What do you think?
Rate this book
Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-Hand Clothes
You look good in those jeans. But are those jeans themselves good? Have you ever looked into where they came from and who made them?
In Clothing Poverty, Andrew Brooks takes readers on a global journey. Following a pair of jeans from fabric to fashion show, Brooks reveals the worldwide commodity chains and hidden trade networks that transect the globe and perpetuate poverty. Stitching together rich narratives, from markets in Mozambique, Nigerian smugglers, Bolivian traders, Chinese factories to London vintage clothing scene, and growing ethical fashion lines like Vivienne Westwood’s, Brooks draws connections and shines light in the world’s dark corners—and forces us to think anew about fashion, ethics, and our role in global production and exploitation.
In Clothing Poverty, Andrew Brooks takes readers on a global journey. Following a pair of jeans from fabric to fashion show, Brooks reveals the worldwide commodity chains and hidden trade networks that transect the globe and perpetuate poverty. Stitching together rich narratives, from markets in Mozambique, Nigerian smugglers, Bolivian traders, Chinese factories to London vintage clothing scene, and growing ethical fashion lines like Vivienne Westwood’s, Brooks draws connections and shines light in the world’s dark corners—and forces us to think anew about fashion, ethics, and our role in global production and exploitation.
288 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 2015
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
July 3, 2021
This is a thoroughly researched, in-depth study of the $4 billion used-clothing industry and, though I consider myself well-informed about such matters, it was an absolute eye-opener.
Only around 25% of clothing donations to the big brand charities goes onto the rails, the rest is sold to for-profit, used-clothing organisations.
The shops rarely make a profit; they are really collection centres for used clothing, though a high street presence raises a charity’s profile.
Charity clothing bins in recycling centres are often owned by for-profit organisations who have licensed a charity’s name. The charity gets the licensing fee, the organisation gets the clothes to sell for profit.
The clothes are sorted and squashed into 45 kg bales marked ‘men’s jeans’, ‘women’s blouses’, etc, and shipped to various low-income ‘global South’ countries, notably in Africa, where they are sold on to street traders.
The second-hand clothing market has destroyed local clothing manufacturing in these global South countries; profits flow back to the wealthy ‘global North’ and away from local economies.
Given the obesity epidemic in the global North, most donated clothes are far too big for people in the global South. In most of these countries, unsellable clothing is incinerated in high volume.
There is quite a bit of international criminal activity in the highly profitable used-clothing industry. Don’t leave your donations on charity shop doorsteps as they may well be stolen – seriously.
The vast majority of the world’s clothing is made in the global South and exported to the global North. The reason it is so cheap is that garment worker’s wages are kept very low; the system locks them into poverty. Once used, clothing is sent back to the global South to be worn by people who cannot afford to buy the new clothes they make.
At the heart of this global circuit of clothing is the massively profitable fast-fashion system; the production of new clothing has doubled in just 15 years and so has the waste. In fact, most of this discarded, plastic clothing goes to landfill in staggering quantities where it will remain for a very long time.
The business model of fast fashion is mass consumption of cheap products. The big brands know that their young target consumers are becoming environmentally aware and cynically exploit this because the thought that they might actually stop buying fast fashion breaks them out in a cold sweat. Many brands have set up in-store ‘recycling’ to dupe their customers into believing they’re doing something virtuous. Vouchers are given for the used clothes to encourage the purchase of more new stuff and then the second-hand stuff is sold for more profit. It is ‘green-washing’ writ large.
Inequality across the world and all of our environmental problems arise from our relentless over-consumption. We are like children sickened from eating too many sweets. There is a deep yearning for a more simple life that is fair to all and protects the environment. Most of us don’t quite know how to go about this but this we can do: we can stop buying stuff we don’t need and be really savvy about buying the stuff we do. It means defending ourselves against the brainwashing of marketing and doing a bit of homework. This book is a decent starting place.
Only around 25% of clothing donations to the big brand charities goes onto the rails, the rest is sold to for-profit, used-clothing organisations.
The shops rarely make a profit; they are really collection centres for used clothing, though a high street presence raises a charity’s profile.
Charity clothing bins in recycling centres are often owned by for-profit organisations who have licensed a charity’s name. The charity gets the licensing fee, the organisation gets the clothes to sell for profit.
The clothes are sorted and squashed into 45 kg bales marked ‘men’s jeans’, ‘women’s blouses’, etc, and shipped to various low-income ‘global South’ countries, notably in Africa, where they are sold on to street traders.
The second-hand clothing market has destroyed local clothing manufacturing in these global South countries; profits flow back to the wealthy ‘global North’ and away from local economies.
