh were pleased to have found work there, as this was the only way to gain independence by earning wages for themselves. Leslie Chang's 'Factory Girls' presented the situation of young female workers in China in a similar light, stressing that for some there was the potential for social mobility despite the prevelance of scams and rip-offs.

In summary, a worthwhile read but I would recommend checking out other books such as the classic No Logo in order to get a wider perspective than you would get from just reading this tome.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

An illuminating and thought-provoking look at the fashion industry, the machinations behind it and its impact on society. It does a great job of exposing some of the myths behind ideas such as 'ethical' fashion, consumer choice and empowerment, and the fashion media. The chapters on the fashion industry and race, gender and the environment are fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. In comparision, the final three chapters, in which Hoskins discusses how the fashion industry might be reformed, felt rather abstract. Hoskins is passionate about her subject and has clearly done a huge amount of research - the downside of this is that sometimes it felt like I was being bombarded with statistics. That said, overall I enjoyed the narrative of her writing, particularly when she was talking about the interviews she had done with industry figures, and this book has made me a much more informed consumer. I will now feel guilty whenever I go into H&M!

I won this in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.

[Trung Nguyen Dang · Rating 2 out of 5]

While there are some good points about exploitation in the fashion industry, the rest of the book is just annoying rambling against the industry including:
- capitalism is terrible and people made a lot of money out of fashion industry. Well, to me it's the same in other industries and fashion is not an exception.
- people are better off making their own clothes. Really? in these days and age. Does the author have a basic understanding about economics? Should a highly paid lawyer start spending days and weeks making some cheap ugly looking clothes (cos he's not specialised in it) instead of making tons of money in the same period and buy tons of clothes instead?

Not worth reading, IMHO.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great novel for the fashion lover. My sister and I have always been fans of the subject and this book was the absolute holy grail of it. :) Keep the good reads coming Tansy!

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having worked in fashion previously this book has given me a really different perspective on it! Well written and very to the point.A great read which kept me interested all the way through.

