The 'feminist' trend AW17

Whether you’ve a lifetime subscription to Vogue, or dress in a burlap sack and couldn’t really care less about fashion, New York Fashion Week post-Trump was of particular import. Almost overnight, the makers and wearers of haute couture, who rarely concern themselves with the struggles of mere mortals, adopted a political agenda. From Tommy Hilfiger to Calvin Klein, apparel appeared to become the new vehicle for social change. Designers printed bold statements on t-shirts, blouses, sweaters, even on underwear, denouncing some of Trump’s most divisive executive orders, from the immigration ban, to the 'wall', to cuts to Planned Parenthood funding.

The plight of women, however, seemed to be a hot topic for many designers to capitalize on. The Nepalese-American designer Prabal Gurung wrapped up his AW17 collection with a display of printed t-shirts proclaiming ‘Nevertheless, she persisted’, ‘Girls just want to have fundamental rights’ and took his final bow sporting a t-shirt splashed with ‘This is what a feminist looks like’. The American designer Adam Lippes unfurled signs reading ‘Adam Lippes stands with Planned Parenthood’ and ‘Girl Power’ outside of his show. I had a feeling Maria Grazia Chiruri’s ‘We should all be feminists’ début as the first female artistic director for Dior would be the overture to this feminist ‘trend’ of 2017. Chiruri drew inspiration for this simplistic design in her Spring 2017 collection from the influential feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

With a price tag of $710 for a printed cotton t-shirt, can we really all afford to be feminists? While I understand and appreciate the awareness many of these designers are attempting to create around feminism in a post-Trump landscape, it’s the disturbing anti-feminist trickle-down effect of many of these designs that I see as problematic.

While many luxury designers may escape scrutiny of their production methods since their garments are costly, created by hand and tend not to be produced in bulk, it’s the much-loved and familiar high-street brands harbouring more ominous secrets. Type in ‘slogan tee’ or ‘printed tee’ into the website search bars of H&M, Forever 21, Topshop, Urban Outfitters, Nike, Primark and many, many more fast fashion brands. One thing becomes apparent. The trend for feminist apparel is no longer confined to the catwalks of New York Fashion Week. ‘Feminism is for everyone’, ‘Revolution♀’, ‘Girls supporting girls’, ‘Fight like a girl’, ‘Equality’ and ‘Girl power’ were all popular buys. Yet somehow I doubt that by buying an overpriced ‘Power to the girls’ t-shirt (that you can frankly make yourself), will put an end to the sexism that is endured in this world. If anything, you may be contributing to the problem.

The 2015 Netflix documentary ‘The True Cost’ is an exposé of the many environmental and social injustices that are borne out of the $3 trillion fashion industry. When we look at the price tag on a t-shirt or a sweater, we’re often blind to the hidden cost behind the perceived bargain we think we’re getting. We often don’t see the many, many hands that have touched these garments. The hands that are being forced to work in inhumane factory conditions because they have no better employment alternative, with little to no workers’ rights, being paid well below a living wage, often forced to forfeit their families, health and sometimes even their lives as we saw in the case of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh. And all for what? So we can buy cheap clothes to satiate some innate desire, only to discard of them when the next trend comes rolling in?

America only makes about 3% of its own clothes, meaning garment production is frequently outsourced to impoverished countries so desperate for the work supplied by these goliath corporations that their governments routinely hold down workers’ wages to prevent companies finding a cheaper alternative and relocating. While it’s clear that the garment industry, the most labour dependent industry in the world, doesn’t solely exploit women, but men and children too, one cannot deny that women in these impoverished countries are hit the hardest by these working conditions, with women making up over 85% of the workforce.

To cite an excerpt from H&M’s ‘sustainability’ tab on their website;

“H&M group helps to create jobs, consequently lifting people out of poverty, and contributing to economic growth and improved standards of living… About two-thirds of these jobs are undertaken by women. For many women, this is their first job that provides an income, their first work outside the home and therefore a first step to independence.”

Sounds very wholesome, doesn’t it? The reality is large corporations such as H&M or any of the brands listed above, can afford to make these grand, vague statements because they don’t directly employ the workers that end up being exploited. They can keep themselves at arms length from the 'dirty' business of factory collapses, structural defects, underpaid workers and increasingly negative health effects of sweltering, overcrowded factory floors, as their products are sourced from 'independent suppliers'. All that this shift of blame results in is avoiding any and all responsibility while at the same time reaping colossal financial benefits from cheap labor. Many of these large corporations also blocked the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act, which tried to “prohibit the import, export, and sale of goods made with sweatshop labor”, citing that it would be an impediment to free trade. The message is clear, profits before people.

With companies refusing to implement any solid legislative protection for workers, or prohibition of goods produced by sweatshop labor, all that is in place are voluntary ‘codes of conduct’ which companies can elect to undertake, and even if they don’t, or fail to see them through, they’ll face little to no punitive consequences.

I can’t help but think about the women sitting in a garment factory in Bangladesh or Cambodia, earning less than $3 a day and stitching the words ‘Girl power’ or ‘Equality’ onto t-shirts without finding the situation to be quite perverse. One poignant, yet resonating line from 'The True Cost', spoken by a female Bangladeshi factory worker lingered with me; "I don't want anyone wearing anything that is produced by our blood". We may think we’re empowering one another by wearing t-shirts with feminist slogans on them, however if they originate from a patriarchal and capitalist system in which thousands of women are forced to work in inhumane conditions for a pittance, then the irony is overwhelming.