Given the obesity epidemic in the global North, most donated clothes are far too big for people in the global South. In most of these countries, unsellable clothing is incinerated in high volume.
There is quite a bit of international criminal activity in the highly profitable used-clothing industry. Don’t leave your donations on charity shop doorsteps as they may well be stolen – seriously.
The vast majority of the world’s clothing is made in the global South and exported to the global North. The reason it is so cheap is that garment worker’s wages are kept very low; the system locks them into poverty. Once used, clothing is sent back to the global South to be worn by people who cannot afford to buy the new clothes they make.
At the heart of this global circuit of clothing is the massively profitable fast-fashion system; the production of new clothing has doubled in just 15 years and so has the waste. In fact, most of this discarded, plastic clothing goes to landfill in staggering quantities where it will remain for a very long time.
The business model of fast fashion is mass consumption of cheap products. The big brands know that their young target consumers are becoming environmentally aware and cynically exploit this because the thought that they might actually stop buying fast fashion breaks them out in a cold sweat. Many brands have set up in-store ‘recycling’ to dupe their customers into believing they’re doing something virtuous. Vouchers are given for the used clothes to encourage the purchase of more new stuff and then the second-hand stuff is sold for more profit. It is ‘green-washing’ writ large.
Inequality across the world and all of our environmental problems arise from our relentless over-consumption. We are like children sickened from eating too many sweets. There is a deep yearning for a more simple life that is fair to all and protects the environment. Most of us don’t quite know how to go about this but this we can do: we can stop buying stuff we don’t need and be really savvy about buying the stuff we do. It means defending ourselves against the brainwashing of marketing and doing a bit of homework. This book is a decent starting place.
January 2, 2017
There is good information and a lot of research in this book. I gave it three stars, though, for the often confusing flow of information.
Read
January 22, 2024This is quite an academic examination of the economics of the fast fashion industry, with a Marxist analysis of the capitalist structures supporting it and a geopolitical approach to the broader topic.
September 24, 2015
Couldn't actually finish the book. Read half of the first chapter and attempted sections of later chapters. It felt like he was trying too hard to include ALL the information which led me to feeling overwhelmed and the content feeling incredibly dry. If a person picked this up with an inkling of wanting to know more about the effects of the clothing industry they'd get bored quickly and go straight to the nearest mall to break the tension.
I had a lot of high hopes for this. There are ways to make this heavy information approachable. Unfortunately, that was not the stance taken during the writing of this book.
I had a lot of high hopes for this. There are ways to make this heavy information approachable. Unfortunately, that was not the stance taken during the writing of this book.
June 17, 2016
While it reads a little bit like a university academic paper, Clothing Poverty brings to light the hidden and not so often thought of world of fast fashion and second hand clothing sales. Before I had always thought clothing donations were a convenient way of getting rid of unwanted clothing, but having read this book I am now thinking twice about what clothing I buy and how I use them. While this won't make much of a dent in the world of clothing, it has at least changed how I will purchase clothing in the future; in a much more careful and long term use way.
May 6, 2018
Limited Overview
The title poses something you don’t actually find in the book and it misses a big point- at least in the United States, Americans receive a tax benefit when they donate clothes so there is a tax incentive to donate a lot of clothes.
The title poses something you don’t actually find in the book and it misses a big point- at least in the United States, Americans receive a tax benefit when they donate clothes so there is a tax incentive to donate a lot of clothes.
February 2, 2022
I'm going to rate it on how much I learned because the entertainment value is not the same as with fiction. tldr: I learned a lot. I don't really have the skills to question it, but I think it did a good discussion on "ethical consumption" as well as an immense deep-dive into how poverty is interlinked with donated clothes in the North, and how it can affect development in the South. I agree that systematic changes are needed, and I was more surprised that 'ethical consumption (as I'm sure many of us have heard about over the last years) can perfectly uphold the injustices of capitalism, among others because we need large-scale change and it doesn't necessarily fix the need for developement in developing countries.
This is not a book that will take you through the environmental impacts of the clothing industry so it was a fresh breath to learn more about the impact on people globally and historically.
This is not a book that will take you through the environmental impacts of the clothing industry so it was a fresh breath to learn more about the impact on people globally and historically.
August 17, 2023
This is definitely a very academically written book, which is something to bear in mind if you're thinking of reading it, but it is incredibly informative and teaches you so much about fast fashion. We all think of Bangladesh when we think about clothing production but this book explores way beyond that. Andrew was my lecturer at university and this book really opened my eyes to the realities of fast fashion, and I can credit it as inspiring me to forge a career in this sector. Highly recommend :)
September 23, 2018
This book was a bit of a chore—an academic tome that suffers from the genre’s inherent need for constant signposting and repetition at the expense of elegance. I enjoyed the author’s Marxist view but wished for more information about his topic and less of the (unfortunately necessary, in his line of work) rigorous defense of his theoretical perspective.
