Posted by Fashion Junior at Large
It's all go here at FEAL towers but fear not, we haven't forgotten you dear readers. It may be short and sweet but we wanted to share some rather awesome prints we saw today at Jonathan Saunders and Stella McCartney. Suddenly all the work we're doing on the trends for SS12 seems to have come to life and we can actually imagine wearing them- or dream of it, more realistically, in the case of Saunders and Stella.
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| At Jonathan Saunders |
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| The indescribably divine Jonathan Saunders, with models |
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| At Stella... |
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| I thought I could never love a nude shoe... |
I would really like to know why nearly all of Johnathan Saunders' clobber is made in China or eastern Europe. I'm not suggesting that craftsmanship is of a lower standard there than it is in the more traditional places of high-ticket garment manufacture (though this is OFTEN the case). I am pointing out that people in those places are frequently uninsured, un-unionized, poorly paid, etc. For this reason, I would never pay $500 for a sweater that was made in China (Johnathon Saunders) or $800 for a pair of boots that was made in China (Alexander Wang, Camilla Skovgard et al), because most of that money is clearly going to The Man (in the corporate sense).
ReplyDeleteThere also seems to be tremendous hypocrisy when work is promoted as Young British Design when in fact it's manufactured in another country. It also valorizes the designer who did the drawing over the workers who actually made it.
A lot of the shoe-production in China happens in the same square block, so Wang shoes are probably made a stone's throw away from (for example) Topshop shoes-- why would one pair cost 100 times (100 times!!) more than the other?
I've left comments and questions like this before on the blogs of so-called "fashion insiders" and they've invariably been ignored. But surely I am not alone in being bothered by the "made in China/ priced in Italy" phenomena?
The point you are making has always been disturbing to me. I am Romanian. Romania is hardly a prosperous country, and I don't know if Romanians score badly on craftsmanship, but it makes me so angry every time I hear that poorly paid craftsmanship in Eastern Europe or China is alluring to Western designers. Paul Smith, Anne Valérie Hash, Carven, Sonia by Sonia Rykiel, See by Chloé, Cacharel, Jil Sander, Paul & Joe, Valentino, Hugo Boss, Prada, Miu Miu, Loewe, Céline, Marc Jacobs, Burberry... all exploit cheap labour somewhere in the world. I often agonize over the cynicism and greed of these luxurious brands, and over the poverty, ignorance and servitude of the people who get exploited.
ReplyDeleteMaria Şerban