Elizabeth Cline Overdressed Summary

Elizabeth L. Cline’s book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion unravels the global garment industry, consumerism, and America’s reckless love for cheap and fast fashion. This book is relative to most humans on this earth since most of us wear clothes, and all have to acquire them somewhere. Elizabeth Cline begins with the confession that she too, had once been a naughty and thoughtless consumer. During the summer of 2009, Cline found herself at a Kmart and purchased seven pairs of identical looking canvas flats for $7. After very few uses, the shoes deteriorated and fell apart and were no longer in style. This prompted the New Yorker to do some serious inventory of her closet. She revealed that she owned 354 items of clothing. This clothing made up most of her possessions, yet she did not know where the items had come from, what the brands were, or even what material the garments were made out of. Throughout this inquiry, Cline realized that something was very wrong with our consumerism approach. Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap …show more content…
As a society, we are obsessed with “deals and steals”. Cline states that “Americans spend more money on eating out in restaurants every year than they do on clothes. It’s not that we can’t pay more money for fashion; we just don’t see any reason to.” I learned as well that this fast fashion business is directly harming thrift and charity shops. Less than 20 percent of donated clothing is sold by these charities. Most of the disposed of clothing goes to textile recyclers, which is then sold in foreign countries like in sub-Saharan Africa. Everyone enjoys fashion and the status that it brings, but these countries are only receiving the “rejected” clothing