Over the centuries Americans’ views on clothing, fashion, and labor have changed greatly. From clothing being valued as less, to new trends everyday, even to unfair labor laws, the developments have been drastic.
Since clothing has been able to made with cheap labor trendy items on the store shelves can be purchased at an extremely low cost, making clothing somewhat replaceable. “Clothing has gone from a long-term investment to a disposable good” stated by Elizabeth Cline, an author of Overdressed : The shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. According to the article Your Clothes by The Numbers, 20 billion garments are bought by Americans per year. In the late 1920’s the average middle class woman had 9 outfits that were rotated until unuseable, now about 10 pounds of clothing is thrown away by each …show more content…
Sadly in each of these incidents innocent factory workers lives were lost because of poor labor laws. In the Bangladesh incident there were 1,100 deaths and 2,500+ injuries, as stated in the article The High Price of Cheap Fashion. The workers in the Bangladesh factories are unsafe, they work long hours and only get paid about $2 a day. The effect of the workers being paid so little is that clothing is cheaper to make in foreign countries. In 1990 50% of clothes sold in the U.S. were made in the U.S., currently only 2% of clothing is made here. With more and more people realizing the effects of having clothes made in foreign countries many are turning to clothing made in the U.S.
In conclusion the development of the clothing industry has had many benefits and consequences. While it is convenient to Americans to have inexpensive trendy clothing, the workers making the items are suffering. The more people are educated the safer working places in areas like Bangladesh will
Since clothing has been able to made with cheap labor trendy items on the store shelves can be purchased at an extremely low cost, making clothing somewhat replaceable. “Clothing has gone from a long-term investment to a disposable good” stated by Elizabeth Cline, an author of Overdressed : The shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. According to the article Your Clothes by The Numbers, 20 billion garments are bought by Americans per year. In the late 1920’s the average middle class woman had 9 outfits that were rotated until unuseable, now about 10 pounds of clothing is thrown away by each …show more content…
Sadly in each of these incidents innocent factory workers lives were lost because of poor labor laws. In the Bangladesh incident there were 1,100 deaths and 2,500+ injuries, as stated in the article The High Price of Cheap Fashion. The workers in the Bangladesh factories are unsafe, they work long hours and only get paid about $2 a day. The effect of the workers being paid so little is that clothing is cheaper to make in foreign countries. In 1990 50% of clothes sold in the U.S. were made in the U.S., currently only 2% of clothing is made here. With more and more people realizing the effects of having clothes made in foreign countries many are turning to clothing made in the U.S.
In conclusion the development of the clothing industry has had many benefits and consequences. While it is convenient to Americans to have inexpensive trendy clothing, the workers making the items are suffering. The more people are educated the safer working places in areas like Bangladesh will