High Cost Of Cheap Fashion Essay

Saying it “is all about 'investment dressing' - buying one piece and loving it for a long time”. (Siegle, 8) When buying a product the shopper should not be afraid to spend a little extra cash so it won’t have to be disposed in a few months time. Making more of a relationship to care for what is in their possession. And repair the clothes they have since “just 2 per cent of the average clothing budget goes on services that repair or lengthen the lifespan of our garments and accessories”. (Siegle, 9) She goes over how the more you buy fast fashion the higher the price and the cheaper the material will be. Ending up in the garbage and repeating the cycle of devastating effects on the

During the time of the Civil War, there were slaves working on farmers, these slaves were not compensated for their labor and services and were producing cotton for a little to nothing cost. Since the Civil War, America has produced an immense amount of cotton and would export it to different parts of the world. America has also had enough workers to meet the exact supply and demand, which follows the demand policy. Correspondingly, the manifest destiny caused for cotton growers further west. Due to the cotton growers going further out west, cotton became easier to grow and easier to protect. These technological advancements simplified the process by which people were able to grow cotton and export it to China for the workers to create these shirts. There are now many subsidiary industries to cotton; industries are always producing new clothes every day. Due to this

Sweatshops a big issue in today’s society, even though their existence can sometimes stay hidden from the public’s eye. A famous author named Berry states, “ most of us get all the things we need by buying them and most of us know only vaguely, if at all, where those things came from; and most of us know not at all what damage is involved in their production. We are almost entirely dependent on an economy of which we are almost entirely ignorant.” The majority of people in the US have no idea where the clothes they are purchasing are actually coming from. Most people would not support the exploitation of their own race of people. If they were able to see and come to realization about what is actually happening they would have a much different change of heart.

It is impossible to beat a cheap price. In today’s world, finding a sought after item at a dirt cheap price is one the main motivation American’s get in the car and battle the craziness in the mall. And as the basic American human beings that we are, it is never possible for us to be complacent with the amount of stuff we currently have. Eventually, we will come across a friend that has the next must have item that will cause us to run to our local mall and purchase a similar item at the lowest price possible. With all that said, it is no wonder why the industry of fast fashion has taken off over the past decade. Felipe Caro and Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz, researchers for UCLA’s school of supply chain coordination, define fast fashion as “a business model that combines four elements: (i) fashionable clothes mostly for consumers under 40; (ii) affordable prices in the mid-to-low range; (iii) quick response; and (iv) frequent assortment changes”. Retailers like H&M, Forever 21, Target, and Wal-Mart have been able to take this business model and make a fortune. But while all these quick trends and cheap prices are great for the consumer, its cost on the foreign worker and the environment does not go uncovered. In the book Overdressed by Elizabeth Cline, she presents many arguments supporting the claim that fast fashion is unethical based on

If the government enacted a special tax on imported clothing making the selling price equal to the selling price of clothing made in the United States, shoppers would see imported items with much higher prices in discount stores. If the prices of clothing made in sweatshops and in the United States were comparative, shoppers would consider the trade-offs and opt to buy clothing made in the United States for higher quality, loyalty to United States workers, and the health of our economy (Mankiw, 2011, p. 4). Wal-Mart and “big-box” stores that sell so many imported clothing items would see a decrease in sales. Shoppers would choose to buy clothing at stores that sell clothing made in the United States. These stores would see an increase in sales.

By the 1990’s, even though a somewhat large percentage of clothing was still being produced domestically, famous companies such as J.C Penney and Gap Inc., started to slowly decrease the number of clothes being made by them in the U.S. They’d still design and market their own clothes but they decided to outsourced production to factories overseas where their clothes were being made at a fraction of the cost (Vatz, 2013). Companies see offshore production as an opportunity to make their business more profitable. Manufacturing offshore offers the ability to produce huge amounts of orders significantly reducing the cost of production. Hence, the reason why a lot of factories have moved to places where laborers get paid almost nothing for their work and the government doesn’t have laws or regulations to protect workers. For companies, it basically means cheap labor and materials and more money in their pockets; for consumers, this means low retail prices for pieces of clothing of questionable quality; and for the United States, it means a decrease in local-garment making industry and less apparel manufacturing

