Fashion Revolution Day 2015: the ugly truth behind the barcode

I feel bad. I have been neglecting this blog as I have been consumed with other aspects of my life: work, travels, spending quality time with loved ones. That said, I have never once given up on my mission to educate people I meet on this issue though I've also had to learn to hold back and be less aggressive in my approach.

A recently released report by Baptist World Aid Australia called "The Truth Behind the Barcode: Australian Fashion Report 2015" has prompted me to provide my perspective on the assessment especially considering that many of these brands are aggressively building their presence in Asia. 313 Somerset in Orchard Road, for example, easily houses half of the brands featured in the study. Fashion Revolution Day 2015 held on the anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh is another huge motivating factor. This report examines 59 apparel companies (219 brands) operating in Australia and assesses the efforts undertaken by these companies to protect workers in their supply chain from labour exploitation such as the use of child labour as well as highlight good practices within the industry. The assessment covers the entire supply chain from the management of raw materials, inputs to Cut-Make-Trim (CMT) manufacturing and covers four broad categories: policies, traceability & transparency, monitoring & training, and worker rights.

Based on the report, 22 out of the 59 apparel companies achieved A grades for policies which while very re-assuring, does not amount to much if they do not rigorously enforce these policies. Also, while slightly over half (52%) of companies are able to trace their suppliers at the CMT phase, the prevalence of  unauthorised subcontractors in this phase of production make it so much harder for clothing companies in particular global fast fashion chains with high volume and rapid turnover to closely monitor and track their supply chains. This fact is reinforced by the various case studies featured in the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report titled "Work Faster or Get Out:Labor Rights Abuses in Cambodia's Garment Industry'. The HRW report also highlights the issue of "coaching" whereby factory managers coached or threatened garment workers ahead of inspections to ensure only positive feedback are given to the inspectors. In fact, the report state that workers were " told to remove piles of clothes from their sewing machines and hide them....and underage child workers were hidden". So unless unannounced inspections are the norm, it is difficult to ascertain the effectiveness of these inspections in curbing human rights violations and instilling good labour practices.

Further down the supply chain, it only gets harder as evident by the Fashion Report which shows that only 25% of the apparel companies can fully trace their inputs and only a paltry 9% are able to trace their raw materials. A 2014 study carried out by SOMO and the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) entitled "Flawed Fabrics: The abuse of girls and women workers in the South Indian textile industry" examines labour exploitation experienced by girls and young women employed in the Tamil Nadu spinning industry in South India through a mix of desk research and on-the-ground interviews with 151 textile workers. The study found rampant human rights abuses including the use of forced labour and child labour, restricted freedom of movement, long working hours and the lack of labour contracts. As noted by the study, apparel companies monitoring and tracking efforts are generally limited to the CMT phase and do not focus on earlier production phases such as spinning, weaving and dyeing. The report subsequently recommends that clothing companies extend their supply chain responsibilities beyond end-product suppliers as supported by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Apart from the lack of traceability further down the supply chain, the amateur behavioural economist in me is interested in understanding the relationship between the pricing of apparels and the labour ethics of the brands. In order to do so, I have created a table to represent different categories of apparel price-point against the grades provided by the Fashion Report. It is important to note here that all the clothing companies which received F grades did not engage in the research process meaning that they could well be doing a lot more than what is publicly available to the study researchers.

 Apparel companies  price-point categories assessed against their labour rights management grades

Based on the table above, there appears to be very little correlation between apparel price-points and apparel companies' labour rights management. I say that with a grain of salt given the lack of scientific approach or rigorous methodology in my assessment. In fact, I was surprised that fast-fashion companies like the Cotton On Group and H&M performed considerably better than companies that retail mid to upper-mid range apparels like David Jones, Myer and the Oroton Group. But then again, numerous studies out there including one carried out last year by the Clean Clothes Campaign have proven that designer labels do not guarantee ethical supply chain. Neither do purchasing products made in established designer markets such as Italy as this fire outbreak in an illegal factory in Prato has underscored.

So where does that leave us fashion-loving consumers? I guess at the end of the day, it's important that we all strive to make conscientious choices when we go for retail therapy. The first step to this would be to make an effort to learn about the story behind the barcode. So...who made your clothes?

Fashion Bloggers, Blogshops & Fast Fashion: The Rise of the Asian, Middle-Class Consumers

Handprint, a short film aimed at raising awareness of the challenges of 

garment workers and jewellery producers around the world. 