[Katrina Sark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction
p.7 – Neoliberalism refers to an economic model championed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in the 1990s. It emphasizes the liberalization of trade, the global integration of markets, the deregulation of state power and the privatization of public services, all of which are portrayed as inevitable, like gravity. Neoliberalism drives down wages and pits workers in different countries and companies against each other in the so-called race to the bottom. To fill the spending gaps produced by falling wages, neoliberalism pushes personal credit – an issue particularly pertinent to fashion.
p.8 – As a result we live in a global society where malnutrition causes a third of all child deaths, yet world-wide, sales of luxury goods stand at approximately $150 billion, 60 percent of this $150 billion goes to just 35 brands, most of which are owned by just a few conglomerates.
p.11 – The Marxist theoretician Louis Althusser described how art is held within ideology at the same time as maintaining a distance from it. This means that art is one medium whereby the ideology that gives birth to art can be perceived. In short, art does not simply reflect ideology. The experience of art – including fashion – gives you the experience of the situation it represents. This does not mean looking at fashion provides a literal interpretation of a given period. The playwright Bertolt Brecht described art as reflecting life with special mirrors, when it reflects it at all. Fashion distorts what it reflects, and often what is not shown tells us as much as what is. If we can understand ideologies, we can understand both the past and the present more deeply – an understanding that is needed to achieve liberation.
Chapter One – Owning It
p.15 – Stefan Persson inherited H&M from his father. The budget clothing chain has made him the eighth richest person in the world. Forbes.com has a “Real Time Billionaires” calculator. Refreshing itself every five minutes, it calculates which of the world’s billionaires have just become even richer, based on the cost of a single share. Persson’s fortune stood at $26 billion.
p.16 – H&M clothes are made in factories from Tunisia to China. They are mass-produced, using valuable water and crop resources and cause appalling pollution. The company produces up to 50 collections every year and advertises them using faked photographs of perfect bodies. In 2010, 21 Bangladeshi factory workers were killed in a fire whilst making H&M clothes.
Chapter Two – Fashion Media
p.39 - The desire not to offend advertisers also partly accounts for the distinct lack of criticism to be found in fashion magazines.
p.40 – There was a time when fashion writers were serious powerbrokers in the industry. Able to make or break a collection, they travelled the world “bulldozing their way through an effete world of air kisses and crinolines.” With some notable exceptions, the vast majority of fashion journalism is now tediously sycophantic. The lack of criticism is compounded by fashion being the only creative field that bans the media for misbehaving.
p.44 – Fashion blogs can therefore be seen as corporate PR disguised as fresh young opinions. Bloggers are flown first-class to fashion shows, given clothes and paid tens of thousands of dollars precisely because fashion corporations receive a far larger payback in terms of zealously promotional blog posts which sell products.
p.45 – As William Gibson, the writer who coined the term “cyberspace,” allegedly noted, “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.”
Chapter Three – Buyology
p.52 – Attracting over 200 million visitors a year, Oxford Street in London’s West End is Europe’s busiest shopping street. Navigating through the crowds takes a shopper past several branches of H&M, with its turnover of up to 50 collections per year; Nike Tower, where lines of fanatical shoe fans queue overnight; Primark, where fights break out during sales and Uniqlo, the Japanese clothing company that boasts of making 613 different varieties of sock. All this is possible only because of the existence of a surplus in society. Whereas animals produce only what they need, humans go beyond their immediate physical needs to produce a surplus of food, shelter, clothing and other commodities. There is more than enough wealth in society to support everybody, but a walk down Oxford Street clearly shows that socially produced surplus wealth is not evenly distributed. Worldwide luxury goods stand at $150 billion, while outside Bond Street underground station the homeless beg for spare change.
p.53 – Despite these glaring inequalities, some still argue that fashion is now egalitarian. Charity shops and cheap chains like Primark have become fashion outlets; H&M and Target release collaborative “designer” collections. The widespread availability of relatively cheap clothing (of dubious quality) is not, however, the same as fashion democracy.
Fashion consumption is deeply unequal and generalisations about fashion consumers are misleading. In 2009, North Americans discarded 300 million pairs of shoes, but it obscures the fact that some 50 million Americans live below the poverty line and another 100 million subsist on a low income.
p.55 – Today it seems obvious that humans need clothes. Indeed, 40,000-year-old sewing needles have been found on Paleolithic sites. Yet, I cannot argue that I need all the clothes that are hanging in my wardrobe. So why are they there? Because fashion is not about answering human need but about producing corporate profit. In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx writes, “World trade turns almost entirely around the needs, not of individual consumption, but of production.” Corporations must produce fashion in order to make money. If everyone bought only the clothes they needed it would spell disaster for corporations, so instead “false needs” are created to keep me and everyone else shopping. These needs are false because they are the manufacturers’ needs not the consumers’.
p.58 – How many people today would happily give up make-up or fashion in its entirety if it were not for the need to earn a living?
The radical Evelyn Reed explained in 1954 that there is a difference between criticizing people for enjoying buying and wearing fashion and criticizing capitalism for compelling people constantly to buy new clothes. The freedom to wear and enjoy fashionable clothes must also be accompanied by the freedom not to do so. If we do not critique capitalist compulsions, then statements from make-up magnates like Helena Rubenstein (“There are no ugly women, just lazy ones”) become truisms rather than merely grasping attempts to make billions by exploiting people’s insecurities.
