Having enjoyed London Fashion Week, Molly Thomas looked again at The Fashion Conspiracy, by Nicholas Coleridge
Let me get this straight, I like labels. Designer ones. I like fashion and I’d like to be someone who wears clothes with designer labels on them. Therefore, my critique of The Fashion Conspiracy is not entirely impartial. However, the book is based on an interesting point. They may be lovely clothes with lovely labels on them but where do they come from?
The author attempts to trace the journey of the clothes from idea to product to possession. It shows how something that starts off as a whim of a major designer is manufactured (possibly with blood, sweat and tears in a sweatshop) and ends up on you. Or whatever celebrity is the “clothes-horse” of the moment.
It shows how the product price is inflated beyond belief and how billions of dollars are spent on advertising without showing where the product came from. For example, the book kicks off with a story about a sweatshop where the writer sees a girl feeding some fabric through a sewing machine. Later, the writer sees a billboard with a model wearing a jumpsuit which is of the same fabric. This sets in motion a thought trial of following the life cycle of clothes.
The book paints a sad picture. The stark difference between those at the top and those at the bottom. Those carrying the bag and those making it. Those with money to burn and those who’d endure burns to get money. Those with and those without. One story that sticks out from the book is that of a laundromat in the UAE where clothes are worn once, sent there and never picked up. The value of the clothes there could make a huge difference to many lives of people at the bottom; but will it ever?
The book contrasts high-flying stories of beautiful, exclusive and world-reknowned people with anecdotes of poor, industrious people just trying to make a living.
This book was written in the late 1980s but it is intriguing to see how many of the main players in the fashion world are alive and prominent today and how many are not. The label Ungaro, described as one of the top five, has faded into obscurity and many other lesser labels have emerged. The book mentions a market monopoly that the top designers have and how impossible it is to break through. It describes young designers who toil away at a major label and then try to start their own label but don't have the necessary resources to launch it.
One of the themes of this book is the invisible people. The people who piece together your bag/dress/shoes. The people who may get paid very low wages. The people who may have to work under bad conditions. The people who will get either nothing or a very small part of the profits of your bag/dress/shoes.