Several months ago, I attended a workshop called 'I Want A Fashion Blog' hosted by a famous local fashion blogger and her photographer friend. I have no intention of being a fashion blogger in the conventional sense. I wanted to be a fair trade advocate that writes about fashion.Why fashion? Because just about everyone I know associate fair trade with commodities such as coffee, sugar and tea. Not surprising since these fair trade products are easily available in the supermarkets though not as diverse as what one might get in a Western nation. The proliferation of trendy cafes that embrace the Third Wave Coffee Movement with its emphasis on direct trade with socially responsible farms also means that consumers here have greater access to ethically-sourced produce.

I am also motivated by the fact that most resources I found from books such as 'Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion' to online articles and lifestyle blogs articulate the issues surrounding fast fashion from a Western consumer perspective. They talk about how physical and cultural distances eliminate any empathy towards the exploited garment workers and ensures disregard towards the environmental impact of fast-fashion. Often, they also try to advocate for locally made fashion. But the problem here is I live in Singapore so these arguments don't necessarily apply. How I see it, these things are happening in my backyard and yet most are still oblivious to the situation.

More alarmingly, the rise of middle-class consumers across Asia and particularly China means that the level of consumption is set to rise dramatically in this part of the world. According to the UNDP's 2013 Human Development Report, two-third of the global middle-class will be found in Asia by 2030. Coupled with lower awareness of sustainability issues as compared to Western consumers, this is a potential recipe for social and environmental disasters.

Consumer expenditure growth (% change) clothing and footwear
Region	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
Asia and Australasia	3.4	8.7	10.4	10.5	10.4
Western Europe	0.8	0.6	1.5	1.5	2.9
North America	2.3	3.2	2.9	3.0	3.3
Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit

Already, a wide variety of sources including this article from The Wall Street Journal have indicated a strong correlation between a rise in the Asian middle-class with the rapid expansion of fast-fashion retailers. An article from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) details aggressive expansion plans across Asia by fast-fashion retailers such as Asos, H&M, Wal-Mart, Uniqlo, Gap and TopShop. The EIU article also provides a projection of consumer expenditure growth in the apparel sector across the world. The table above clearly shows that Asia Pacific is leading the pack with double digit growth forecast between 2015 and 2017.

To make matters worse, retail landlords in China are even aggressively luring fast fashion retailers to set up shops in their malls through lucrative deals such as waiving base rent in return for a percentage of the store's turnover. The success of international fast fashion brands have also encouraged Asian retailers such as the Metersbonwe Group to speed up their production process and inventory turnover thus contributing to existing problems that includes the pollution of Yangtze and Pearl Rivers.

Aside from fast-fashion retailers, high technology adoption across the region has also led to the growth of widely-read fashion blogs and blogshops that further fuel the demand for short-lived fashion fads. For the uninformed, a blogshop is an online retail business that leverages on blogging platforms such as Blogger, LiveJournal and WordPress to sell highly affordable products. It is an extremely popular retail platform in Singapore that allows thousands to make side incomes. According to Blogshopsingapore.sg, there were over 50,000 blogshops in 2011, the estimated average income of a blogshop is around S$1440 and the estimated retail price of a blogshop product is S$20. The website also wax lyrical about the advantages of blogshop shopping.

As with fast fashion retailers, blogshops rely heavily on high stock turnover and low cost garments for their business model. Blogshop owners usually source cheap clothing from the region or City Plaza, a fashion wholesale mall although increasingly many owners have taken on the role of designer to give themselves an edge in the competitive blogshop-sphere. Given their unsustainable retail model, I wanted to research on the social and environmental impacts of blogshops. There were none. Instead, what I found were glowing articles praising the entrepreneurial spirits of these blogshop owners such as the blogshop couple that own MGP (My Glamour Place) that reportedly makes S$30,000 a month in 2011 selling dresses that retail for about S$30.

Returning back to the workshop, I was curious if anyone would raise the issue of ethical fashion or whether I had the guts to raise my hand and disrupt the workshop by asking the blogger if she ever thought of the hidden costs of fast fashion but I thought better of it. As much as I'd like to, I could tell they had put in a lot of effort to organise the workshop and it would be terrible of me to ruin it. That said, I hope that - even if the possibility is remote - some of the girls I met at the workshop might come across my blog and re-think their fashion stance and embrace the ethical fashion ethos.