Why Your Clothes Are Bad Quality

so the next part of the chapter really really interesting cuz I don't think many people know this but Dana Thomas talks about how the quality of garments is very different depending on the market or where it's produced um and I'll read from page 221 to 222 where she kind of highlights this but to kind of summarize before I read it in the EU they might only expect you to use a certain grade of things whereas in another country there's no regulation so brands will deliberately only produce the high quality garments for a specific market and then the low quality garments go to a different Market cuz I think people don't actually know this that Brands sometimes produce different clothes for different markets I think people just think everything is the same for every brand worldwide that might be the case for you know lower smaller brands that don't have the huge infrastructure to do things like that but the biggest brands the Ralph Laurens the chanels the Gucci they have different grade F like Fabrics quality of clothes for different markets which is insane and that all goes down to um legislation and kind of what is expected by the governments in different countries so to read from page 221 it says the manufacturing of clothing like that of perfume accessories and every other luxury good now follows the pyramid model the Exquisite work is produced in a very limited quantity by a Coty of Highly skilled traditional Craftsmen in France Italy ity and the United Kingdom the middle range such as ready to wear is farmed out to Big factories in places like Spain North Africa turkey and the former Eastern block countries Georgio Armani said in 2005 that It produced 18% of its highend ready to wear line Alman koni in Eastern Europe GUI makes some of its SAS in Serbia and pra does the upper parts of some shoes in Slovenia in 2004 Valentino reportedly begun to Outsource its one $1,300 men suits to a factory in Cairo where they were produced by veiled Muslim seamers who learned their craft by watching videos on televisions in the workshop at the time Italian textile workers hourly wages were $18.63 the the Egyptian workers earned 88 when the suits destined for the European market arrived in Italy Valentina representative ripped out the ma in Egypt tag in Europe companies do not have to declare where their goods are produced Valentino suits for the American and Japanese markets which have stricter laws about Provence labeling were produced in Italy in the United States and Japan perceived quality is more important than real quality explain Valentino CEO Mikel NOA which is mad for him to say that perceived quality is more important than real quality wow uh the cut in manufacturing cost had a positive impact on the bottom line in 200 5 Valentino posted its first profit in years the lowest end of the luxury Spectrum like logo covered luxury t-shirts and knitwear are produced in developing nations such as China Mexico Madagascar and maritus in February 203 I traveled to maius to see the process firsthand maius is a Tropical Paradise so ravishing that Mark Twain once wrote you gather the idea that heaven was copied after maius endless Acres of lush Lush Sugar can Fields that's like a tongue twister Lush Sugar Cane Fields surround Jagged volcanic mountains that rise out of the Sea Mist like peaks of mering wide Tran tranquil Bays wow this is like a tongue twister wide tranquil Bays of vibrant turquoise are framed by swats of fine white sand and swaying Palms colonized over the centuries by the Dutch the British and the French the island was home of the legendary dodo bird today macius is a favored winter holiday destination for Europeans and an offshore Financial Center for India it has also been for the last 30 years one of the world's key centers for textile manufacturing textile manufacturing in maius is purely is a purely contrived industry unlike other major garment manufacturing countries which also produce much of their raw materials maius Imports everything from the yarn to the packaging hundreds of factories dot the Inland Hills where workers predominantly women produce sweaters cashmere blankets and t-shirts but everyone from discount retailers like JC Penney to luxury Brands such as Geo Amman and burry and that's so true I mean obviously these all these things in this book are still the case today but the craziest thing that just confuses me to the core is so last week I was sent a package by Mani right um I like money as a brand I'm a big fan I like some of the stuff that they make not everything but I don't really like everything for any brand but anyway what really stood out to me was I got I was sent a pair of trousers that were amazing they fit right really good quality caros um like two pairs of knitwear which are also really good quality and then a t-shirt so the trousers the quality was like really exceptional one of the knitware pieces the quality was really good the other knitware piece the quality seemed really bad and the T-shirt the quality of the T-shirt was so bad that like I don't even know what to compare it to like this t-shirt is by uh Jack Harper and uh Eliza that's the name of the brand when you f the quality it's such a high quality t-shirt I've worn this so many times and watched it and it's as good as new it's so structured too I love it this t-shirt is like it cost I think it retailed for maybe £1 the Mani t-shirt I had to check online to see what it retails for it retails for £250 and the quality is worse than like Gildan it was so it feels like the kind of fabric that if I did that too hard it would literally rip in two the quality was so bad that I was shocked that a brand like man could even attempt to sell that kind of t-shirt like absolute absolutely shocked so the chapter then continues talking about macius as a hub for textile manufacturing but also a hub for cheap Tex down manufacturing it's so funny because also something that I've noted in my notes is the fact that like what I just read where she Dana Thomas writes about the fact that everything is imported to Marius and exported back out so all the raw materials they need to produce stuff is imported there and then it's exported to wherever it needs to go after it's been produced which is so funny because we have this conversation about sustainability and because brands are seeking cheaper and cheaper labor to increase profits they're making things even more and more unsustainable which is why anytime a a corporation that makes billions especially a one that is trying to see Financial growth year on year opens their mouth to talk about sustainability for me it goes in one ear and it comes out the other cuz there's there's absolutely no way you can operate like that and tell me that you care about sustainability it's just not a thing um but then she talks about how the landscape of maius changed so she talks about how it went from high unemployment to so much employment they started offering work visas and grants to Keen workers from other countries to keep the country's industry growing so they started giving you know work visas to people from