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Written for Wine, Women, and Revolution
Wine, Women, and Revolution Warmly Welcomes Ekaterina Sedia
Hello, listeners and readers and welcome to Wine, Women, and Revolution, with your host Heather Warburton, coming at you from Revolution Radio. Today we are honored to be joined by special guest Ekaterina Sedia. Kat is currently a Professor of Biology at Stockton University in South Jersey. This is where she met our writer and assistant producer, Leah, and connected her to Revolution Radio. Heather and Kat became close comrades through work in activism.
Though this may strike some of you as unexpected, today’s topic is fashion. Kat teaches a class at Stockton on the history of fashion called Fashion and Society. Kat notes that there is a societal expectation that an interest in fashion means that one will dress fashionable, but this is not always the case. An interest in something cannot always translate to practicing that thing directly. Although not a lavish dresser herself, Kat has always been interested in textiles and fashion history. It came to her attention early in life that fashion has been a catalyst for social movements. She looks at her class as an opportunity for herself and her students to explore that connection and examine the lens through which they see their clothing.
Industrial Tragedy
One of the main things that Kat discusses in her course is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. In this accident, huge numbers of female immigrant factory workers were injured and killed because they were locked inside of a Manhattan factory. This incident brought attention to the plight of the workers. Suffragists were attracted to the movement that was created for women’s industrial rights. Domestic laborers organized and New York City’s garment industry was somewhat reformed, becoming a way to rise out of poverty into the middle class.
A few years ago, there was a factory fire in Bangladesh that tragically killed close to a thousand people. The story was similar; the factory was locked so that the workers could not go outside and take breaks. Workers had even pointed out that there were cracks in the building but were told by management to ignore it and go back to work. Many people hear about this incident and believe that the same positive resulting changes will occur there that happened in New York over 100 years ago will take place again. However, the labor pool for the fashion industry has become so widespread that this will not be possible. If workers demand concessions, labor can be outsourced to a different poor country.
The Truth Behind the Fashion Industry
The modern fashion industry is extremely profit-oriented. One may ask themselves, “but couldn’t the factory owners have afforded fire extinguishers?” Yes! But they wouldn’t buy them because it would chip away at their profits, even if in a minuscule way and at the benefit of the preservation of human life. The network of global exploitation is all about greed.
Clothing is usually more expensive when it’s made using fair labor. However, this does not mean that all expensive clothes are produced ethically. A majority of clothes are marked up for little reason besides brand name, even when those brands use cheap labor from sweatshops. Disposable fashion, the planned obsolescence of clothing, is also very real. It’s how all the conglomerates are maximizing profits these days — things you use become things you use up.
Global Effects
This planned obsolescence generates a great magnitude of waste and perpetuates the system that pays fashion workers slave wages. To those wondering about the specific injustices faced by global fashion workers, Kat recommends a documentary called The True Cost, which she describes as a very depressing look at the destructive effect of industrial exploitation on human life.
The environment is also endangered by the fashion industry’s exploitative and profit-obsessed global framework. Regulations do exist but it is often the case that corporations ignore them or even write their own laws, which bend according to their needs. Kat cites a saying from the field of ecology. “There is no nowhere. Everything has to go somewhere.” Clothes don’t decompose easily, if at all. Some industries “self-regulate”, but this translates to no regulation.
What Companies Do
People often donate their old clothes as a form of charity. For example, Kat shares, H&M has a drive in which customers can donate unneeded clothes items and receive a discount. The assumption that most people make is that these clothes are distributed locally to those in need. However, in many cases, it goes much deeper than this. There are usually more clothes at the end of the day than people who need them. Often, the remainder of the items are shipped in bulk to the global South. There, these shipments have disrupted local economies by saturating the clothes market with inexpensive options. No research is done into the needs of global communities before the clothes are dumped there.
What Can Be Done
The internet is a good resource for finding independent artists who create clothes ethically and sustainably. Kat mentions Etsy and Instagram, which are particularly effective places to look. Meanwhile, she warns against “fast fashion” — production based on fast cycling through the trends: think H&M and Zara. These types of brands overproduce by necessity. If it’s available to buy in new condition and at a cheap price, a garment was most likely not produced ethically. One of the best things to do if you’re concerned about where the clothes on your body were sourced, shares Kat, is to purchase secondhand articles.
Unfortunately, although purchasing responsibly is a good thing to do, that single practice alone cannot address the root of the problem: the deeply entrenched global mechanism of exploitation. Kat comments that she should not have to do 2 hours of research to see if a shirt she wants to buy was made by child slaves. If you make friends who create clothing and buy from them, you can be sure of your source. Also, you may not need as many clothes as you think you do. It is a good idea to ask yourself if your needs have already been met before purchasing a new clothing item.
The Root Issue
Ultimately, the problem here is too big to be solved completely by any of the aforementioned ideas alone. Our current solutions are band-aids at best. The system has to change, and that’s why Heather and Kat had this discussion here today. We are here to bring awareness to these issues that people don’t talk about.
There’s no part of your life that this horrible exploitative system doesn’t reach, right down to the very clothes on your body. We thank Kat Sedia for lending us her time and expertise to bring attention to a subject that is often overlooked. Thank you to our listeners as well, we would not be here without you. Remember to donate if possible. Even a few people giving a few dollars a month makes a big difference for us at NJRR. The future is yours to create, go out there and create it!
-Leah Giannantonio, for Revolution Radio
