This is the weekend edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. A few stats, words, and charts that have been knocking around in my brain, trying to arrive at something like meaning. Let me know which ones knock around in your brain, too.
I love how you put this together, heartbreaking as it is (I get queasy thinking about how much the house + property across from me just sold for in Whitefish).
A long time ago I did a work-for-hire gig writing a 6th-grade math/social studies textbook on the Great Depression. I had to find lots of numbers for the math problems. The research was *fascinating*, especially the details on inflation, prices of necessities, the explosion of credit to buy new luxuries like radios, and how Social Security was designed in its midst to get men to work and women to marry (has not been updated BTW!). Also an NYT front-page article on Eleanor Roosevelt making the case for housewives to get minimum wage. And the parallels for our times were pretty stark (this was a couple of years before the 2008 crash).
In other words, these numbers tell a big story and make me sad :(
I've dove into the world of sewing reddit and instagram over the past few months, and it has really opened my eyes as to a) the amount of labor that goes into making a garment, even accounting for industrial process and b) how exploitative fast fashion is. Layer on the environmental impacts of some fabrics and you find yourself attempting to make your own wardrobe and buying 50$ fair-trade organic t-shirts.
I think about the price of clothing a lot. Clothing is supposed to be expensive. Karolina Zebrowska had to make a video to explain that that the existence of the original Strawberry Dress, a well-made fancy dress that costs $490, is not oppression.
If a small business/artisan makes clothing, pays employees fairly, and sets prices fairly, they are not oppressing us. We need to blame our own low wages and the inflated cost of rent and healthcare instead. Fast fashion has distorted the true cost of clothing to the point that makers can get brigaded online for setting prices fairly.
i love this. i've never commented here, but i came to make two quick observations that don't undermine your larger point at all, just for when or if you go to formalize these thoughts:
- i wonder if this 1935 budget is for ready-to-wear clothes or not, especially dresses. 1935 seems like a weird tipping point where most women still sewed their own clothing, or had the capacity to do so; but college coeds probably would be the market for ready-to-wear (hence the "some live on less" comment).
- tacomas are a bit of a weird example for the used car point, b/c there was already a thriving used market for tacomas pre-covid (they're a bit like wranglers, where people have preferences for a particular model/year, and they hold their value well)
Just want to point out that both Patagonia and the Christy Dawn dress only go to a XXL, but the Target dress presumably goes to a 4x. So many people are excluded from more sustainable brands. Also the price for used cars are insane, even compared to just 10 years ago. The cost for childcare isn’t very transparent if you’re just thinking about having kids, so I feel like it’s something hard to plan for.
Fascinating stuff, as always. Is there a verb for what a concierge does? A concierge of cultural information?
I wanted to second the recommendation of the linked piece about The Eyes of Texas. I probably wouldn't have read it if I hadn't felt a connection to the song,* but that would have been a mistake. This is as comprehensive a take down of a respected institution's lame 'dammit we're not racists!' effort as I've ever seen anywhere. The song has simply go to go.
Man writes a parody song for a single college glee club show as an undergrad, dies more than 40 years later, and every obituary -- and I think he had more than a dozen -- lists this one thing about his life. And 70 years after that, people are analyzing a few days from the man's life, among other things, to decide just how racist his song is. One doesn't want to live one's life with a looming concern about how any specific thing we do is going to outlive us, but boy howdy is this a cautionary tale. And the song has got to go.
* I'm not an alum of UT, but know some, and certainly knew the song well as an elementary school kid growing up in Texas. What I hadn't know until long after is that my grandmother's second cousin had married the fellow who wrote the song. (She's quoted in the linked article).
I have long wanted to see more coverage about sustainability in fashion and its connection to climate change. I've been wondering how it will shake out in the next few years as people start buying clothes again – will the shifts that consumers made during the pandemic continue, or not? There's such a huge emphasis on ESG investment right now as a tool to fight climate change. How does apparel fit into that? And I'm curious about how B Corps have weathered the pandemic versus other comparably-sized companies. (Patagonia was one, and was the first in California.) I've never looked closely at their filings, but I suspect it leans heavily on a sustainable supply chain to get the B Corp designation.
82 pounds of clothes a year?! Did I read that right? What Americans are those? I don’t even own 82 pounds of clothes! And there are thrift stores that recycle all that fabric into various materials used by all kinds of organizations. Sheesh.
I am self-employed and work at home, and tend to buy mostly boring, sturdy clothing from places like LL Bean and Lands' End. I wear stuff until it's pretty much worn out (which can take years!). I am itching to buy some new clothes this year, and wasn't sure what to do with my old garments, many of which aren't really in good enough shape to donate to a thrift store. After a lot of searching, I found this site: https://fordays.com/take-back-bag You can buy a bag for $10, fill it with clean used clothing, send it back to them (shipping is included in the $10 price), and they guarantee it won't end up in a landfill. I ordered 2 bags, and they're large enough to hold a lot of stuff. Anyway, thought this might interest folks who are interested in sustainability.
