We will stop producing clothes to allow the Planet to regenerate: that is the vision of journalist Tansy E. Hoskins in "The Anticapitalist Fashion Book".
Fashion is a political act. Many social critics and celebrated designers think so, but they probably don't mean it in the same way as Tansy E. Hoskins, an investigative journalist specialising in the global fashion supply chain. In the British journalist's latest book, recently translated into Italian for Il Saggiatore, she makes it clear from the very title: "Il libro della moda anticapitalista – Tra Karl Lagerfeld e Karl Marx".
A radical solution — proposing an anticapitalist fashion system — because radical are the problems afflicting this sector, from the waste of natural resources to the violated rights of workers, to racism and the uncontrolled production of textile waste invading the Global South, all points addressed by Hoskins chapter by chapter throughout the book.
Hoskins's judgement of the current fashion system is merciless (as was the investigation into shoe production in her other book "Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion"), yet the prediction with which she concludes her lengthy dissertation is fascinating. Having witnessed the rise of fast fashion and then ultra fast fashion, Hoskins writes: "I consider it likely that the mass production of clothing will come to a complete halt for years, so as to allow the earth to regenerate and to allow us to carry out a thorough clean-up of the industry, sorting, classifying, repairing, recycling and redistributing the garments we already have. Many of these resources will be gathered in communally owned warehouses, which will lead to greater access to clothing but also a shrinking of personal wardrobes. Workshops for repairs and tool maintenance will emerge where tasks and skills can be shared, alongside public laundries."
How did you come to specialise in the global fashion supply chain?
I started around 2011 because I had many questions and couldn't find satisfactory answers. At the time there was no sustainable fashion movement, nor so many articles or podcasts. It was still a fairly little-known sector in terms of its inner workings. Only British journalist Lucy Siegle had already published something on it. Above all, nobody seemed to directly connect the word "capitalism" to fashion, whereas for me it was a fundamental connection for explaining many of the mechanisms involved.
In Italian the phrase "fatto a mano" (handmade) is used to indicate a piece of high-end tailoring, as if the rest of our wardrobe were produced by robots rather than human beings. When and how did we become so detached from what we wear that we barely notice the people who sew our clothes anymore?
Brands would love nothing more than to have robots capable of sewing and assembling clothes instead of humans, but at the moment that isn't happening. Everything inside our wardrobes or on our shoe racks is made by a human being — typically a woman in a country of the so-called Global South, who does not receive a living wage and who works in a context that is often harmful to her health or dangerous to her safety. How did we come to forget about 72 million people in the fashion supply chain? I believe it was a deliberate choice to make us forget. Brands don't want us thinking about factories; they want to sell us a very precise image, tied to whatever they choose — whether that's fitness, luxury or sustainability.
In your book you seem to downplay the collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013 as a point of no return on the issue of worker safety in the fashion supply chain. Why?
The collapse of Rana Plaza was a bomb that exploded at the heart of the fashion industry. It destroyed forever the idea that fashion was fair, sustainable, gentle, luxurious or whatever else. It was supposed to be a turning point. It was supposed to be the moment when every brand would demonstrate that it truly cared about garment workers, women's rights and so on. But the reality is that, while Rana Plaza made people all over the world very angry and shocked, it did not change brands' sourcing practices. The major change that did come about was the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, a union-led initiative that imposed a system of factory inspections in Bangladesh. Without question, thanks to the Accord, factories in Bangladesh are safer today.
And what happened during the pandemic years?
The pandemic is the perfect example of why Rana Plaza failed to change the fashion industry. Brands began cancelling orders all over the world — even orders that had already been completed or shipped. They would simply say they didn't want to pay, or that they wanted a 70, 80, 90% discount. The workers paid the highest price for these terrible practices. I spoke with women who survived for months eating rice sprinkled with salt. Many couldn't afford medicine or adequate food. A report by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance highlighted that fashion workers faced the pandemic effectively without wages, without work, without food, without assistance.
In Italy there is a tendency to absolve oneself by claiming this is a problem exclusive to other countries, when recent news stories have shown that is not the case. Can we still trust the "Made in" label?
For me it is a meaningless piece of fabric — it doesn't even guarantee that the item in question was entirely produced in the country indicated. Some time ago I visited a shoe factory in Macedonia: a dreadful place with no emergency exits, barred windows and dozens of women paid a pittance. It was a kind of seasonal work: they were laid off when there were no orders and then rehired. Throughout the factory there were boxes labelled "Made in Italy". I discovered this is the result of a phenomenon called "outward processing trade" — a loophole in EU legislation that allows goods to move to other countries for certain production processes. The shoes can be manufactured in Macedonia, then brought back to Italy for some minor finishing process, such as polishing, packaging or inserting the laces, and can therefore be labelled "Made in Italy".
Another important aspect is that many people working in the supply chain, including for luxury brands, are required to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), so many terrible things happen but are hard to uncover because they cannot be spoken about. Every time an investigation is carried out into the standards of luxury fashion houses, these companies never come out looking good — whether on the subject of taxes, workers' rights or sustainability.
Which countries currently have the worst working conditions?
It is difficult to draw up a ranking — certainly the whole of South Asia finds itself in a very difficult situation, also due to financial crises and social unrest. I'm thinking of Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar. And the burden is particularly felt by garment workers because exports are critical for these countries: in Bangladesh, 80–90% of exports consist of clothing. The situation is truly dire in Myanmar, a country governed by a military junta, where wages are particularly low and trade union freedom is non-existent.
How can brands be unaware of what constitutes a living wage in a given country?
They know. A journalist like me or any NGO can go and find out what the minimum wage for a dignified life is, or commission a study — so imagine what a multinational company making billions in profit could do. On the contrary, the teams tasked with sourcing suppliers are looking for whoever produces fastest and at the lowest cost — the exact opposite of what would be right. They want to find factories that pay poverty wages, because that way their profits are higher.
In your book, you seem to have little faith in "voting with your wallet" – that is, in the power consumers have to change the production system through their purchasing choices. Do we really have no power at all?
I think people's power is absolutely fundamental. Every change we have seen in the fashion industry has been the result of a concerted global effort. But none of those changes happened because of purchasing choices. The changes we have seen – for example, the Bangladesh Accord on safety, or the Dindigul Agreement in India, which addresses gender-based violence in Tamil Nadu – are all the result of the joint work and protests of people in Italy, Europe, the United States, and of people in Bangladesh or India. Here we have the brands' shops, their headquarters and a free press that listens to us, so we certainly have a fundamental role to play.
You were involved in reaching the Dindigul Agreement against gender-based violence in 2022. How did you get there?
It all started after the murder of a 21-year-old textile worker in Tamil Nadu named Jeyasre Kathiravel, which uncovered a horrific reality of systematic violence against female workers, particularly Dalit women, including sexual harassment. In Britain we organised demonstrations outside H&M stores across the UK and ran a viral social media campaign. Other European countries and the United States followed suit, where teams of negotiators worked to support the women affected by the violence in India, who slowly came forward to denounce an endemic problem. Once again, it was people power that changed things.
Should we place greater emphasis on the fact that the fashion system's unsustainability is a gender issue?
Yes, in the book I make my view on this very clear. The fashion industry punishes women – from the farmers who grow cotton to the factory workers on the production lines. From the models used in advertising to the end consumers who buy the clothes, often being made to feel uncomfortable in their own skin about their appearance. And then, when fashion becomes waste, the waste collectors and rag pickers end up sorting it, and even in this final stage it is mainly women who are involved. The tens of billions in profits generated every year by fashion are built on women's misery. Violence, moreover, is a cross-cutting issue that affects all of them, from models to factory workers.
We have seen fast fashion arrive, then ultra fast fashion. What should we expect from the future of the global fashion system?
In the book I try to explore a number of horizons with some deliberately provocative predictions. I think it is undeniable to say that the fashion industry will change, because right now it is unsustainable. It is built on fossil fuels – for fabrics and for global transport – on unfair labour conditions, and on a volume of clothing that is unsustainable if we genuinely want to tackle climate change. So it will either change for the better, or it will collapse along with society as we know it today. Frankly, that is the direction we seem to be heading in right now. Temperatures are rising relentlessly, while brands keep churning out billions of items with an extremely short lifespan that we simply do not need. That is why I advocate degrowth for the fashion industry – because it largely produces non-essential, unnecessary objects.
What do you say to people who ask "so what should I wear?"
It is frustrating for me too to be asked this question so often. We need to focus on what we actually need, not on what multinationals want us to buy. The small daily decisions about what we purchase have limited power. Do the best you can to make a sustainable choice. The purpose of life is not to build a perfect wardrobe – especially because today no one can feel truly comfortable with these clothes, since sustainable fashion on the mass market simply does not exist. Our primary task remains working with those 72 million people who are currently enslaved by the clothing industry.
Will we ever be able to love fashion again?
We need to reflect on the role we want fashion to play in our lives. We want beautiful, well-made clothes that do not harm those who produce them or the planet we live on – clothes that tell our story, celebrate our cultures. We want them to last and to accompany us through our lives. The moment we decide that this is what fashion is for, then we can change. We can change everything. We can make it so that countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Macedonia stop having their entire economies based on export industries and start asking themselves: "OK, what do we actually need?" We have 72 million people working in the clothing industry – perhaps we should have them building flood defences, solar panels, schools, hospitals, and regenerating agricultural land.
