SHIRT

When I first read the fashion archive #1 which should be associated with the topic “labor”, I came up with my multiple items at my closet. I could not choose just one item, because most of my clothes are made in China. The reason why I choose my clothes is that nowadays almost every clothes are made in China or nations in South-East Asia, such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia, and they are made by people who live in poor working environment and get low wage. However, people who can afford to buy clothes what they like and want, comparing to people who work in factories, are able to purchase them without knowing a sad story behind the production process of clothes. There are so many examples of incidents that fashion brands are associated with labor. For example, there was a huge incident in Bangladesh, which is the Bangladesh garment factory collapse in 2013. Based on the report, it says that there are more than 1,100 people who are killed and injured because of the collapse. According to the police report, it called the death a “mass killing.” They were working in really poor condition with wrong emergency exit route, improper machines, overtime work hours, low wages, and much more.

After the incident, a number of people in the world were focusing on the incident and luckily, consumers started to realize the importance of worker’s rights. At the same time, well-known fashion brands that have factories in South-East Asia started to inspect their working condition and environment, such as Gap and H&M. For instance, Gap announced that the retailer would voluntarily raise its corporate-wide minimum wage to $9 in 2014 and to $10 in 2015. Also, Gap mentioned that such a “strategic investment” would better the lives of Gap workers while delivering the company “a return many times over” through higher productivity and morale. Therefore, nowadays, there are definitely no doubts that the importance of labor interconnected with the fashion world are growing.