Wow. This book (Overdressed, by Elizabeth Cline) totally changed the way I look at clothes... I may never be able to walk into a Gap or Banana Republic store again. Suffice to say, it's a must read for anybody who spends money on clothes..... meaning everybody.
Most impressive to me was Ms. Cline's discussion of what clothing manufacturing and consumption was like just 50 or 100 years ago. Just after WWI, a mid-priced day dress would sell for $16.95, or $200 today. Most women didn't own more than 5 or 10 dresses. Fast forward to today and you can buy a brand-new dress at H&M for $4.95 and a whole industry has sprung up to help us sort out and purge the incredible excess of clothes we now own. Taking a step back, in 1962, the US garment trade as a whole was a $12 billion enterprise-- compare that to the annual sales for a single retailer, H&M, in 2010 -- $19 billion. Wha?! People are buying more and more, throwing out more and more, and manufacturers and retailers keep packing the racks with what have become disposable goods.
Ms. Cline spends a good deal of time explaining how we got to where we are. Not surprisingly, the single biggest cause is the outsourcing of manufacturing. Of course, outsourcing brings a long a whole host of tragic externalities, including environmental devastation in places like China, India, and Bangladesh, and inhumane working conditions (not to mention salaries) for the people sewing the clothes we buy. The last chapter of the book is devoted to what can be done -- namely, buy less, buy domestic, and take care of the things you own.
Perhaps the best way to come to understand what's wrong with being able to buy a dress for 97.5 percent less than what one cost just 50 years ago is to make a dress... and quickly realize that the time and resources it takes to make a dress can't possibly add up to just $5.00.
Next up, debunking the myth of luxury branding.
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