00:00Hi, I'm Kate Monroe. I'm a senior editor at Refinery29, and I have a few questions about
00:04fashion and capitalism. For as long as I've been alive, I've been obsessed with clothes.
00:09Dressing up and collecting pieces and putting together outfits is a huge part of how I express
00:12myself and how I feel good every day. I'm totally one of those people where if I don't like my
00:16outfit, it can ruin my whole day. But over the past couple years especially, I've been thinking a lot
00:21about the things I see around me that are wrong. And when I think about these problems and get
00:24down to the root cause of them, it always comes down to capitalism. And fashion is a huge part
00:29of that. Capitalism is why we're the richest country in the world, and it's why the top 1%
00:34owns almost 43% of the wealth. It's why 44 million people don't even have health insurance. It's why
00:40CEOs make an estimated 278 times what their employees do. It's why, if we're going to apply it to fashion,
00:46a designer handbag can cost up to 20 times more to buy than it does to make. All of that
00:51is just
00:52insane to me, and I think a lot of other people are waking up and realizing that it's insane to
00:56them
00:56too. And yet, in the middle of a global pandemic and all of this other stuff going on, I'm still
01:01like out here trawling the internet for cute work from home clothes. I'm totally part of the problem.
01:07So I wanted to find out, could the fashion industry even exist in an economy that doesn't
01:11prioritize the bottom line at the expense of everything else? And what can we as fashion lovers
01:15do to shop in a way that's more in line with our politics and hold the industry to a higher
01:19standard?
01:19Tonsi Hoskins is the author of the book on this topic, Stitch Up, the anti-capitalist book of fashion. So
01:25I thought that
01:25she might have some answers. Hi Tonsi. How's it going? So anti-capitalist sentiment is growing,
01:31especially in memes and tweets and on the internet about like how to reconcile a belief that capitalism
01:36is wrong and a desire for a different way of doing things with a genuine love of fashion and aesthetics
01:41and a desire to own and wear beautiful things. So I wonder if you have thoughts on whether or not
01:47it's possible to do both, and if so, how? For me, capitalism is what is ugly about the fashion industry.
01:56Capitalism warps fashion and design and makes it not about the best of human creativity,
02:04but it turns it into just providing for the market. For me, there is no contradiction in really, really
02:11disliking capitalism, but also wanting to participate in creativity and joy and beauty when it comes to what we wear
02:20every day.
02:21So what might the fashion industry look like in an anti-capitalist marketplace? Or is that just
02:26sort of an oxymoron? Like how can the fashion industry be less capitalist?
02:32This is really, for me, this is about democracy. And it's about stopping fashion being owned by a tiny
02:39group of basically white Global North shareholders and opening it up. And so that would be the first thing
02:47that an anti-capitalist form of doing fashion would change. It would transfer power. Who owns
02:53the factories? Who decides how the factories run? Who decides what's made in the factories?
02:58It would take it away from a tiny group of factory owners and giant corporations and transfer it into the
03:04hands of the workers. It's impossible to talk about capitalism without talking about Karl Marx,
03:10who predicted that it would cause a lot of the problems we're dealing with today, like globalization,
03:14wealth inequality, monopolies, and recessions. When people say late-stage capitalism, they're referring
03:19to the period of time when the system starts to break down, which is right now. A big part of
03:24reforming
03:25capitalism is ensuring that workers are treated fairly. That means a living wage, access to health
03:30care, sick days, and paid time off, maternity and paternity leave, and safety on job sites.
03:36It seems pretty basic, but a lot of garment workers, especially those who make clothes for fast fashion brands,
03:41don't have access to this stuff. One thing that Marx argued was that the means of production should be
03:45in the hands of the workers. So that would mean the people making the clothes would own the factory,
03:50and the people working in a brand's HQ would own part of the brand. When activists and progressive
03:54politicians talk about reforming the capitalist system, they talk about strengthening the social
03:58safety net, empowering workers, closing the wealth gap, and ensuring equity for all. But how can we
04:04apply all of that to fashion? For one thing, we can vote with our dollar and only support brands who
04:08have
04:09ethical labor and manufacturing processes, or who uphold our ideals in other ways, like offering
04:13a full range of sizing. I've loved fashion all my life. I love to shop. I do spend money on
04:19clothes,
04:19and sometimes I wonder if that instinct is at odds with my beliefs about capitalism and my beliefs about
04:26the flaws of the industry. What I would say to someone like you, or indeed to someone like myself,
04:32is that not to get caught in a cycle of guilt about this kind of thing. Because I mean, really,
04:39you are up against an absolute machine, like a machine that is spending billions and billions
04:46of billions of dollars every single year to make you go and shop. Take it from Janu Roberts,
04:53a low-waste and sustainability blogger who knows all there is to know about shopping consciously.
04:57Fashion is an industry of excess. We're always trying to keep up with the new trends, and brands
05:02are coming up with new products left and right. And this leads to a ton of textile waste that just
05:07sits in landfills. And so one of the things that you can do is shop secondhand, and you can also
05:12upcycle the clothes that you already have. I'm uplifted by the knowledge that the world is changing,
05:16for good. And the fashion industry, if it wants to stay relevant, has to change too. I think for me,
05:22it also means reassessing how I think about style. For example, I've always wanted a Chanel flat bag,
05:27and now I'm like, why? Why do I even want that? Is it just because I can't afford it? Is
05:31it just
05:32because it's this carrot being dangled in front of me by this industry that needs me to keep wanting
05:36that in order to keep getting paid? And can I just decide to opt out of that narrative entirely,
05:41and do my own thing, and define my own path when it comes to style? As long as we're living
05:45under
05:45capitalism, especially as women, there's always going to be a push-pull between wanting stuff,
05:50which is what we're constantly being conditioned to do, because that's how this system functions.
05:54And recognizing that buying shit doesn't bring us happiness, no matter how many times we're told
05:58it will. The whole system's got to change, and that's a lot to process, especially at a time when
06:03there are so many other things going on. But the fact is, a lot of these issues are interconnected,
06:08so it's time to get to work.
06:14So
06:18you
06:24you
06:25You
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