October 6, 2018
Has definitely caused me to think again about some of the choices I make around clothing -- especially around the used-clothes system, which I've been largely ignorant of.
Lots of valuable insights in there, but you had to work hard to get at them! For a book written with the express purpose of being "accessible", I found the writing really quite stodgy and academic. To my surprise (being quite a lefty), I found the Marxist economic analysis almost as unrewarding as many classical (capitalist) economic analyses -- neither really leave enough room for human agency and complexity. (I say 'almost' because at least a Marxist analysis offers a different perspective on the way the world works to the one we usually get, and that's valuable in its own right.)
Worth sticking with it.
Lots of valuable insights in there, but you had to work hard to get at them! For a book written with the express purpose of being "accessible", I found the writing really quite stodgy and academic. To my surprise (being quite a lefty), I found the Marxist economic analysis almost as unrewarding as many classical (capitalist) economic analyses -- neither really leave enough room for human agency and complexity. (I say 'almost' because at least a Marxist analysis offers a different perspective on the way the world works to the one we usually get, and that's valuable in its own right.)
Worth sticking with it.
October 25, 2020
This book, although written in quite an academic language, clearly explains how the fashion industry, in its many forms, has an impact on poverty, influences poverty and is dependant on the exploitation and poverty of people in the global south (some in the global north as well) and consumers. The chapters are like essays, which makes it easy to dip in and out of the book, without having to read it from the beginning to end. Yet each chapter offers new insight into the industry.
The book discusses a very flawed system and the factors that make solving the environmental and social issues very complex. It was interesting to read how organisations that aim to resolve some issues do not understand the fundamental issues within the power relations and the overall system that perpetuate poverty in the global south. The one aspect, that could have been discussed more, is the role certain global organisations have in the whole system.
Although it might seem long, this book is an important read to anybody operating within the fashion industry. It helps the practitioners understand the underlying issues and possibly help to find solutions that could support rather than exploit countries that make our clothes and buy the clothes that we discard.
The book discusses a very flawed system and the factors that make solving the environmental and social issues very complex. It was interesting to read how organisations that aim to resolve some issues do not understand the fundamental issues within the power relations and the overall system that perpetuate poverty in the global south. The one aspect, that could have been discussed more, is the role certain global organisations have in the whole system.
Although it might seem long, this book is an important read to anybody operating within the fashion industry. It helps the practitioners understand the underlying issues and possibly help to find solutions that could support rather than exploit countries that make our clothes and buy the clothes that we discard.
March 21, 2025
Well-researched, throrough, and important...but so dry. This reads like a textbook. Frustrating, because the average consumer needs to read this, but the writing isn't going to hold their attention past the first chapter.
There were some good parts, especially the case studies of individual factories and secondhand sellers. It was eye-opening that door-to-door clothing collection and in-store clothing recycling immediately gets sold for a profit overseas. It was eye-opening that bales of secondhand clothing have winter jackets mixed in, even though they're being sold in hot Africa, because the sellers know that the buyers have no choice but to buy the entire bale. The trade relationships between countries were fascinating as well.
But all of this good stuff was 40% of the book. The other 60% was so dry I had to fight to get through. And that's saying something, because this is a topic I'm passionate about!
There were some good parts, especially the case studies of individual factories and secondhand sellers. It was eye-opening that door-to-door clothing collection and in-store clothing recycling immediately gets sold for a profit overseas. It was eye-opening that bales of secondhand clothing have winter jackets mixed in, even though they're being sold in hot Africa, because the sellers know that the buyers have no choice but to buy the entire bale. The trade relationships between countries were fascinating as well.
But all of this good stuff was 40% of the book. The other 60% was so dry I had to fight to get through. And that's saying something, because this is a topic I'm passionate about!
June 24, 2024
Even as someone who is well informed about the consequences of fast fashion in the global north, there were a great deal of important details I learned through the systems-of-provisions lens in this book. Brooks uses the global clothing trade to critique the larger structure of neocolonialism in a relatively accessible way.
However, because the supply chain is so complex, the only thing I would have preferred is for the book to include images, graphs, maps, flowcharts, or other visual ways to process the very dense information. As a teacher, I was hoping to use this book in my classroom, but because it lacks this kind of visual data aggregation, it's not a book I can easily recommend to my friends and students who are less familiar with the subject.
