Fashionopolis : The Price of Fast Fashion - and the Future of Clothes.
Publisher: London : Head of Zeus, 2019Copyright date: ©2019Description: 1 online resource (194 pages)Content type: text Media type: computer Carrier type: online resource001: 43995ISBN: 9781789546057Genre/Form: Electronic books.Additional physical formats: Print version:: Fashionopolis : The Price of Fast Fashion – and the Future of ClothesOnline resources: Click to View Summary: An investigation into the damage wrought by the colossal clothing industry - and the grassroots, high-tech, international movement fighting to reform it.Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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eBooks | MAIN LIBRARY Electronic Books | ONLINE | E-BOOK (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 43995-1001 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
'A gripping blockbuster... Thomas researches meticulously and writes with simmering even-handed anger' TELEGRAPH .
Fashionopolis is the definitive book on the cost of fast fashion, and a blueprint for how we get to a more sustainable future.
Fashion has blighted our planet. Today, one out of six people on earth work in fashion, churning out 100 billion garments a year. Yet 98 percent of them do not earn a living wage, and 2.1 billion tonnes of clothing is thrown away annually. The clothing industry's exploitation of fellow humans and the environment has reached epic levels. What should we do?
Bestselling author and veteran journalist Dana Thomas has travelled the globe to find the answers. In Fashionopolis , she details the damage wrought by fashion's behemoths, and celebrates the visionaries - including activists, artisans, designers, and tech entrepreneurs - fighting for change.
We all have been casual about our clothes. It's time to get dressed with intention. Fashionopolis is the first comprehensive look at how to start.
Reviews:
'Fascinating... Powerful... Thomas has succeeded in calling attention to the major problems of the fashion industry' New York Times
'Thomas takes a story most of us think we know, but tells it better and in compelling, readable detail' The Times
'Engaging and thorough... Fashionopolis has implications beyond cloth and thread' Financial Times
'Thomas is a conscientious reporter - as evidenced in her research, which is studded with statistics' Times Literary Supplement
An investigation into the damage wrought by the colossal clothing industry - and the grassroots, high-tech, international movement fighting to reform it.
Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2020. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Journalist Thomas offers a wide-ranging exposé of the fashion industry. Her book title invokes themes from "Cottonopolis"--the sobriquet for Manchester, England, and birthplace of the 18th-century Industrial Revolution--to Metropolis, a 1927 dystopian film about low-wage factory work. This work describes a similarly massive, problematic modern industry, which allows capitalism to run amok and pushes rampant consumerism and endless consumption. It affects developed economies by outsourcing jobs, hits developing nations with sweatshop labor, and creates environmental degradation. Thomas offers readers hope for change by introducing visionary entrepreneurs who embody the future of fashion. At the individual level, for example, she visits Stella McCartney, who uses new simulated fibers grown in a lab in place of leather and animal products. On a larger scale, she spotlights new approaches to manufacturing blue jeans, from a farmer growing natural indigo to those planting organic cotton. The author also explores circularity as she considers how clothes are recycled and fibers reused, as well as checks out new companies that rent out clothes. From clothes made on 3-D printers to factories full of robots, Thomas shows us sustainable alternatives for the future. VERDICT Fascinating reading for anyone who wears clothing.--Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at MartinPublishers Weekly Review
In this informative volume, fashion journalist Thomas convincingly lays out multiple arguments against fast fashion (low-cost, mass-produced clothing) and the cycle of rapidly manufacturing, purchasing, and discarding clothes that is sweeping the globe. Thomas points out that American "shoppers snap up five times more clothing now than they did in 1980," that fast fashion also preys on consumers' insecurities, that synthetic dyes and fertilizers have harmful effects on the environment, that southern mill towns emptied when clothing manufacturers sent those jobs overseas, and that outsourcing grievously exploits laborers (as evinced by the devastating collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, where many U.S. companies subcontracted work, which killed more than 1,000 garment workers). In the latter part of the book, Thomas delves into efforts to mitigate these effects through "slow fashion," such as Levi's using domestically produced organic indigo for some of its denim, and small, socially conscious companies bringing their manufacturing operations back to the U.S. Thomas interviews individuals such as Alabama Chanin, who grew up in Florence, Ala., "the Cotton T-shirt Capital of the World," and, upon returning home, has reimagined how clothing can be produced locally in a manner that exploits neither its employees nor the environment. Thoroughly reported and persuasively written, Sexton's clarion call for more responsible practices in fashion will speak to both industry professionals and socially conscious consumers. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.Booklist Review
Fast fashion, the inexpensive, essentially disposable clothes found in so many of our wardrobes, has a high cost beyond the meager price tag: nightmarish human-rights abuses, environmental devastation, and the theft of intellectual property as retailers race to translate runway innovations for the masses. Thomas (Deluxe, 2007) efficiently covers these issues to great emotional effect, making the case for the innovations that are covered in the bulk of Fashionopolis. The wide-ranging solutions to the fashion industry's problems range from the hyperlocal, slow fashion movement that is helping to revitalize former mill towns in the South to retrofitted factories that use advanced technology to reduce environmental impact to the future of sewing robots and 3D printed clothes. Particularly interesting are the textile innovations the movement to convert tobacco farms to growing indigo to combat the toxicity of synthetic dyes, and advances in biofabrication, which uses science fiction-level technology to create animal-free leathers and silks. Her deep knowledge of the style side of the industry adds to the appeal of the book, which will find eager readers of both social issues and fashion.--Susan Maguire Copyright 2010 BooklistKirkus Book Review
An educated update on the current state of fashion, how it got there, and a prognostication on its precarious future.Paris-based fashion journalist Thomas (Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, 2014, etc.) offers informed, fair-minded, passionate, and cautiously optimistic scrutiny of "fast fashion," which entails "the production of trendy, inexpensive garments in vast amounts at lightning speed in subcontracted factories, to be touted in thousands of chain stores." The author focuses on the negative ramifications of this rampant consumerism, which gives little regard to garment quality or manufacturing origins. Among the "casualties" of this trend are underpaid, exploited, and often underage factory workers in developing countries; labor forces in developed economies; and the environment, as microfiber-shedding synthetic fabrics and fertilizers commingle to pollute water supplies. Thomas interweaves details on sartorial workmanship, designer profiles, and fashion history into her discourse, creating a distressing yet intriguing story of the textile industry and how the global explosion of "furious fashion" hijacked a uniquely creative economic market. She reveals how this grand-scale industry seized control over impulsive buyers and greedy profiteers, setting in motion a "hamster-wheel cycle" of overmanufactured garments, indifferent consumers, and billions of pounds of waste. In her travels to Bangladesh, five years after the deadly Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, she uncovered somewhat improved working conditions, but there still remained a sweatshop subculture rife with sexual and physical abuse. But Thomas isn't hopeless, and her engrossing report is leavened with uplifting accounts of brands using organic indigo for blue jeans and a force of designers, merchants, and manufacturers eager to revolutionize the garment industry's aggressive tide of overproduction through "slow fashion." In her conclusion, Thomas notes the evergreen conundrum (and "epic-sized mess") that exists regarding high fashion's rubric of seasonal production and the recyclers and eco-engineers aiming to recalibrate its production output and repurpose its leftovers.Convincing, responsible, and motivational fashion industry reportage. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.There are no comments on this title.