Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

A swarm of trade liberalization polices in the 1990s, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, effectively wiped out most import restrictions and duties on foreign-made clothing, all in the name of global prosperity. 

It was supposed to be a good thing, but it is also a validation of the statement that you can’t have it all. The embrace of free trade has meant trade-offs.

Most significantly, it has almost demolished the U.S. apparel manufacturing industry, driving garment production to Asia and Latin America. Then it stimulated an explosion of environmentally destructive fast fashion. And behind most pieces of fast fashion is a story — too often a grim story about low pay, long hours and exploitation.

In the early 1800s, most garments worn by Americans were homemade. After the Civil War, U.S. factories that had produced uniforms transitioned to producing men’s suits, then to making cloaks and jackets for women. By the end of the 1860s, Americans bought most of their clothing rather than making it themselves.

Department stores rose up in the 1880s. By 1915, ready-to-wear departments had become regular features, supplemented by the arrival of mail-order catalogs from companies such as Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck & Company.

Still, even by 1960, about 95% of clothes sold in the United States were made domestically. By 1980 it was about 70%. But by 2000, the amount of clothing sold in the United States that was made domestically had plummeted to 29%.  And in 2022, only about 2% percent of the apparel sold in the United States was made domestically.

Even companies that proudly proclaim their American heritage have largely abandoned their roots.

“For more than 150 years, Pendleton has set the standard for American style,” Pendleton Woolen Mills proudly proclaims. But is the iconic family-owned and operated Portland, OR-based company, rooted in late 19^th century Salem, OR, still an American institution?

The honest answer – Barely. Pendleton has shifted its production, without much fanfare, almost entirely out of America.

Similarly, Made in Oregon points proudly to how has built a reputation as a purveyor of high-quality, local products. But, in fact, its ubiquitous stores have opened their shelves to products , including clothing, that are manufactured offshore if they are “designed” in Oregon, an exception you can drive a truck through. 

Not only is most American clothing now imported, but we have vastly increased the amount of clothing we buy. 

In 1960, the average American bought fewer than 25 garments each year. Now Americans buy an average of 68 items of clothing a year. Some of that is because of our culture of consumerism, driven by pervasive advertising and the availability of easy credit and the availability of a wide range of clothing products. But it’s also driven by the emergence of fast fashion, where fast-changing trends have replaced the previous focus on quality and durability. 

And that has meant an estimated 11.3 million tons of textile waste in the United States end up in landfills on a yearly basis. That’s equivalent to approximately 81.5 pounds per person per year, according to Earth.org, an environmental news site. 

Good On You, an organization that rates clothing and accessory brands, defines fast fashion as “…cheap, trendy clothing that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments at breakneck speed to meet consumer demand…so shoppers can snap them up while they are still at the height of their popularity and then, sadly, discard them after a few wears.” In essence, fast fashion plays into the idea that outfit repeating is a fashion faux pas.

And this is a message fashion writers perpetuate. A Feb. 19, 2024 New York Times article, for example, tried to advise on what’s in and out:

“For women, it’s time to retire the ankle boots known as mojo booties,” the article advised. “People really wear them to anything — jail, a funeral,..Just no, girl. This is not an all-weather moment. No-show or ankle socks were once ubiquitous. Now, showing ankles is “pretty polarizing. Try layering socks over leggings, or a crew sock or quarter-length sock that shows a little bit over flats or sneakers…Infinity scarves are out, but blanket scarves, skinny scarves and mid-width waffle-knit or cashmere scarves in neutral colors are good options…”

It’s all reminiscent of Joan Didion’s trenchant observation years ago, in a 1979 New York Review of Books essay on Woody Allen, to be exact, about “…a new class in America, a subworld of people rigid with apprehension that they will die wearing the wrong sneaker, naming the wrong symphony, preferring ‘Madame Bovary.’ ”

This is at the heart of the rapidly expanding offshore clothing companies that free trade has enabled. It has allowed offshore employment to expand, improving living standards in many other countries, but not without cost.

In order to mass produce millions of inexpensive garments in a hurry,  factories are often sweatshops where laborers, too frequently children,  work for low wages and long hours in dangerous conditions. 

The shift in garment production offshore has also cost American jobs and raised sustainability concerns.

