Fashionopolis - Why What We Wear Matters

Zusatztext 108291321 Informationen zum Autor Dana Thomas Klappentext *NYTBR Paperback Row Selection* An investigation into the damage wrought by the colossal clothing industry and the grassroots, high-tech, international movement fighting to reform it What should I wear? It's one of the fundamental questions we ask ourselves every day. More than ever, we are told it should be something new. Today, the clothing industry churns out 80 billion garments a year and employs every sixth person on Earth. Historically, the apparel trade has exploited labor, the environment, and intellectual property-and in the last three decades, with the simultaneous unfurling of fast fashion, globalization, and the tech revolution, those abuses have multiplied exponentially, primarily out of view. We are in dire need of an entirely new human-scale model. Bestselling journalist Dana Thomas has traveled the globe to discover the visionary designers and companies who are propelling the industry toward that more positive future by reclaiming traditional craft and launching cutting-edge sustainable technologies to produce better fashion. In Fashionopolis, Thomas sees renewal in a host of developments, including printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling-even lab-grown materials. From small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to such household names as Stella McCartney, Levi's, and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading the crusade. We all have been casual about our clothes. It's time to get dressed with intention. Fashionopolis is the first comprehensive look at how to start. ONE Ready to Wear   On the third night of the seventy-first Cannes Film Festival, in May 2018, Australian actress and jury president Cate Blanchett floated down the red carpet in a showstopping sleeveless bubble-hem gown. The rowdy floral print began on the bodice as black-and-white line drawings, like paint-by-numbers, and eventually erupted on the voluminous skirt into full-blown Technicolor. Daring and complicated, it was exquisitely executed by Mary Katrantzou, a Greek-born, London-based women's wear designer most consumers have never heard of, though have most likely worn, after a fashion. Katrantzou is one of the talents who creatively fuels the Fashionopolis machine: the original silhouettes she dreams up in her small London atelier are sold in limited numbers by luxury retailers in cosmopolitan capitals. This is the apex of the fashion pyramid-the same place where Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, Louis Vuitton menswear designer Virgil Abloh, Givenchy artistic director Clare Waight Keller, and other high fashion designers sit. The clothes that Katrantzou and her confreres design are copied by fast-fashion brands on the cheap and peddled in chain stores-the massification that constitutes the broad bottom of the fashion pyramid. The "knockoffs," as the fakes are known, rake in millions for the hucksters who vend them. Katrantzou, meanwhile, receives nothing from the unauthorized global rollout of her work: no money, no glory, no acknowledgment that she ignites trends or contributes to the fashion conversation. She toils; others profit; we all wear. Sound unfair? It is. But this trickle-down scheme-as sharply laid out by Meryl Streep in the "cerulean-blue sweater" scene in The Devil Wears Prada-is how the fashion industry works. It begins simply enough at a wholly unglamorous semiannual trade show outside of Paris, near Charles de Gaulle airport, called Premire Vision Paris. For three days each February and September, more than sixty thousand apparel trade professionals from 120 countries descend on the multihall convention complex of Villepinte to shop the world's largest selection of future-trending fabrics and textile designs, leather, accessories, and ma...

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Dana Thomas
• Verlag: Penguin Books USA
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Taschenbuch
• Erschienen: 30.09.2020
• EAN: 9780735224032
• ISBN: 978-0-7352-2403-2
• Seiten: 320
• Abmessung: 140 mm x 214 mm x 21 mm
• Serie: PENGUIN BOOKS
• Thema: Sozialwissenschaften, Recht,Wirtschaft > Wirtschaft > Einzelne Wirtschaftszweige, Branchen