p.59 – Advertising is a that bridge corporations use to reach consumers. Its purpose is to sell products to gain maximum profits. As such, the advertising industry is merely a symptom of the system that we live in and not the main problem itself. It presents massive waste, however, with $100 billion spent on advertising each year in the United States alone.
Chapter Four – Stitching It
p.68 – On the morning on 24 April 2013, a group of garment workers argued with their managers outside Rana Plaza, a commercial building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which contained a number of clothing factories. The garment workers said the structure was unsafe.
The managers replied that anyone refusing to enter the building would have their wages docked, not just for that day but for the entire month. In Bangladesh, losing a month’s wages is tantamount to starvation, so the garment workers were forced to climb the stairs to their work stations.
An hour later, the eight-storey building collapsed on itself.
The official death toll of Rana Plaza was 1,133, making it the deadliest garment factory disaster in history. Another 2,500 people were injured, many disabled permanently.
Retailers who have admitted to using the Rana Plaza factory include Benetton, Bon Marche, Mango, Matalan, Primark, and Walmart, but hundreds more companies use low-cost Bangladeshi factories, including upscale brands like Armani, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors and Hugo Boss.
p.69 – As an industry, fashion is dependent on human labour. In a world where robots walk on Mars, the underwear you are wearing can only be produced by human hands. Because of this, fashion and human labour are inseparable. Everything we wear is the direct result of detailed, repetitive, human toil.
The profits accumulated by the fashion industry are huge - £759 million for Zara and £2.5 billion net for LVMH in 2011. There is enough money in the industry for the entire workforce to be reasonably paid and fairly treated if only profits were reinvested and priorities realigned. The inescapable logic of the market means that wages, an elementary cost to cut, are driven as low as possible. Fashion today is inseparable not only from human labour but from its extreme exploitation.
There is an inexhaustible list of brands caught using exploited labour. It extends well beyond the cheapest brands. It keeps growing to include H&M, Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Converse, Gap, DKNY, Levi’s, Marks & Spencer, Karen Millen, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, and hundreds of others. The key word here is “caught” because no clothing exists that have been made without the exploitation of human labour. With a supply chain that incorporates chronically underpaid agricultural, chemical, factory and shop work, such a thing is impossible.
p.70 – A Marxist understanding of the term “exploitation” is that it occurs when people are not recompensed for the full value of their labour. Workers are not paid for the work they do but for their “labour power” – their ability to work.
Chapter Five – A Bitter Harvest
p.100 – What is needed is an overhaul of the entire system to stop big businesses and the IMF destroying the ability of communities to survive.
p.103 – H&M has been widely criticized by Greenpeace for using Chinese factories that discharge untreated chemicals into rivers, and for selling clothes, including children’s clothes, impregnated with chemical hazardous even at a very low concentration.
Having earned a reputation as a major polluter and having had its shops stickered by activists, H&M launched its green drive.
p.104 – Such environmental pledges cannot contend with what has been called the fashionably dressed elephant in the room: ethical fashion is an oxymoron. How can an industry claim to be ethical when it churns out billions of items of clothing, sending new stock to shops up to 50 times a year? Environmental initiatives are the result of genuine and widespread public concern over climate change and environmental degradation. Yet much of the “greenwashing” that takes place is just that – a crude attempt to take advantage of these concerns.
Chapter Six – Fashion and Size
p.110 – In her book, Bodies, psychologist Susie Orbach outlines how desire for an idealised, slim, Westernised body has spread with globalization. Eating disorders followed the introduction of television in Fiji, Chinese women undergo leg-breaking surgery to make them taller, and some of Tehran’s 3,000 plastic surgeons carry out five rhinoplasties (nose jobs) a day. Size is intimately linked with race – a Western ideal is promoted at the expense of “Indigenous bodies.” For Orbach this is a new frontier of colonialism, with brand iconography replacing religious iconography to determine aesthetic norms.
We live in a world soaked in visuals. People see between 2,000 and 5,000 images of bodies every week. These images display something unobtainable while simultaneously assuring us of a beauty democracy. Their message is that everyone can and should work towards looking “great.”
p.111 – The fashion industry collapses the space between aspiration and fantasy. Its rhetoric of “choice” and “empowerment,” coupled with our ability to consume clothes, means that people are given the impression that they can become what they see. Bu this beauty democracy does not exist.
In 2011, a Norwegian website exposed H&M as using computer-generated bodies to market its lingerie and swimwear. The digital bodies are pigmented to match the head of the models that are stuck on top. H&M defended its use of fake bodies by saying that it is merely following industry standards.
Society is in the process of making reality unpalatable.
p.118 – Enforced thinness – starvation to the point of death – is emblematic of the industry’s treatment of people and the planet, of the pressure the industry exerts on all its workers. But there is also something more sinister at work. Making unnaturally obtained or sustained extreme thinness a condition of employment is a reactionary but effective means for the industry to maintain control of employees, for taking away their agency. Dunja Knezevic explains: “The industry is literally weakening people. A lot of people with anorexia or bulimia say that eating is the one thing they can control. For models especially this is the only thing they can control as their agencies are controlling their life. For clients or agencies – if you can control models in the sense that you can get them into this mentality, then you’ve got them. You can tell them what to do and push them around and manipulate them. Eating disorders are really a great way to do that. If you think about it, it really takes over the mind. It is a weakening of the mind.”
