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The Not-So-Hidden Ethical Cost Of Fast Fashion: Sneaky Sweatshops In Our Own Backyard

Syama Meagher

Welcome to 2020 — everyone has a voice and consumers aren’t afraid to use theirs. And two of those loudest voices are shouting about hot button issues: purchasing fashionable items on a tight budget and the ethical do-good, feel-good awareness factor of the clothes that are made.

The concern over working conditions and ethical sources behind fashion is nothing new. As long as the term “sweatshop” has been around, there have been advocates against them. But human nature is also built on a duality — and sometimes a lie. For all the preaching on caring about the human worker, does the average consumer even really care?

Fashion Nova and the American problem

When The New York Times NYT broke the story that fast fashion company Fashion Nova was exploiting Los Angeles-based sweatshops, no one really blinked an eye. It was a breaking story that wasn’t really breaking news. For clothes so cheap, sweatshops are kind of expected. The revelation that these are American sweatshops, though, probably should’ve ruffled a few more feathers.

That’s partly because there’s a false sense of righteousness that owes its existence to word associations. “Made in the USA,” especially, is often a false flag operation of a buzzword. When someone sees an item is made in America, there are certain (wrong) assumptions made:

  • That it’s made with fair labor practices
  • That it’s directly supporting American businesses that are ethical
  • That, even if it is cheap, it’s somehow thanks to a loophole and not shady production

In all fairness, some of these — or all — are sometimes true. But the old adages of “too good to be true” and “having your cake and eating it too” (the clothing being the cake, the peace of mind that comes from ethical business practices being the eating) ring very true here. There’s a certain general consensus that when bad things happen, they’re usually worlds away (either distance or class) and never right in our own backyard.

Los Angeles is the ground floor of fast fashion’s dirty “secret”

But fast fashion’s dark side is happening in our own backyard, and you have to wonder whether or not anyone even cares. Los Angeles is a biting dichotomy: activists and influencers shout about human rights, meanwhile sweatshops are a dirty little secret.

It’s not in China, but in America that workers put in grueling 12 hour days, making garments that will be sold for anywhere from $5 to $75 for around three cents apiece paid out. The lofty goal of making what amounts to $5 an hour is in reality a pipe dream for them.

The majority of this sweatshop workforce is, unsurprisingly, comprised of undocumented immigrants who are left with few other choices for work. According to California Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the over 46,000 individuals who make up Los Angeles’s second-largest industry (the so-called “cut-and-sew” labor force) a whopping 71% are immigrants.

The issue of undocumented immigrants will always be a political one, but at the end of the day it's a matter of questioning the value of a human life. Whether documented or not, do we care about these people? Does the average consumer — the target demographic of the fast fashion industry — care that their trendy new boots were paid for with pennies, putting a literal dollar value on a worker's life? Or does that $25 price point make it worth it?

Haven’t we been here already?

Gildan Activewear (known better to the public for purchasing American Apparel) was one of the first fast fashion brands to come under the microscope after that purchase. While American Apparel had long been known for their “Made in the USA” claims, that previously long-held perception was no more, as they now used factories primarily in the Caribbean and Central America, and the public noticed.

The recent New York Times article on Fashion Nova takes that scandal a step further by acknowledging that the fast fashion brand may be indeed using American-based labor, but that labor is unethical as heck. The American factories they use owe over $3.8 million in wages to workers, with those same workers making an average of $2.77 an hour.

All this is bad, yes, but we can’t pretend it’s anything new. It’s an easy lie to believe that buying American-made over Chinese-made earns us enough Good Place points, but the system is more complicated than that. And it can only continue to be that messed up as long as we choose to ignore it.

Influencer marketing and the false sense of morality

Fashion Nova has tapped into a goldmine. They’ve jumped on influencer marketing that creates an aspirational aesthetic that is actually attainable. And for the middle class of America, living the Kardashian lifestyle is an ideal that once seemed so far out of reach, the average consumer’s torment of Tantalus. Being offered a shiny apple of fast fashion leads to a rotten garden of human rights violations.

Using American influencers helps perpetuate the illusion of organic ethics. If our own homegrown darlings, ones who also aren’t born into luxury, are proudly wearing and marketing these clothes, how bad can they be? If they’re made in the USA, then what’s the harm?

Turns out, there’s a lot of harm. The hated sweatshops of old are happily entrenched in the economy of home. In fact, the Department of Labor (DOL) investigated garment factories in Los Angeles and found that 85 percent of them have wage violations. The fact that many of these workers are undocumented may make it easier, subconsciously, to let it slide when its happening on own soil.

The pendulum of consumer practices swings wildly between “cheap” and “ethical,” with a sweet spot middle ground becoming harder and harder to find. At the end of the day, the New York Times piece isn’t breaking news. It hardly even qualifies as surprising. What does matter, though, is what we do with the information. With Fashion Nova’s and other similar brands’ revenues and popularity only rising, we’ve got an unpleasant answer for at least one demographic: it’s all right for fast fashion to be an ethical corrupter if we value money over the cost of a human life.

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I am CEO, founder, and chief retail strategist of Scaling Retail, named one of WWD's Top 20 Women in Business (2017). We are an international retail consulting and brand

I am CEO, founder, and chief retail strategist of Scaling Retail, named one of WWD's Top 20 Women in Business (2017). We are an international retail consulting and brand marketing agency based in LA and NYC guiding startup, growth stage, and enterprise fashion companies seeking to launch, pivot, or scale. I've worked with the United Nations as well as fashion brands including Rhode Resort, where I acted as interim president. Previously, I was a buyer at Gucci and Barneys New York and catalyzed sales for nascent businesses within the organizations. I regularly speak at industry trade events SOURCING, MAGIC, the ideas fair TEDxLA, and enterprise events including SAP 500 and American Express Open Forum CEO BootCamp for female entrepreneurs, and am regularly cited in the press including NPR, The Financial Post, Inc., and US News & World Report. I serve on the board of the Los Angeles Downtown Women's Center.