China Bangladesh Sri Lanka and India to work in Marisha says in 2004 there were 20,000 experts working in the manufacturing industry on the island and it just talks about even like kind of earlier what I said later on D Thomas kind of made a similar point where the supply chains of these things are really unsustainable the fact that you have you know fabric woven in China died in Scotland finished in USA and then you know are made in the USA label um but then production actually slowed down um and most of the production shifted to China uh which is actually very interesting so I'm actually going to read that cuz it's from page 225 to 226 this is a very very interesting part by the way so to read from page 225 it says shibani has 1,800 workers on sweaters and 400 on intimate wear xat workers predominantly from China and India make up about 10% of the workforce in a sweater Factory factories shani's four factories run 24 hours 7 days a week with four shifts each day the legal Marian work week is 45 hours I'd rather give preference to Marius workers than deal with the lodging food passage tickets hassamal admitted but Imports are better skilled as machine operators and there's less absenteeism because of family duties plus they don't mind working nights amarish do when the break was over the Chinese girls snapped up and went right back to work their faces were blank their eyes empty no one spoke all you could hear was the deafening sit sit sit of the knitting machines by 2003 Marius texti clothing manufacturing export sales and amounted to roughly $1.5 billion and that's by 2003 that's a lot the sector employed about 40% of the country's Workforce and contributed 12% to the gross domestic product as a result maius had the highest per capita gross domestic product in sub Sahara in Africa there's evidence of the prosperity of Marius everywhere you turn new European cars restaurants shopping centers and housing construction textile manufacturing is a main pillar of our economy trade chairman gopal told me but that may be headed the way of the dodo on January 1st 2005 the World Trade Organization eliminated the 30-year-old textile quot s that gave birth to thriving manufacturing centers in developing nations such as maius Bangladesh Madagascar and Sri Lanka maius was perhaps the worst hit according to the apparel industry consultant David Burnal of third Horizon Limited in winners and losers 2005 a study of the economic impact of the phase out of 28 key garment producing countries in 2003 and 2004 maius lost 30 companies in employing 15,000 apparel and textile workers and burn bound reports that t textile shipments from Marias to the United States in 2004 were down by 17.5% from 2003 not surprisingly the majority of producers have moved their manufacturing to China the Chinese work 7 days a week 24 hours a day they live in the factory and are paid pennies an hour Michael Mayor told me how can we compete with that so that's how production obviously shifted from maius to China which was obviously even cheaper because that's kind of what they wanted it's kind of interesting how um kind of like a Side Story how China opening their doors for these big companies to manufacture there kind of killed the Hong Kong manufacturing industry because Hong Kong at the time had a really big textile manufacturing industry and all the people that were producing in Hong Kong literally just shifted production to China because it just made more financial sense there was even a part in the chapter where a guy who was huge in the manufacturing industry in Hong Kong talks about why he himself actually moved to Hong Kong um so that's definitely a really important part to read and it's also funny how a lot of these Luxy Brands were pretending to you know produce in the west but actually they're producing in China um actually let me see cuz I I think there was a page I think it was like 228 where they talked about that um that would be actually good to read to be fair um okay let me read that so from page 228 it says as China's manufacturing base grew Hong Kong shrank Chinese workers skills improved and production quality increased yet yet cost remained low uh soon highend and luxury Brands began to relocate their clothing manufacturing from Europe the United States Hong Kong maius and elsewhere to China in a matter of days in the fall of 2005 I heard from manufacturing and Industry sources in China that several prestigious Italian Brands manufactured ready to wear and knit wearther in pieces and had the items assembled in Italy to carry the maiden Italy label and Christen lar had knitwear made there Fang said we do it for Ralph Lauren and a smaller amount for Donna Karen which since 2001 has been an lvmh brand I was told by a senior Burberry executive in Hong Kong in December 2004 that the british-based company produced a small bit of luggage in China it's experimental tiny tiny a day later a source who worked with burry at the time told me bur's production in China is more than experimental it is Big quantities which obviously is what these brands do they pretend that they don't produce out side of the West cuz they're trying to sell a dream even though the reality is they're just lying um but anyway continuing says and said it was primarily leather goods and accessories produced in China some of the lower PRC Burberry Blue Label a licensed line that is produced by the Japanese firm SOS shokai limited for the Japanese Market is manufactured in China as well I remember the Burberry trench my husband tried on in Chan and thought to myself maybe it was real in September 2006 burby announced it was shuttering a factory in South Wales that had been in operation since 1939 and and produced polo shirts leaving 300 out of work and moving their production to China in November Welsh actor ion grafford who had modeled in a bbery ad campaign protested the closure and the times of London reported that Prince Charles contacted Welsh government ministers to ask if there was anything he could do to stop the move Peter Hayne Britain's Secretary of State for the northern Island in Wales asked bur CEO Angela adren to rethink the move and the church of England which has a $4.9 million stake in the company requested a formal explanation we found the costs of producing the polo shirts offshore were substantially lower than the cost in Wales that says the coast in Wales but I guess that supposed to write the Cost U Michael mahany bur's director of commercial Affair said at the time in fact they were less than half the only luxury designer I heard openly embraced manufacturing clothing in China was Georgio Amman the ma in Italy label is very important for the Top Line because it suggests a certain specialization he said during his visit to China in 2004 but to manufacture some of our other in China as long as we control the quality why not so that kind of shows you how you know tax manufacturing kind of moved away from different markets and you know moved to China essentially

Channel: Fashion Roadman

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Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2024