p.119 – Strength is replaced by obsessing over extreme thinness. If taught that they are weak, women are less likely to fight back against poor treatment. They are also less able literally to fight back against physical attack. Attacks on women, including rape and sexual assault, are widespread across society but take place with disturbing regularity within the fashion industry. Several top industry figures, including the photographer Terry Richardson and American Apparel CEO Dov Charney, have stood accused of the alleged routine sexual abuse of young women.
p.120 – Promoting fake body ideal is also deeply disempowering. It leaves women feeling so inadequate that they spend large amounts of their time trying to alter their appearance. The promotion of a particular fetishized body shape – in this case airbrushed thinness – form part of the process of exclusion carried out by the fashion industry.
p.121 – In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf argues that extreme thinness through dieting did not exist until women’s emancipation entered law. When women received the vote in the 1920s, dieting and thinness became a preoccupation for women. This change is blamed on the social expediency of making women’s bodies into the prisons that their homes no longer were since women were now entering “male spheres,” including the workplace.
Wolf writes that fashionable dieting and extreme thinness has occurred simultaneously with every advance in women’s rights. Examples include the popularization of the Twiggy “waif” silhouette during the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and the 1970s to cancel the contraceptive pill’s most radical implications. “Heroin chic” (the look of sickness, the look of poverty, and the look of nervous exhaustion) was, Wolf argues, brought into fashion in the 1990s as a way of curbing women’s hopes for advancement and gratification.
Society, she argues, keeps women prisoner by keeping them on display. She describes how women check the mirror half a dozen times a day to see if their make-up has smudged; worry that the wind or rain will ruin their hair; and being scared of getting fat, monitor what they eat. Women therefore self-enforce their prisoner status: because they know they are being watched, “inmates” police themselves.
Chapter Nine – Reforming Fashion
p.167 – “Join us in rejecting the tired notion that shopping is a reasonable response to human suffering.” (buylesscrap.com)
Clothing is presented to us as a question of individual choice. On the surface the choice seems simple: “good clothes” or “evil clothes.”
Whilst it makes sense to buy the least harmful option when purchasing any product, what about the myriad factors that determine “choice?” Class is the primary factor. You buy what you can afford.
p.168 – There is no way out of sweatshop labour or environmental devastation via an individual route. You cannot shop workers in China to freedom. You cannot shop the Aral Sea back to life. The neoliberal mindset that permeates the fashion industry must be shaken off because it is dangerous nonsense.
We do have agency on an individual level but we must confront the challenges ahead collectively and with a realistic assessment of the barriers that people face. Marx defined this contradiction: “Men and women make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”
I look at several methods for organized reform of the fashion industry:
• People organizing collectively as consumers
• Shopping differently to change the world
• Government-led reform
• The increasing trend to “reform” amongst multinational corporations
• Trade union-led worker reform
p.170 – Ethical fashion has become a catch-all phrase encompassing issues such as environmental toxicity, labour rights, air miles, animal cruelty and product sustainability. After 20 or so years and despite some innovative initiatives, it holds an “exceptionally low market share” at just over one percent of the overall apparel market.
A central dilemma for ethical fashion is how to prioritise all the issues thrown up by the industry. One book explains that there is no “simple list of moral ticks and crosses” with which to decide which is most important. Is it better to buy a dress sewn in a co-op in India which uses thousands of freight miles or a locally manufactured dress from a company that uses fur trim? Is it better to buy organic cotton jeans from a retailer who shuns workplace safety regulation, or conventional pesticide ridden jeans from a regulated retailer? How about a recycled polyester fleece which sheds synthetic lint fibers and contaminates oceans, beaches, and marine life? Is it better to buy vegetarian shoes made in a Chinese sweatshop or leather from a designer who says fat people are ugly?
The unhelpful solution proffered by ethical fashion books is for consumers to try an “ethical calculus” to figure out which issues matter most. The inability to provide a decent answer stems from not wanting to name capitalism as the cause of the problem.
p.171 – Because they do not name capitalism as the problem, ethical fashion books are forced to look to unlikely sources for salvation. As well as urging people to buy less, most ethical fashion books read like a shopping list, with brands and products advertised on every page. Readers will often be surprised to read positive reviews of the very companies that made them concerned enough to pick up the book in the first place. Green is the New Black lists Nike, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Topshop amongst its “high street heroes.” Heart On Your Sleeve, an Oxfam publication, also lists Topshop as a place to find ethical clothes, along with M&S and Gap.
p.172 – Causumerism shifts blame for the world’s ills from capitalism onto individuals. Products considered “ethical” are often the most expensive on the market, so ethical consumption is unfortunately deeply class-based. It is wrong to blame those with the least individual power in society for the destruction of the planet or the existence of sweatshops.
p.175 – Philanthro-capitalism – The upsurge in public interest in ethical consumption has resulted in a distinct move on the part of multinationals to embrace the language and appearance of ethical consumer campaigns.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Últimamente me siento bastante negativa respecto al futuro del mundo, y este libro me ha convencido de que el capitalismo nos va a matar a todos. Hace unos análisis muy interesantes y puede ser una buena introducción a varios conceptos marxistas si no se está familiarizado. Tb dedica los últimos capítulos q pensar en las alternativas y llegar a la conclusión de que o matamos al capitalismo o nos mata a nosotros. Mucha información que te deja tiesa pero que es necesario y justo que conozcamos y que informe nuestras decisiones políticas. Me gustaría ver una versión actualizada pq los ritmos de la moda se han acelerado todavía más desde que se escribió y estaría interesante un análisis de cómo tiktok o shein afectan a la industria de la moda.

