Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

So a couple years ago, I got anxious about child labor making clothes. I guess, at the end of the day, I'm a hippy at heart and I absorbed a lot of sweatshop rhetoric as a child. At the end of 2013, I made a New Year's resolution that I wasn't going to buy anything, unless it was made in a country with strong labor laws, or out of recycled materials, or in some other way good for something. It was a surprisingly difficult year, especially for socks and underwear. But after 2014 ended, I kept it up for clothes, at least. And, as billed by Elizabeth Cline, buying high-end brands (mostly used) and avoiding fast fashion has resulted in clothes I like more, and keep longer.

Given that I was pretty much already there, I found Overdressed a pretty shallow read. It read fast, and at times seemed more interested in the cost of cheap fashion to a fashionista, rather than more generally. Nonetheless, it provided a context for how the clothing market got to where it was.