Sustainability author, co-founder of fashion brand Zady and former lawyer Maxine Bédat discusses her book Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment with the CFDA. Bédat delves into the extensive research she conducted pertaining to labor and environmental practices within the fashion industry, connecting the dots of circularity through a single pair of jeans.

How has your experience contributed to the crucial work necessary to make the fashion industry more sustainable and ethical globally?

My background in law and in the weeds running a company and personally steeped in supply chains has helped me see the industry both from a global systems perspective and from a very practical – [as in] how am I going to get this sweater made and sold – perspective. It’s an odd background perhaps, but one that has helped me “see” the industry. I appreciate the power of clothes. I appreciate that the clothing business is not an easy one, especially trying to navigate “sustainability” and I also appreciate the dire situation the industry is implicated in with regard to labor conditions and the climate crisis.

What inspired you to use storytelling through the lifecycle of a pair of jeans as your medium of choice? How have you seen it impact pre-existing problems?

I knew that I wanted to tell the story of a single garment, because it’s the most human way into the impacts of the industry. “Sustainability” tends to get steeped in statistics, unfamiliar terminology, and there just seem to be so many issues to contend with that it seems overwhelming. But I found that by knowing the full story of just a single garment, I was equipped to really see where the impact was and from there how to address it. It actually becomes very straightforward.

By connecting the dots in the story of a single garment, you also tell the story of the world and how it got this way – from capitalism, colonialism, the institution of slavery, the climate crisis, income inequality, structural racism, global development, globalization, profit maximization, why we are so divided … the story of our jeans tells us about all of this. And, I think most importantly, this story of a pair of jeans is the story of very real people: from cotton farmers, garment workers, the communities around textile mills, fashion designers and marketers, resellers, waste handlers, and, ultimately, us, the people who purchase fashion. The data is just used to back up the human stories.

How have you seen the way clothing is produced and consumed change over time?

In my lifetime, I have seen clothing go from a significant expense to something that costs less than a cup of coffee. While I used to compare myself to my classmates, students today, because of social media and social media marketing, compare themselves to everyone. Behind this is a global trading system that has been created which is essentially lawless, which has kicked off a race to the bottom in terms of environmental and social standards. So we get cheap clothes that tap into our most base instincts, helping us advance our status in an economy that has become increasingly divergent, which is part of what plays into the desire for status to begin with.

This is of course not the whole industry. Fast fashion has largely been an invention of European brands and the newest players like SheIn are based in Asia. But this is the trend.

In the past couple of years, companies have woken up, perhaps not to the full extent of the problems, but to the changing interests of some of their customers. So “sustainability” collections have been launched and more work has been done, but there is still an enormous amount of green-wishing happening. Companies that hope that what they are doing is moving the needle when much of it is not. That doesn’t mean significant change isn’t possible; it absolutely is and we’re all learning as we do this, and there are very well intentioned people working very hard within fashion to make change, but that is a snapshot of where things are right now.

You traveled to Bangladesh to gain more insight into the labor conditions of garment workers, who have been historically abused in harsh working conditions. What was the biggest takeaway? What can the industry do to better serve every person fairly that works within it?

The fashion industry – like the rest of the economy – is organized to maximize profit. This is not an inevitability of capitalism, it is only our current iteration of it – call it extreme capitalism. As a result, labor, which traditionally has been the biggest expense in clothing creation because it’s humans sitting behind a sewing machine making our clothes, has been squeezed in a global trading environment where a company can seek out the lowest labor costs anywhere. Bangladesh is part of this race to the bottom. Workers there live as a family in a single tin room where there does not seem to be much ability to move up. Meanwhile, the mechanised work that they perform day in and day out is mind numbing and dehumanizing. This system could change. Fashion brands could partner with one another working with their shared suppliers to pay a living wage. It’s really that straightforward. But it may be hard to do this if, say, you are a chief financial officer of a fashion company and you are hired to maximize the company’s profits. Then you likely won’t approve such a project because it would increase costs, and decrease profit margins and make the company less competitive. This is why we ultimately need legislation to level the playing field and just create a floor of standards that all companies have to follow.

As we continue to see the rise of an  economy of online sales, what kind of changes would you like to see from major brands and consumers, and how can we keep them as well as ourselves accountable?

In the absence of changes from brands or companies like Amazon, which is playing an increasingly large role both in fashion and in our economy, we need to see policy makers step up. This is the work that we are looking to advance at New Standard Institute and we need support. Support from brands who see the broader structures at play and want to have a level playing field, and certainly from individuals who want to make a difference. Policy makers will only care about this issue, if they see their constituents asking for it.

To learn more about Unraveled, explore Maxine Bédat’s social media accounts @maxinebedat and https://linktr.ee/maxinebedat.