Slightly random comment about the college girls wardrobe in 1935: At that time only about a quarter of the population finished high school, let alone went to college. So the college girls wardrobe you’re describing here is a thrifty rich girls wardrobe, not a thrifty girls wardrobe
This is why I almost exclusively buy used clothing (and used more generally). Money spent at my local charity shops go directly to local families in need and it saves the clothes from going straight to the landfill. Money spent in my local community means I’m not giving my hard earned cash to (normally) absurdly rich white men who exploit workers and usurp independent communities. Shopping used means I do not participate in the cycle of buying new, stripping the environment, supporting labor that is basically indentured servitude, etc. Charity shops also frequently accept grocery and shopping bags, boxes and packing paper, etc., which is a great way to recycle things besides clothing that normally end up straight in the trash. Finally, and most importantly, local charities that I support have moral values that I also hold. I have seen the staff at Habitat for Humanity give bags to poor families and just tell them to fill the bags with children’s clothes without charging them anything. This is the kind of shopping that I love.
I wish everything written everywhere about salary and minimum wage would include this kind of cost-of-living breakdown. I think the concept of just how terrible wages are sometimes get lost for people who aren't living it.
The transit stuff bounces around in my head all of the time, and it all goes back to how our cities are designed. I WANT to ride my bike or take the bus everywhere. But, my mid-sized Southern city does not make it very safe to ride my bike outside very contained areas, and while the city has been aggressive about adding bike lanes where it can, for the most part the roads aren't designed to accommodate bike lanes and are too dangerous to ride without them. The bus ride to cover my 13-mile commute would take 2.5 hours one way because the bus system doesn't have enough routes going to the right places frequently enough (and I live in a transit-heavy neighborhood and work in a fairly dense business district -- theoretically I have one of the best setups for public transit.) The public transit thing is such a chicken/egg conundrum. More ridership would provide more fares and incentive for better/more routes, but they can't attract more riders without better/more routes.
Wow - I've never heard of Christy Dawn. This is the first time I've seen a breakdown of cost transparency per item like this. Pretty cool. Anyone know of other companies doing this in their customer-facing communications? Does anyone who knows more than me about clothing production (me = 0 knowledge) trust this cost breakdown?
I love how you put this together, heartbreaking as it is (I get queasy thinking about how much the house + property across from me just sold for in Whitefish).
A long time ago I did a work-for-hire gig writing a 6th-grade math/social studies textbook on the Great Depression. I had to find lots of numbers for the math problems. The research was *fascinating*, especially the details on inflation, prices of necessities, the explosion of credit to buy new luxuries like radios, and how Social Security was designed in its midst to get men to work and women to marry (has not been updated BTW!). Also an NYT front-page article on Eleanor Roosevelt making the case for housewives to get minimum wage. And the parallels for our times were pretty stark (this was a couple of years before the 2008 crash).
In other words, these numbers tell a big story and make me sad :(
I've dove into the world of sewing reddit and instagram over the past few months, and it has really opened my eyes as to a) the amount of labor that goes into making a garment, even accounting for industrial process and b) how exploitative fast fashion is. Layer on the environmental impacts of some fabrics and you find yourself attempting to make your own wardrobe and buying 50$ fair-trade organic t-shirts.
I think about the price of clothing a lot. Clothing is supposed to be expensive. Karolina Zebrowska had to make a video to explain that that the existence of the original Strawberry Dress, a well-made fancy dress that costs $490, is not oppression.
https://youtu.be/Sk4YNRip_dM
If a small business/artisan makes clothing, pays employees fairly, and sets prices fairly, they are not oppressing us. We need to blame our own low wages and the inflated cost of rent and healthcare instead. Fast fashion has distorted the true cost of clothing to the point that makers can get brigaded online for setting prices fairly.
i love this. i've never commented here, but i came to make two quick observations that don't undermine your larger point at all, just for when or if you go to formalize these thoughts:
- i wonder if this 1935 budget is for ready-to-wear clothes or not, especially dresses. 1935 seems like a weird tipping point where most women still sewed their own clothing, or had the capacity to do so; but college coeds probably would be the market for ready-to-wear (hence the "some live on less" comment).
- tacomas are a bit of a weird example for the used car point, b/c there was already a thriving used market for tacomas pre-covid (they're a bit like wranglers, where people have preferences for a particular model/year, and they hold their value well)
Here I am just minding my own business on a rainy Sunday afternoon and Anne walks into my apartment and slaps me hard across the face
Just want to point out that both Patagonia and the Christy Dawn dress only go to a XXL, but the Target dress presumably goes to a 4x. So many people are excluded from more sustainable brands. Also the price for used cars are insane, even compared to just 10 years ago. The cost for childcare isn’t very transparent if you’re just thinking about having kids, so I feel like it’s something hard to plan for.
