Poverty, pollution and profligacy – a fast-fashion horror story that will make you think twice about buying clothes
- Author Maxine Bédat traces the life cycle of an average pair of jeans ‘from farm to landfill’ and what she discovers makes for shocking reading
- Pollution spewing from Chinese denim factories, women in poor countries sewing like machines, your conscience-easing thrift shop donations – all is dissected
Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment by Maxine Bédat, pub. Portfolio
Whenever Japan’s domestic goddess Marie Kondo preaches her gospel – of discarding belongings that no longer spark joy – she prompts wholesale purging as rapturous as the reaction to her immaculate tidying concept.
In the wake of Kondo’s 2019 Netflix series, for example, Americans formed long queues outside thrift shops to relieve themselves of clothing. And 18 months of pandemic-related lockdowns have only expedited showdowns with bulging wardrobes, according to Maxine Bédat, author of Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment.
Purging may prove cathartic for those who believe their actions have a higher purpose, but the reality is often different, she says. Bags of clothes dumped outside donation centres most likely end up in landfills. She adds: “Eighty per cent of donations leave a donation store’s floor not in the arms of individuals […] but packed into huge bales headed many places, including overseas.”
Bédat may be referring to the United States, but her point is clear: our taste for fast fashion is unsustainable. Her book, which follows the journey of an imaginary pair of jeans, from fibre to smoke fumes, ends where mountains of donated clothing wind up – Ghana, the final resting place for second-hand apparel sent also from Europe and Asia to be sold at markets in Accra. What isn’t sold makes its way to places such as the Kpone landfill, where Bédat witnesses bags full of gear – “Puma high-tops, H&M shifts, knock-off Versace bags” – go up in flames.