However, because the supply chain is so complex, the only thing I would have preferred is for the book to include images, graphs, maps, flowcharts, or other visual ways to process the very dense information. As a teacher, I was hoping to use this book in my classroom, but because it lacks this kind of visual data aggregation, it's not a book I can easily recommend to my friends and students who are less familiar with the subject.
July 22, 2019
In aiming for accessibility the author sadly denies himself his strengths as a writer. Where he could deliver dense marxian geographic analyses like with texture and clarity in the same tradition as Harvey and Soja he instead packs in shallowly worked data (the breadth of which is fantastic). This would have been fine if the author was capable of producing an engaging polemical voice as say Marx who in his writings on textile manufacture in Capital vol. I (an inevitable comparison given the topic).
April 22, 2026
El tema de la moda sustentable es sumamente complejo e interesante. Pero en este libro se busca abordarlo todo y termina no concretando nada. Además de que tiene capítulos enteros que se vuelven aburridisimos y tortuosos de leer.
Prefiero los libros de Dana Thomas, o la biblia de la moda sustentable “loved clothing last”
Prefiero los libros de Dana Thomas, o la biblia de la moda sustentable “loved clothing last”
September 28, 2020
This book seems very boring. I felt that it was a bit far from reality. I prefer to wear Ming Dynasty clothes to appreciate how beautiful I am than reading books.
May 23, 2020
This was a pretty meaty bit of text, very academic but so informative. I feel like I’ve learnt a huge deal from this book, it’s worth a read.
Read
January 16, 2021That is very nice and interesting book. Thanks!
https://harrystylesmerch.net/
https://harrystylesmerch.net/
Read
October 1, 2025Good information relayed concisely — but oh god, the copyediting…
March 8, 2020
This book contains a plethora of information in a dry academic fashion that bored me to tears. I slogged through to the end because I find the topic interesting, but it felt more like a forced assignment than a book meant for a casual reader.
Read
April 30, 2023book was ok but a bit lacking, prose was ok, clothes manufacturing was always involved in capitalism, overproduction of clothes leads capital to seek new markets in the global south via e.g. captive markets, used clothes are absorbed by non-profits to resell in the global south, global south manufactures the clothes we buy and capitalist pressure lowers their wages to the point of incapability of buying those same clothes they manufacture, didn't care much for discussion of clothes and culture, non-profit clothing collectors shady af (because everyone's a capitalist in disguise), second-hand clothes imports disincentivise development of local industry, some stuff about surplus value you've probably heard before, the chinese are sadomasochistic (i.e. employers are sadists and workers are masochists), the world bank and its SAPs can go f*ck itself, japan really likes jeans for some reason?, ethical consumption lul, let's give poor africans shoes instead of food to eat, because this way we get to keep buying new shoes without feeling guilty from it, consumption is buying clothes as buying an identity, ethical consumption is buying a good identity without thinking too hard about who makes the clothes and why they're paid so little, oh my god can fast fashion hurry up and go die in a fire, overall insightful on a subject I didn't know much about but a bit disappointing, doesn't say anything super new or interesting
"it is unrealistic to expect consumers in the global North to be able to undertake an accurate ethical audit whenever they go to buy new clothes." -> you vastly underestimate how little of a life I have 😎
"it is unrealistic to expect consumers in the global North to be able to undertake an accurate ethical audit whenever they go to buy new clothes." -> you vastly underestimate how little of a life I have 😎
July 13, 2020
Clothing Poverty
Very well-written, lots of information about the fashion industry, fast fashion and how Third World countries are affected by the Fast Fashion industry. People already know about the low waged and poor conditions in Pakistan and Bangladesh....what is less well-known is the effect of the industry on various African nations Brooks also suggest solutions to the problem, and there is a helpful list of Further Reading.
Very well-written, lots of information about the fashion industry, fast fashion and how Third World countries are affected by the Fast Fashion industry. People already know about the low waged and poor conditions in Pakistan and Bangladesh....what is less well-known is the effect of the industry on various African nations Brooks also suggest solutions to the problem, and there is a helpful list of Further Reading.
November 10, 2021
A great subject, and very topical. I didn't read the whole thing but dipped into the chapters that appealed most to me. There is lots of information here, maybe too much, and it's an academic book , so not the mostly reader-friendly prose.
August 14, 2024
One year later and I still didn’t finish it. It wasn’t what I was looking for. It’s time to let it be, at around 60% of it. It’s more about history of Africa then about the business of fashion. Maybe one day I will come back to it.
June 25, 2015
marxist geographer takes on international clothes production.
February 3, 2024
An eye opener into the clothing trade from the first world countries to third world for selling etc. One minor criticism is that there are no photos or pictures
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews