FASHIONOPOLIS by Dana Thomas

The three basic needs in our survival - food, clothing and shelter. And all three have morphed from those bare minimal essentials into huge statements of excess, want, over supply and enormous wastage. We have become better at building sustainably and for longevity. We are much more conscious and aware of where our food comes from, its nutritional value, growing our own food. But clothing? Oh boy have we got a loooonnnng way to go here. Even the most intelligent and well read of us, will have no idea really about the costs to the environment, to the health and welfare of those who make what we wear, the horrendous wastage with what we carelessly discard. It is staggering, shameful, and scandalous.

This book will tell you all you need to know! But at the same time it is not preachy, shaming us not too much for our frivolous purchases and fashion mistakes. If anything the author is educating us about where our clothes come from, how we are sucked into buying, buying, buying, the fashion industry money-go-round. As the writer says she is attacking this subject not just as a journalist but also as a consumer who, unsurprisingly enjoys buying clothes to wear and how fashion makes us feel. She has covered the fashion industry for 30 years so knows what she is writing about. And you can actually google any of the stories she writes about, any of the people and work they are doing to make fashion better. She is the first to admit we are never going to want to stop buying clothing, but that we have to start doing it in a different way.

Being American, the author has focussed primarily on the US  market, but does speak to a number of designers in the UK as well. The American model can be applied just as easily to how clothing is manufactured and sold here in NZ, not only because we have the likes of H and M, and Zara which both come in for strong criticism, but also because, like the US, almost all clothing sold in NZ is made in China, a smaller proportion in India, Bangladesh and Vietnam. These are all countries where sweat shops rule, the working conditions and pay appalling, which to our shame, we have all contributed to.

She goes to towns in the US where in the past manufacturing has been a major employer. The big factories have long gone offshore, but there is a revival taking place. Small producers  are making and dyeing fabrics in more sustainable ways, others  are making garments using these new fabrics - cottage industry I suppose you would call it, but also increasingly selling their products to larger manufacturers, some of it even going off shore back to the factories in China. She looks at the rise of 3D fabric making and printing, speaks to designers using these techniques. She spends quite a bit of time with Stella McCartney who is relentless in trying to minimise the impact on the environment - financing the growing of fabric in laboratories, sourcing her own silk thread due to silkworms almost being wiped out. There are many people and small businesses all over the world doing their bit to bring about a new future for clothes production.

Our own attitudes towards towards shopping and what we wear have to change too. Even reducing the number of times we wash our clothes is beneficial. Finding better ways to dispose of our clothes, buying to wear for more than just a few times, how we can change our clothes into something else, purchasing here in NZ from sustainable designers and outlets - easy to google and find out. These are easy things we can do and in our own small ways also contribute to a more sustainable fashion industry.