Esquel, one of the leading cotton-shirt-manufacturers in the world came from China and it supplies lots of clothing brand such as Banana Republic, Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss, Brooks Brothers, Abercrombie and Fitch, Nike, Nordstrom and Lands’ End, in addition to private companies (Plunkett Research, Ltd.). However, due to the high demand of the US apparel stores for Chinese products, the low cost, which was the main reason why raw materials are being purchased from China, have increased. China’s competition is huge, with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Sri Lanka also producing material at cheap prices (Plunkett Research, Ltd.). The US apparel stores can instead purchase from these other Asian countries. It is hard to determine the exact number of suppliers in this industry; but, in general, majority of them are in Asian countries that can provide low-cost raw materials to US-based apparel stores. Therefore, the US apparel stores may acquire higher net profi

As this article focused on the change of American culture during World War II, another main point was how the clothing styles changed. In the 1930s, women mainly wore conservative, but stately dresses. After women entered manual factory work, they needed to wear appropriate clothing, such as pants and flat shoes (Hall, Orzada, and Lopez-Gydosh). Because pants did not fit the woman’s picture, clothing companies had to shift to comply with the demand. Due to this, not only did the workforce demographics change, companies and products changed from past

Some people who buy clothes just for the sake of buying clothes are impacting the sweatshop workers. People who just buy clothes for the sake of it are wasting resources. Average british women spend $285(euro) on clothes that they will never wear.

The True Cost, by Andrew Morgan, was a truly eye opening documentary on what price workers who make our clothes have to pay in regards to their health, finances, and sacrifices they have to make. Most of us purchase clothes and do not think twice about where they came from, who made them, and impact it is having on our society. Stores such as H&M and Forever 21 sales clothes for very cheap prices; however, the more the prices are reduced, the more the environmental costs are raised. Our society revolves are materialism and most believe our clothing portrays who a person is, to a certain extent. If this is the case, our clothes may be saying more about ourselves than we think, if we are wearing clothes that workers in other countries are paying a price for.

“Heavy cloths were often priced for use in everyday situations” and earning a living through manual labor. The British government needed to reduce production and consumption of civilian cloths to safeguard materials and factory space. The bosses had to release the workers for the production. This was announced in June 1941 by “Oliver Lyttelton, president of the Board of Trade”. The adornments of a British service dress uniform and class A jackets of the US Army was more or less hundreds of dollars The women’s clothing was overly expensive. The black two-piece suit was $22.95, as the men's shirts were only $3.70(New Jersey, 1946). The women’s shirts were $5.40(New Jersey 1946 *wool*). After the war in Britain, America and Europe turned to them for more ideas for developing

Retail stores and corporations are the third social actors, I believe that all they value is low expenses and high profit. Stores like Walmart and Old Navy buy in bulk for cheap then sell those bulks in individually priced clothes to consumers for cheap. This idea of marketing it as cheap and affordable makes consumers buy more. If the buyers didn’t have to pay that much for a bulk of clothing and then they turn around and sell it at an affordable price to consumers which is obviously more than what they bought it for it’s a win-win for retailers and

Although the Chinese apparel manufacturers would lose profitability due to rising cotton prices and competition from emerging countries, they stand to gain the most from the removal of U.S. quotas and tariffs. According to the author, in 2007, 95% of the 20 billion garments Americans made were purchased overseas. Due to U.S. trade barriers, China’s share of the U.S. apparel import was only 30%. Once these barriers were removed, Chinese apparel would flood the American market due to their low cost and dominance in garment manufacturing. Experts predict that China could eventually supply 85% of U.S. apparel. As they increase their market share in the

The things that bothers most about my clothes are the things that I get from Wal-Mart first thing they pay their workers very little money, and secondly they also have their clothes and merchandise produced in third world countries; they pay the workers little

However, the issue becomes more complicated when one takes a closer look at the data. To be sure, there have been job losses in the US textile industry, but clothing prices in the United States have also fallen since 1994 as textile production shifted from high-cost US producers to lower-cost Mexican producers. This obviously benefits US consumers, who now have more money to spend on other items. The cost of a typical pair of designer jeans, for example, fell from $55 in 1994 to $48 in 1997. Nor is the fall in prices simply a result of the movement of production from the United States to Mexico.