Fascinating stuff, as always. Is there a verb for what a concierge does? A concierge of cultural information?
I wanted to second the recommendation of the linked piece about The Eyes of Texas. I probably wouldn't have read it if I hadn't felt a connection to the song,* but that would have been a mistake. This is as comprehensive a take down of a respected institution's lame 'dammit we're not racists!' effort as I've ever seen anywhere. The song has simply go to go.
Man writes a parody song for a single college glee club show as an undergrad, dies more than 40 years later, and every obituary -- and I think he had more than a dozen -- lists this one thing about his life. And 70 years after that, people are analyzing a few days from the man's life, among other things, to decide just how racist his song is. One doesn't want to live one's life with a looming concern about how any specific thing we do is going to outlive us, but boy howdy is this a cautionary tale. And the song has got to go.
* I'm not an alum of UT, but know some, and certainly knew the song well as an elementary school kid growing up in Texas. What I hadn't know until long after is that my grandmother's second cousin had married the fellow who wrote the song. (She's quoted in the linked article).
I have long wanted to see more coverage about sustainability in fashion and its connection to climate change. I've been wondering how it will shake out in the next few years as people start buying clothes again – will the shifts that consumers made during the pandemic continue, or not? There's such a huge emphasis on ESG investment right now as a tool to fight climate change. How does apparel fit into that? And I'm curious about how B Corps have weathered the pandemic versus other comparably-sized companies. (Patagonia was one, and was the first in California.) I've never looked closely at their filings, but I suspect it leans heavily on a sustainable supply chain to get the B Corp designation.
82 pounds of clothes a year?! Did I read that right? What Americans are those? I don’t even own 82 pounds of clothes! And there are thrift stores that recycle all that fabric into various materials used by all kinds of organizations. Sheesh.
This week's Just Trust Me kind of ripped me wide open.
I am self-employed and work at home, and tend to buy mostly boring, sturdy clothing from places like LL Bean and Lands' End. I wear stuff until it's pretty much worn out (which can take years!). I am itching to buy some new clothes this year, and wasn't sure what to do with my old garments, many of which aren't really in good enough shape to donate to a thrift store. After a lot of searching, I found this site: https://fordays.com/take-back-bag You can buy a bag for $10, fill it with clean used clothing, send it back to them (shipping is included in the $10 price), and they guarantee it won't end up in a landfill. I ordered 2 bags, and they're large enough to hold a lot of stuff. Anyway, thought this might interest folks who are interested in sustainability.
BTW, this is a good article on how part of fashion’s sustainability problem is how little data we actually have about the true environmental costs:
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/27/21080107/fashion-environment-facts-statistics-impact
Slightly random comment about the college girls wardrobe in 1935: At that time only about a quarter of the population finished high school, let alone went to college. So the college girls wardrobe you’re describing here is a thrifty rich girls wardrobe, not a thrifty girls wardrobe
This is why I almost exclusively buy used clothing (and used more generally). Money spent at my local charity shops go directly to local families in need and it saves the clothes from going straight to the landfill. Money spent in my local community means I’m not giving my hard earned cash to (normally) absurdly rich white men who exploit workers and usurp independent communities. Shopping used means I do not participate in the cycle of buying new, stripping the environment, supporting labor that is basically indentured servitude, etc. Charity shops also frequently accept grocery and shopping bags, boxes and packing paper, etc., which is a great way to recycle things besides clothing that normally end up straight in the trash. Finally, and most importantly, local charities that I support have moral values that I also hold. I have seen the staff at Habitat for Humanity give bags to poor families and just tell them to fill the bags with children’s clothes without charging them anything. This is the kind of shopping that I love.
I wish everything written everywhere about salary and minimum wage would include this kind of cost-of-living breakdown. I think the concept of just how terrible wages are sometimes get lost for people who aren't living it.
The transit stuff bounces around in my head all of the time, and it all goes back to how our cities are designed. I WANT to ride my bike or take the bus everywhere. But, my mid-sized Southern city does not make it very safe to ride my bike outside very contained areas, and while the city has been aggressive about adding bike lanes where it can, for the most part the roads aren't designed to accommodate bike lanes and are too dangerous to ride without them. The bus ride to cover my 13-mile commute would take 2.5 hours one way because the bus system doesn't have enough routes going to the right places frequently enough (and I live in a transit-heavy neighborhood and work in a fairly dense business district -- theoretically I have one of the best setups for public transit.) The public transit thing is such a chicken/egg conundrum. More ridership would provide more fares and incentive for better/more routes, but they can't attract more riders without better/more routes.
Wow - I've never heard of Christy Dawn. This is the first time I've seen a breakdown of cost transparency per item like this. Pretty cool. Anyone know of other companies doing this in their customer-facing communications? Does anyone who knows more than me about clothing production (me = 0 knowledge) trust this cost breakdown?