Sweatshops are back and as bad as they were a century ago. At the base are seamsters paid less than minimum wage, and at the apex are contractors, manufacturers, retailers, financiers, and landlords. Appelbaum and Bonacich have written the definitive book on the structure of the apparel industry. Unfortunately, the collection also includes turgid cultural studies essays about fashion. Taken as a whole, No Sweat speaks well for the new labor movement, but the implication for cultural studies is grim.
Fashion is an industry totally dependent on the global economy.
In fact, today's all-American youthful lifestyle is created by those who sew and make the clothes and sneakersnot just by the designers or marketers who advertise them. A young, mostly female workforce in Asia and Latin America sews Guess Jeans, Nike sneakers, and other trademark clothes sold in fashion magazines and malls all across America. Processes of production and consumption are frequentlyand falselyrepresented as worlds apart. Sewing machines, for instance, besides being tools for the mass production of clothing, have been marketed to women as domestic consumer goods. He focuses on the meanings of fashion, but he, too, helps to blur the distinctions between producing and purchasing.