Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

186 Pages·2012·0.79 MB·English

by  Elizabeth L. Cline

Overdressed
Overdressed
The Shockingly
High Cost of
Cheap Fashion
ELIZABETH L. CLINE
PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN
PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN
Published by the Penguin Group
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80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2012 by Portfolio / Penguin, a member of Penguin Group
(USA) Inc.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Elizabeth L. Cline, 2012
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Cline,
Elizabeth L.
Overdressed : the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion / Elizabeth L. Cline.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-1-101-56058-7
1. Clothing trade—Social aspects. 2. Clothing trade—Environmental aspects. 3.
Fashion—Social aspects. 4. Fashion—Environmental aspects. 5. Shopping—
Environmental aspects. 6. Consumption (Economics)—Social aspects. I. Title.
HD9940.A2C54 2012
338.4’774692—dc23
2012004525
Printed in the United States of America Set in Stempel Garamond LT Std
Designed by Alissa Amell
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage
piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only
authorized editions.
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
To my grandmothers, Routh and Margarett
Contents
Introduction Seven Pairs of $7 Shoes
1 “I Have Enough Clothing to Open a Store”
2 How America Lost Its Shirts
3 High and Low Fashion Make Friends
4 Fast Fashion
5 The Afterlife of Cheap Clothes
6 Sewing Is a Good Job, a Great Job
7 China and the End of Cheap Fashion
8 Make, Alter, and Mend
9 The Future of Fashion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Introduction

Seven Pairs of $7 Shoes
In the summer of 2009, I found myself standing in front of a rack of shoes at
Kmart in Astor Place in Manhattan. This particular location is inside the former
annex to Wanamaker’s, one of those regal midcentury department stores that
sold fine goods of all varieties, including high-end fashions direct from Paris.
Today, Wanamaker’s is gone. Today, Wanamaker’s is a Kmart.
The rack itself stretched up above my head, and the shoes—canvas slip-ons
made of nothing more than a rubber sole glued to a sheath of cotton—hung
down like fruit from a tree. In my mind, these shoes might as well have grown
there on that metal tree. They had no origins, no story. They just magically
appeared. And to my unbelievable fortune, they had been marked down from
$15 to $7 a pair. My synapses starting firing, my pulse quickened, and before my
thinking brain could kick in, I was standing at the cash register with my bright
red plastic shopping basket brimming with seven pairs of plucked slip-ons. I
cleared the store out of my size.
My arms ached as I carried my haul in two parachute-size bags back to the
subway. Those shoes looked like a cross-section of the earth’s crust within a few
weeks—the thin rubber soles cleaving and separating from the flimsy canvas
tops. Before I could wear them all out, I got tired of them and the style changed,
so I’ve got two pairs left taking up space in my closet.
The average price of clothing has plummeted in recent decades. And cheap
clothes have undergone a total image overhaul, where they no longer imply some
inherent compromise in style and quality. Budget fashion is seen as chic,
practical, and democratic, and our conversations are dotted with wow-inducing
stories of clothing “steals.” At a birthday party last year, a college friend thrust a
ruffled, canary yellow pleather bag in my face. “Five dollars!” she boasted.
Another friend messaged me online recently to exclaim: “I just paid $10 for a
$50 dress! $30 for a $60 one!” Fashion magazines, tabloids, and morning talk
shows now routinely run stories on how to land fashion deals.
For a decade, I only bought cheap fashion, and the vast majority of it was from
just four budget-fashion retailers that seemed to appear out of nowhere about ten
years ago: H&M, Old Navy, Forever 21, and Target. I owned a few items from
off-price stores Ross and T.J. Maxx, as well as from the buzzy basics chain