[Jessie (thatchickwithabook) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Stitched Up has been a truly eye-opening read. Touching on everything from racism, to sweatshops, to sizing in the fashion industry, its main focus is capitalism as how it affects the entire industry.

It’s quite a depressing read, to be truthful. Obviously to tackle a lot of these issues individually is proving difficult. Tackling capitalism as a whole seems impossible.

“As disappointing as it may be to hear this, there are no ethical clothes for sale. Temporary disappointment is, however, a small price to pay for taking part in the biggest challenge ever faced by humanity - the overthrow of capitalism.”

It’s short at 202 pages, and I cannot stress enough how much it changes your perspective on what you’re paying for and where you’re buying it. Definitely one of my favourite non-fiction books I’ve ever read. Incredibly factual without coming across as boring.

[Sanjukta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't recommend this book enough to anybody who cares about art, human rights, the communities we live in, our environment and protecting this island planet from the impending catastrophe of climate change.

[Yvonne Janot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly an interesting topic and an informative read for anyone who wonders why they feel they just have to have one more tshirt/jeans/coat. It’s not an easy read however, both contextually and stylistically.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un ensayo muy interesante sobre la moda, el capitalismo y la explotación de las clases obreras, con datos muy interesantes de las grandes firmas de moda y alguna que otra alternativa a todo esto.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all: "This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review."

I quite enjoyed this thorough and comprehensive review of the fashion industry and its impact on the economies and of the world, not to mention the environment. The author has evident passion for the subject, and has clearly researched the topic extensively. Whether this is your first foray into the world of fashion or just an attempt to stretch your knowledge further, this book is an excellent resource.

The narration of the audiobook is very well done. The narrator has obviously taken care to learn the various pronunciations of the designers and styles, and adds interest to the subject matter through her inflection.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read

"The notion that supporting a multinational corporation by buying its products will help solve poverty and reduce inequality is an extremely clever pretence that fundamentally alters the perception of corporations and lets them appear interactive, inclusive and charitable. It is fundamentally contradictory. Poverty is the result of an exploitative system of global capitalism, of which multinational corporations are key exponents and beneficiaries. What is actually occurring with charity commerce is the maximisation of corporate profits through the exploitative marketing of human misery."

This is a very important book. It must be read by all. We simply cannot go on with business as usual. Too much is at stake.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book.

I tend to lean more towards the free-market model, but I do realize that there are significant flaws within our system. I don't follow fashion, but I do wear clothing and have recently become interested in trying to sew up some of my own clothing. So, given all that I am surprised at how well the author was able to write an impassioned, reasoned book that addresses the disastrous effects that unmitigated consumerism, environmental degradation and body shaming have on a global level. The book is well researched and doesn't (thankfully, refreshingly) gloss over the role of the elite in perpetuating an unfair system.

Despite my overall appreciation for the content and intent of the book, I found this book more as a call to arms than as a useful tool in actually fighting the system. Which really is fine. Yes, capitalism is flawed, but I think it skews (even if it is unavoidable) the situation to discuss how the world will look after capitalism ends - what brings about the end of capitalism? See - there is a big gap between very real, present day issues and what happens when capitalism falls. That portion in the middle is the hard part to discuss, and that (of course) is what I'm interested in.

There is a bit of confusion about the British/American standards of grammar/monetary amounts - nothing too big there. There are hundreds of rhetorical questions. Overall though, this is a very good overview of the complications of fashion.

(I was a Goodreads first reads winner)

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received Stitched Up as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

I was excited to win Stitched Up because, while I do not work in the fashion industry, I have recently had to work closely with it for a work project. As a self-professed tomboy who dressed for comfort, I was fascinated and often aghast at the prices designer clothing and accessories fetch, the disposable attitude towards these incredible expensive items, so I was interested to hear Hoskins' perspective.

Stitched Up is a Marxist examination of the fashion industry from the 20th century, with an emphasis on recent history. To me, the strongest and most fascinating chapters were the ones on body image and race (and racism) in the fashion world. While they aren't unfamiliar topics of discussion, they did strike a chord with me and were very engagingly written, often forced to conform to particular sizes or stereotypes.

Other chapters felt a little off. Hoskins throws a lot of statistics at you, and it often feels like a barrage, like the point of the chapter is being lost in the numbers. I think Stitched Up is strongest in narrative mode: sometimes the social science aspect seems a little heavy-handed.

That said, it's an enlightening read for the fashion-forward among us, who live for the latest season's collections, as well as those who see the fashion world as frivolous but essentially harmless.

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received Stitched Up as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

I was blown away. This book changed my whole outlook on fashion and the fashion industry. A very strong voice throughout the whole book that makes such good points that you just can't ignore. I am outraged at what goes on behind the scenes and how they can use a little marketing to make us simply forget. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing. I look at labels and brands so differently. I was once just a blind consumer, now my rose colored glasses are gone.
Thank you so much, Tansy. I adore this book and will recommend it to everyone!

[A · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Oh no! The evil capitalists make us want the clothes, buy the clothes, and need the clothes! Let's just stop it and quit buying at all. That'll break the system! Ready, fellow Marxists? We're going to stop the system in 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . stop! No more buying! Break the exploiters, the parasites! Now we can finally pay people what they need, and academic research on the evils of buying fancy clothes is sure important."

All I remember about this book was the absurdity of it. It swung me out of the leftist sphere I was swimming in at the time.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won "Stitched Up" in a First Reads giveaway.

This is a well-written and compelling expose of the ugly side of the fashion industry. Tansy Hopkins has done a huge amount of research and the results are truly shocking. I was appalled by some of the revelations in the book and will never feel the same way about clothes shopping again.

[Sarah Guldenbrein · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is great! Very in line with what I want my dissertation to do. Unfortunately for me, no great insights here, since I'm already deep into this literature.

I'd recommend it to anyone interested in slow fashion as an approachable primer on fashion and capitalism.

[Josephine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect read to become fashion de-victimised.

[JC · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

This was a surprisingly fun read. I was fairly interested in fashion in high school. I don't really admit this to people I meet, but I actually used to flip through WWD photos of Paris, London, and New York shows back then. I think it was probably rap music that stoked that interest for me (I still like listening to rap bars ladled with designer label names) and I eventually gravitated mostly towards colourful/wonky or monochromatic/drapey Belgian stuff. It was a phase, like most things unfortunately are for me, and I eventually lost track of it all. I think this was in part because I found the class and inequality issues which were inevitably woven into fashion to be fairly unsettling and I wasn’t sure how to quite comprehend what was going on within fashion.

Yet I’ve never stopped being curious about style and clothing, because I think they are in fact dimensions of human experience which extend very far back into history—one might say all the way back into some mythic Edenic past. I have often wondered how money flows through the fashion universe today, and while I have in the past gleaned a little bit about how margins function in typical retail and haute-couture fashion stores, this book provided a neat tour through the tangle of capital that undergirds the industry. And surprise, it’s not that pretty.

For one thing, it’s laughable at how consolidated the fashion industry is; a lot of the really big names are actually concentrated into a handful of conglomerates. Like the processed shelf-stable foods you can find in your average supermarket, the endless racks of brand labels often come from a surprisingly small number of MNCs. VF Corporation, once sharing a name with that massive Victorian novel by Thackeray, owns Vans, The North Face, Timberland, Eastpak, Jansport, and several other brand names you’d be hard pressed to elude at your local mall. PVH owns Calvin Klein, Hilfiger, and a host of other similar brands. And its even more concentrated at the luxury level; LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) encapsulates an absurd number of subsidiaries including Kenzo, Celine, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, Dior, as well as other brands like Sephora, Bulgari, and Hennessy. It’s main competitor is Kering which houses Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, and Boucheron. They are both significantly owned by old white billionaire men who are among the world’s richest people. Pinault who is the primary shareholder of Kering also owns the auction house Christie’s. The book mentions the Forbes list, though it was written a while ago so I decided to look into it myself for 2018. Pinault of Kering is #30 on the list and Arnaud of LVMH is #4 on the list. As for fast fashion? Stefan Persson of H&M is #73 in the list and Ortega of Zara is #6.

This is an industry which is one of the most exploitive in the world and one of the largest water polluters out there. There are countless injuries and deaths that happen each year in sweatshops, and this is extremely pervasive, almost equally within the luxury goods markets as fast fashion. I’m not sure how else to see CSR initiatives in light of all this except as an extremely heartbreaking farce. And this book gives an extremely important primer on high-fashion’s coziness with the Nazis, including designers like Coco Chanel, Dior, Balenciaga, and Hugo Boss, as well as brands like Louis Vuitton. Even all those high-fashion fragrances manufactured by Procter & Gamble and packaged in fancy Marc Jacobs bottles are not enough to hide the stink of it all.

