Eco Chic & War on Want

I have chosen 'Eco Chic', which was probably the best resource for me in writing my Wiki essay and 'Fashion Victims' by War on Want, which is fantastic for statistics and research in factories overseas to analyse for my dissertation research so far.


Eco Chic – Matilda Lee analysis
The main purpose of the book ‘Eco Chic’ by Matilda Lee is to inform consumers about the real price of their clothing by researching labour standards for popular brands, looking into our current ‘consumer culture’, damage to the environment from this culture and from the process of making clothing.
The key question addressed for my topic is how ethical our fashion is:
“How could there ever be a place for ethics in an industry dominated by aesthetics” – Matilda Lee
The most helpful information provided in this book for me is the specific examples of poor labour standards in clothing factories. Lee talks about how factories have moved their production abroad to increase profit and gives many examples of companies which have done this and the effect this has had on many workers lives. This is all taken from research done in other countries which provide our clothing and this helps to support the idea that our fashion and consumer culture is only possible at the cost of poor living standards for workers overseas.
The author has looked at Multi Stakeholder Initiatives (MSI) as part of her research to see what these organisations are doing when working with companies to improve the situation. This information shows what companies are trying to do to improve their labour sources. She has also looked at many books and articles to support her arguments; each piece of information is backed up well with research.
The main conclusions that the book comes to are that we all need to try to change the consumer culture that we currently have. We should practice ‘smart shopping’ by looking for fair-trade, refashioned or second hand clothes. Ultimately we need to stop buying so much and instead looking for quality clothing that will last and is ethically sourced.
The key concepts we need to understand in this book are about eco fashion, ethical fashion and ethical labour. The author thoroughly explores different areas of ethical fashion and also gives the reader ideas for becoming more eco friendly and thoughtful about where their clothing is sourced.
If we took everything in the book seriously and everyone acted on it we would start to get a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. This would mean changing the way that we shop, what we buy and how often we throw away clothes. It would therefore be far better for the government to take action, to set in place labour standard laws or make corporations commit to a MSI to improve working conditions and to improve the quality of our clothing in order to make it last longer and do less damage to our environment..
If, however, nothing is done about the problem, workers overseas will continue to suffer from low wages and bad working conditions and there will be serious implications for the environment. The authors main point of view is that we cannot continue with our consumerism and must work together to become more ethical and eco-friendly.


War on Want - Khorshed Alam – Fashion Victims (2006) analysis
The main purpose of the article is to inform fashion consumers about the implications of their budget clothing bought from the big clothing companies Asda, Tesco and Primark, to give information about Multi Stakeholder Initiatives (MSI) and how effective they are in maintaining good living standards for overseas workers by giving a set of fair labour principles, to try to send a message to these three companies and also to the UK government to try and improve the current situation.
These corporations have agreed to stick to a set of principles which should provide good working conditions and a living wage for garment workers. War on Want asks why, then, they are not being held accountable for the terrible working conditions and shockingly low pay rates, which still exist in their factories in other countries.
In the article there is a huge amount of research and evidence about poor labour standards overseas. This information is extremely useful in seeing what the current situation is like in other countries, especially as it is quite a recent research article.
War on Want work closely with the National Garment Workers Federation as well as many other ethical labour organisations. This article is based on primary research carried out by War on Want in six factories in Bangladesh where interviews were set up with sixty workers to find out about their working hours, breaks, pay rates and general treatment from management.
This article is meant to evoke change. The conclusions in the article are that the labour standards are shockingly bad and change is needed to improve the lives of these workers. It gives us examples of what action is required at the end; Consumers need to start shopping for ethical clothing and avoid the places mentioned as much as possible, and the government needs to lay down strict regulations concerning working conditions.
The key concept is about why the government is not doing anything about bad labour standards. War on Want is campaigning all the time to get labour laws changed and for these companies to stick to their promises of fair pay and labour.
If this article was taken seriously by governments War on Want might get what they have been campaigning for; companies would have to change their sourcing policies, workers would be paid properly and working conditions would improve for overseas garment workers.
The main points of view are that our clothes are far too cheap at the cost of poor living standards for workers overseas, that big companies get away with this unfair treatment but still claim to be sticking to a set of principles about fair labour, that our government is not setting strict regulations about treatment of workers and that our consumer culture cannot be sustained. War on Want is campaigning to change all of these things and has been for years. Following this report another was carried out in 2009 which found that nothing had changed in three years.