Americans employed in manufacturing apparel – 1960: 1,233,000

Americans employed in manufacturing apparel – 2022: 93,000

In 1960, 1,233,000 Americans were employed in the manufacturing of apparel, 5.5% of the total manufacturing workforce, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. By 2022, only about 93,000 employees were part of the apparel manufacturing industry in the United States.

Meanwhile, apparel from stores such as Forever 21, Zara, and H&M are mass-produced by legions of workers laboring for long hours in third world countries in sweatshop-like conditions.

Then there’s Temu, an online marketplace operated by the Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings. Temu, which racked up  roughly $9 billion in U.S. gross merchandise value and  spent $1.7 billion on marketing in 2023,  has emerged as a major player in the fast fashion universe in the United States. “Temu is disrupting U.S. e-commerce with tried- and-true tactics used by Chinese companies: earning razor-thin profits or losing money in exchange for market share and gradually squeezing out competitors,” says the Wall Street Journal.

Another fast-fashion behemoth is Shein, founded in Nanjing, China in 2008 as ZZKKO. Now headquartered in Singapore, while keeping its supply chains and warehouses in China, it has become the world’s largest fashion retailer. 

Shein plans to go public in 2024 (It confidentially filed for an initial public offering in Nov. 2023), though there is continuing controversy over allegations of Shein’s (and Temu’s) use of forced labor from the autonomous region of Xinjiang in China. In late 2023, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D- VA) led a bipartisan call for the SEC to halt Shein’s IPO until it verifies that the company does not use forced labor within its supply chain.

Meanwhile, Shein and Temu “are accelerating the fashion cycle to unimaginable speeds,” Quartz,  a website focused on international business news, reported in January 2024.  The speed is being accelerated by Tik Tok, which is addictive by design. “The rise of TikTok has led to trends changing so quickly that brands and consumers cannot keep up,” Stacey Widlitz, a retail analyst, recently told the New York Times. “Everything Gen Z consumes is driven by influencers,” she said. “As fast as something comes in is as fast as something can go out.”

“The downside to all that cheap speed is, of course, the exploitation of everyone involved in its production and consumption,” said Quartz.  

The State of Fashion report, an annual publication from the industry outlet Business of Fashion and the management consultancy McKinsey and Company, notes that Shein is now producing an astonishing number of new items—2,000 to 10,000—every day,  and they are each shipping out more than a million packages to the United States daily, The Wall Street Journal reported in December.

Shein and Temu keep the costs of their fast fashion clothing down by taking advantage of a U.S. shipping provision called the “de minimis exception,” which waives duty fees for any packages with a retail value of less than $800. Since the typical order from Shein and Temu is much smaller than that, Shein and Temu paid no duty fees on imports to the U.S. in 2022, according to a congressional report. Sneaky, but legal. 

In the face of all this, there are still some America-based apparel manufacturers. Their growth and the emergence of more companies is possible with technological advancements in manufacturing and the increase in environmental and social consciousness. Reshoring apparel production is likely to be constrained, however, by supply chain issues as well as high labor costs and overhead expenses that will make it difficult for U.S. producers to price their goods competitively and maintain profitability.

So, what to do if you care about all this?

You are not helpless. You can learn to ignore Tik Tok influencers who must not be aware of Freya India’s admonition that “these people “… who do post everything are not people to aspire to. If they influence you of anything it should be to not copy their deranged behaviour and document your entire life online.”

As somebody commented on a recent New York Times story about Gen Z fashion, “Tik Tok ‘influencers’ aren’t style icons, they’re the new mall rats with a megaphone.”

 There are apps out there that give you the power to help create an ethical and  sustainable fashion industry.

GoodOnYou, for example, rates more than 3,000 clothing and accessory brands on whether they are doing the right thing for people, the environment and animals in producing ethical and sustainable clothing. Download the Good On You App

Then you can change your habits:

• Stop buying so damn much fast fashion.
• Be mindful of your consumption habits.
• Remember that the most sustainable clothing is already in your wardrobe. Love the things you own.
• Repair, rather than replace, damaged clothing.
• Look for clothing that: 

– is manufactured in an environmentally conscious way.

– is designed and manufactured with human rights in mind.

– can be rented, loaned or swapped

– has been repaired, redesigned or upcycled

– is of high quality & timeless design

– is “Fair Trade Certified”

– is versatile and will see you through more than one season. 

Thanks to RedressRaleigh.org for some of these suggestions.

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