If you like clothes, watch The True Cost. If you don’t like clothes but wear clothes, watch The True Cost. If you don’t wear clothes, please email me. Then watch The True Cost.
If for some reason you haven’t heard of this film, it’s a documentary about clothing manufacture and the diabolical environmental, human and ethical damage it does. You can watch it digitally right now and it’s brilliant. Brilliant, alarming, terrifying, shocking, horrible, illuminating and ghastly. If it doesn’t change the way you go about shopping for clothes, you’re a fucking barbarian and I don’t want to know you.
The juxtaposition of the terrible working conditions in Bangladesh and the beastial behaviour of crazed western consumers on sale day is sickening. Just watch it. Watch it now and suggest others watch it. Corporations won’t change their behaviour unless the consumer does first. Just watch it. Seriously, now, fucking watch it. I’ve haven’t been this worked up since they reduced the size of the Dairy Milk.
Yeah seen this. The scene discussing the spike in numbers of people with tumours and kids born with disabilities as a direct result of the chemicals put on crops made for particularly uncomfortable viewing. Had to go put on my Incotex kecks, they’ve got a bit of stretch in them, problem solved.
In all seriousness though, how the problems caused by something as vacuous as fashion have been allowed to continue for so long is beyond me. My missus attempted to guilt trip me over my expensive clothing habit after watching the film. What she fails to realise though is that by paying a premium for my gear, I can normally tell you where it was all made. It’s actually the people who supposedly don’t care about their clothes, yet by it by the boat-load in Primark and the like, that continue to cause building collapses in India.
Essentially what I’m saying is that this is all my wife’s fault.
Yeah, you’ve hit the nail on the head. If you’re buying clothing that costs a bit more, but is made in Japan, the US, the UK and Europe in general, at the very least you’re not contributing to the direct suffering of workers. And while you have a clothes habit, for the price of one pair of Incotex chinos you could buy armfuls of diabolical, cheap, sweatshopped rubbish from H&M. I’m willing to bet there aren’t many pairs of Incotex in those vast piles of landfill clothing shown in the film – it’s all dresses and shirts for the weekend from some horrorshow of a highstreet corporation. Thanks for the comment fella.