ABSTRACT
Fashion production is the ugly sister to its Cinderella fantasy, consumption. Indeed the study of fashion production compared with its consumption is relatively neglected. Costume histories and analyses of advertising, designers or signifiers significantly outnumber empirical investigations into manufacture, training or even retailing. There are perhaps several reasons for this situation: first, fashion production is particularly complex, involving the coming together of a number of fragments – weaving and dyeing is not in the same arena as cutting and sewing, let alone retailing or distribution; second, the production of fashion is politically sensitive and difficult to access – designers and retailers have a vested interest in concealing at least some of their sources whilst the often grossly exploitative working conditions that surround the cutting, sewing and finishing of garments are equally intentionally hidden; and third, it is nauseatingly unattractive – discovering one’s gorgeous gown was once no more than a set of rags in a grubby garment factory undermines its mystique to say the least. There is indeed something here that echoes the relationship of dream and nightmare or fantasy and reality. Fashion, even in its second-hand market versions, is sold according to illusion or the notion that dresses, jackets or shoes are somehow invested with the transformative magic to make us more than what we are, that clothes may somehow make up for what we lack or more simply help us to fulfil our fantasies. Fashion’s production is a grim reminder that they are no such thing, that they are just materials assembled and sold, often at a rip-off cost to our pockets and at the expense or the exploitation of someone else. Fashion production is exploitation – the culmination of sweatshops, under-
paid designers, industrial turmoil and now increasingly racialised as well as sexist methods that exist alongside the abuse of child labour. Documenting this is hardly necessary – we all know it without even having the evidence put in front of us – the more interesting question is why and perhaps following that why we apparently do not care, cease to care or simply don’t care enough. The answer to this question, or at least some of it, I will argue, lies in the idiosyncrasies of fashion itself, what defines it as different, and what characterises it as quite unlike anything else.
