Some of us are wearing clothes made by people, probably young women (the sort with tiny fingers and good eyesight who can embroider and satisfy our current mania for sequins) who perished in the collapse of a building housing four garment factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The clothes were undoubtedly destined for shops in the West.
It’s hard to know which shops, as garment workers are routinely searched as they leave factories after their 12 or 14-hour shifts – to ensure they are not smuggling out tiny labels to show members of the West’s press.
Liz Jones writes that many of us in the west will have worn garments made in the factory that collapsed in Bangladesh
This is a tragedy for the families of the almost 300 people who lost their lives. But it is also a tragedy for us.
For someone who has written about fashion for 30 years and seen a change that means almost all of our clothes are now made abroad – Jaeger makes nothing here and Reiss stopped making anything here a decade ago – this presents a moral dilemma.
Of course, it would be great if we manufactured more in the UK. This is something Marks & Spencer is about to embrace with its Best of British collection – everything from tweed jackets to shoes and knitwear – in its stores soon. But the people of Dhaka need work. We might prefer to still see them subsistence farming in their rural villages, but this is not what they want for themselves.
More... Simon Watkins: Foreign sweatshops and low-cost clothing are hurting our economy Simon Watkins: Foreign sweatshops and low-cost clothing are hurting our economyIn 2010, I went to Dhaka to do an investigation into sweat shops and managed to persuade a few garment-workers to smuggle out labels – the names of which we duly exposed.
More importantly, I met Dolly, living in a room made of twigs, balanced above an open sewer in a slum called Kuni Para, home to 18,000 people.
She was 14, working 12-hour shifts, seven nights a week, as an embroiderer in a garment factory. I remarked on the beauty of her golden highlights, then felt stupid when told they are a sign of malnutrition. A hundred people shared two cooking rings, but where you might have expected chaos there was order – with those about to go to work given priority over those on a break.
Workers are paid little and work long hours so that shoppers in the west can have access to cheap fashionDolly had to sleep during the day, which was nigh on impossible given the heat and the fact that children would wander into her room, wanting a cuddle.
I was so shocked by the conditions, I decided to rescue her, much as though she were a puppy.
Through a Fairtrade fashion brand, which also runs a charity, I was able to relocate Dolly, her sister, Jolly, and her parents back to their village.
Dolly and Jolly were enlisted in school, which I’m paying for until they reach 18. I’m pretty sure the family is better off, and happier, but the transition hasn’t been straightforward.
Reiss created the dress that Kate Middleton wore for her official engagement portrait (pictured) but now never makes clothes in the UKDolly was initially bullied in her new school for being behind in her education, and for being different. She was so distraught, she ran away from home. She has had health problems, too – some, such as delayed puberty, a result of having been malnourished. She is small, and probably always will be.
We have come to expect cheap fashion, and so we can never go back. We might frown on Primark, which used suppliers in the building that collapsed. But having stood outside the new branch in Chelmsford, Essex, one Saturday afternoon – and seen all the confident teens and pre-teens in their fake Uggs, skinny jeans and £5 T-shirts – I couldn’t help but wish I’d been able to shop there when I was their age.
How much more beautiful I would have looked, how much happier I’d have felt.
Shopping with that ‘Made in Italy’ assurance won’t work, either. David Reiss, owner of the aforementioned store that no longer makes a stitch here – yet still manages to dress the Duchess of Cambridge – told me: ‘I know of an accessories factory in Korea that makes bags and shoes for some very big Italian fashion houses.
‘I know the factories in China where they make clothes for them. The brands have a way of getting around it: a dress or a bag made in Korea or China goes to Italy to be pressed or polished or finished. They then charge six, ten times what we charge.’
So, cheap is bad. Expensive is bad. Bar going naked, what’s the answer? I think it’s a compromise: we have to pay a little bit more and keep the Dhaka factories humming.
When I met her, Dolly earned about 50p a day, most of which went on rent. We need to increase the minimum wage in Bangladesh to a living wage.
A £20 pair of jeans would then have to increase by 80p. That is all. That is nothing. But to girls like Dolly, it is everything.