There were so many other important gems of insight in this book. The analysis on alienation was really good. There was a good serving of Marx quotes, and interesting insights from the likes of Evelyn Reed and John Berger. There was also a very important chapter on the severe racism that still persists in some of the industry's top design houses, and also inevitably all the body-shaming that has unfolded in the industry (along with all the disingenuous body-positive tokenism that it's trying to use to remedy the deep harm it has caused). This book brought a lot of clarity to me for an issue that seems to have been very purposely rendered into a vague and numinous existence.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

It doesn’t take much of a sceptical view to see the fashion industry as the embodiment of capitalism. Here is an industry the very basis of which is dissatisfaction, with ourselves, with the contents of our wardrobes, with the options available last week to replenish that wardrobe and with the (corporeal/bodily) frame we have available to hang those contents on. Tansy Hoskins sets out to explore and make sense of how this particular industry works as a capitalist practice, and in doing so she unpicks the structure of the industry as it is woven into other related industries (media industries for instance) as well as the particular versions of race and gender – femininity, actually – as well as a range of political and cultural responses to the fashion industry.

Fashion is one of several cultural industries that have a profound social impact and influence, often in ways that we do not or find it hard to discern – on notions and perceptions of attractiveness or beauty, for instance, on ways we consider suitable and appropriate to present ourselves or perform in everyday life. One of the problems with so many discussions of the industry is that few focus on fashion as a cultural industry, where there are powerful motifs and tropes of fashion as, amongst other things art form, cultural marker of status, identity marker or a whole range of other ways of framing while for some it is trivial and absurd. Despite the rise of discourses of ethical fashion practice there are very few discussions that treat it as an industry or that do much to recognise the international character of the industry. Along with a few other analysts, Hoskins challenges us to see fashion as a global and multi-layer industry, and in doing so she explores ways that we can make sense of the links between ecological devastation in central Asia, hideous forms and levels of worker exploitation across the world, economic deprivation and the incessant demand that we consume. Unlike some of those discussions, she explicitly rejects notions that blame lies with the consumer or that we can shop our way to an ethical fashion business. In short, not only is Hoskins clear about the issues, she is also clear about how they come about and what we need to be doing.

She explores the industry by developing three strands of analysis. The first is broadly political economic (but not hard edged big numbers political economy – although the fashion industry is crying out for that sort of Left analysis) where she explores ownership of the industry, the interwoven ownership and impacts of the industry’s media handmaidens and the shape and impacts of discourses of consumption. This focus on consumption then allows Hoskins to develop a more convention industry analysis with a Left political economy slant through her assessments of fashion production. I particular appreciate her emphasis on both the factory production of item of clothing alongside her discussion of the production of fashions raw materials, especially cotton. These two chapters allow a segue into a more cultural studies aspect through discussions of the fashion industry’s relations with the politics of size and body shape and the industry’s construction and maintenance of beauty as ‘white’ as well as the politics of cultural appropriation. As with so much of the rest of the book, these discussions get beyond, for instance, fashion and ‘race’ as being about white models (which it is, but it only partly is).

Finally, she explores the politics of resistance (what Stuart Hall called politics for bad times) often leading to appropriation but crucially as being, for the most part, individualist or individualising, the politics of reform (including trenchant critiques of ethical consumption and philo-capitalism, but also complimentary while recognising the limits of the activism of groups such as Labour Behind the Label); I would have liked to see some discussion of the anti-slavery campaigns in the cotton industry here. Finally, and this is singular in all the work I have read on the fashion industry, she considers what might happen if we moved beyond resistance to and reform of a capitalist fashion industry to explore post-capitalist/revolutionary fashion (including a rich and useful discussion of alienation-in-the-Marxist sense in a way that may be useful to explore in other areas of cultural production). One of Hoskin’s strengths as a writer can be seen here in that she is able to explore these revolutionary concepts and ideas while continuing to draw on specific fashion-industry related evidence to make it accessible. She is no lefty-fashion-hater.

All in all, this is an extremely good and engaging exploration of the fashion industry. It draws on an impressive engagement with scholarly literature in the field, although aside from Ashley Mears’ very good sociological work on modelling she seems to miss a growing body of work about work in the industry more generally such as Jane Collins’ Threads: Gender, Labor, and Power in the Global Apparel Industry or Joanne Entwistle’s and Elizabeth Wissinger’s Fashioning Models: Image, Text and Industry but then we can’t cite everything in a field in our work. Her clear and explicit political outlook, one I share although not the specifics of her particular form of Marxist analysis, means she is able to be clear about both structural questions and the limitations of actions that fail to recognise that the problem lies in a capitalist order where rates of exploitation are required.

The book also sets up, implicitly (it would be nice if it was a little more open about lines of further analysis), other aspects of the fashion industry we need to explore and further analyse. The most important of these is the role and function of fashion as a form of cultural industry, as a meaning making site of cultural practice and struggle linked to other cultural industries – some more obvious such as film but others less obvious such as sport industries where among other things the politics of celebrity make a range of cultural industries complicit in each other’s politics of exclusion and power. The book might also have benefitted from an appendix or on-line further information linking to activist groups building internationalist working class and progressive change in the industry given her important point that revolutionary change only comes about by building struggle. There is still much to address in this area.

The book is well presented with great illustrations by Jade Pilgrom. It isn’t a game changer in the field (no single book can be) but it is a significant and important contribution to rethinking and challenging the fashion industry with its profound role in the development and maintenance of capitalism. Highly recommended as an important book in a field that demands more of our attention.

[Magda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I came across this book as it was highlighted by reposed as one to read. Sadly, as a fashion professional I found it extremely hectic, and it much more resembled a fashion studies dissertation than a proper critique. The author may have done a lot of research but at times it seemed as though she did not connect two dots properly, and a lot of information was rather overlooked, which I found extremely disappointing as a reader. In one of the first chapters she mentions a t-shirt seamstress in Bangladesh being paid 87c per t-shirt made, yet a company X sells them for $27 in US, hence their profit is $26.13. That is not the case, and the author massively overlooked various aspects of production and went on to blame a huge brand for the poverty of Bangladeshi workers. Of course, that is the easiest way of explanation, and the author is taking every shortcut possible to make fashion the worst industry ever.
Also, I would not see sources cited by the author as very credible either, as majority of them actually make tonnes of money off fashion brands.
This book is one big ramble about how fashion is bad but provides really no justification. Author's opinion is rather limited, and her views are really biased. Would not recommend.

[Mia Balsamo · Rating 4 out of 5]

As is most likely obvious with a non-fiction book about an overwhelmingly negative and large part of our society, but this book is not exactly uplifting. I found this book after watching the documentary "The True Cost". Between the two, the book and the documentary create a very grim future of fashion. The fashion industry has done a wonderful job concealing the realities of exploitation and pollution it has created across the world. I hope more people read, watch, or listen to stories similar to this one and come away from it making real changes in their own life to help make as much of an impact as we can against fast fashion.

"Fashion can be both oppressive and emancipating, glorious and terrible, revolutionary and reactionary at the same time. It is inherently contradictory, as is all culture, and indeed all social reality."

[Donata · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best research-style books I have ever read (and I had to face quite a few when working on my BA and MA degrees). Informative, captivating, insightful, interesting, well-written, easy to read, comprehensible and full of poignant quotes. I especially enjoyed the one by Constance Markievicz.
I am a reader of Vogue, I watch documentaries like The First Monday in May and The September Issue as well as The Gospel According to Andre - I feel I do see the magic and beauty of fashion but this was a needed eye-opening about its industrial side.
Would recommend for both fashion lovers and the ones who despise it for its impact on the world which is sadly undeniable. Despite the side one is on, it is an exciting, informative and valuable read.

[Katharine Harding · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely worth reading. I didn't agree with all of it by any means, but it is thought-provoking and I will certainly reconsider my approach to fashion having read it. The chapters on gender and race are especially good.

I must say that having recently done quite a bit of travelling around Eastern Europe I am firmly not in favour of communism, and I dont think it is a good system for the general population to live under. Nonetheless, there is a great deal wrong with consumerism and fashion is a good illustration of this.

I really liked the book's illustrations. Very stylish.

[Kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Makes you think about the people working under horrible conditions creating each piece of clothing in your closet. A real eye opener but not sure about the solutions. I don't believe in socialism, but still hold hope that a solution can be had for people working under these nightmare situations. I only buy second hand now but I use to be a victim of fast fashion when I lived in new york. Shopping filled an empty void that was never satisfied. It's a nasty and expensive cycle. I don't know what the solution is but I like to think I'm doing my part by buying second hand.