The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion

Tansy E. Hoskins

Description

*Selected by Emma Watson for her Ultimate Book List*

Fashion is political. From the red carpets of the Met Gala to online fast fashion, clothes tell a story of inequality, racism and climate crisis. In The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, Tansy E. Hoskins unpicks the threads of capitalist industry to reveal the truth about our clothes.

Fashion brands entice us to consume more by manipulating us to feel ugly, poor and worthless, sentiments that line the pockets of billionaires exploiting colonial supply chains. Garment workers on poverty pay risk their lives in dangerous factories, animals are tortured, fossil fuels extracted and toxic chemicals spread just to keep this season’s collections fresh.

We can do better than this. Moving between Karl Lagerfeld and Karl Marx, The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion goes beyond ethical fashion and consumer responsibility showing that if we want to feel comfortable in our clothes, we need to reshape the system and ensure this is not our last season.

Foreword by Andreja Pejić
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Owning It
2. The Fashion Media
3. Buyology
4. Stitching It
5. A Bitter Harvest
6. The Body Politic
7. Is Fashion Racist?
8. Resisting Fashion
9. Reforming Fashion
10. Revolutionising Fashion
About the Illustrator
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Climate Change
• Environmental Protection
• Environmental Conservation
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Saint Laurent
• Sustainable fashion
• Miss Guided
• Communism
• History of fashion design
• Fast fashion
• Christian Dior S.A.
• Versace
• Saint Lawrence (disambiguation)
• Consumerism
• Sweatshop
• Slavery
• Capitalism
• Advertising
• Gucci
• Atelier de misère
• Gianni Versace
• Prada
• Fendi
• Vogue
• Louis Vuitton
• Laurent de Rome
• Communisme
• Zara
• Chanel
• Dior
• Nike
• Nature

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780745346632
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion
Praise for Stitched Up
Makes a strong case for nothing less than a revolution.
-Emma Watson, actor
An incredible accomplishment.
-Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue
Interrogates today s fashion landscape with rigour - will make you view your wardrobe through a different lens.
-Lucy Siegle, author of Turning the Tide on Plastic
Thoroughly researched with a reach extending both globally and historically, the book is packed with interesting examples, and Hoskins engaging style makes it eminently readable.
- LSE Review of Books
A classic read for all fashion students, and of course those interested in the politics of fashion. I will refer to my copy for a long time to come.
-Caryn Franklin MBE, fashion commentator and body image activist
A book that hangs like a garment on a coat-hanger. A garment with many pockets. In the pockets numberless notes and remarks about clothes and history. Take it off the hanger and put it on. By which I mean - read it and walk through history.
-John Berger
A masterclass in unpicking the threads of injustice, exploitation and oppression woven into our clothing. By joining the dots between fashion and capitalism - this is a route map to weave a different story for our clothing, our planet and its people.
-Asad Rehman, Executive Director, War on Want
This is a wonderful book, bursting at the seams with power, passion and politics. Clothes will never look the same again!
-John Hilary, former Executive Director of War on Want
The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion
Tansy E. Hoskins
Foreword by Andreja Peji
First published 2022 by Pluto Press
New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
www.plutobooks.com
The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion is based upon Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion , published by Pluto Press in 2014.
Copyright Tansy E. Hoskins 2014, 2022
The right of Tansy E. Hoskins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4662 5 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4661 8 Paperback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4665 6 PDF
ISBN 978 0 7453 4663 2 EPUB
ISBN 978 0 7453 4803 2 audiobook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
To my parents, Kay and Gareth, with love and affection
And in loving memory of Neil Faulkner - Workers of all lands unite
Contents
Foreword by Andreja Peji
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Owning It
2. The Fashion Media
3. Buyology
4. Stitching It
5. A Bitter Harvest
6. The Body Politic
7. Is Fashion Racist?
8. Resisting Fashion
9. Reforming Fashion
10. Revolutionising Fashion
About the Illustrator
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
Andreja Peji
Almost 100 years ago, the Communist Revolutionary Leon Trotsky gave us these powerful words on art and a very fine vision of the future:

Art then will become more general, will mature, will become tempered, and will become, the most perfect method of the progressive building of life in every field. It will not be merely pretty without relation to anything else. All forms of life, such as the cultivation of land, the planning of human habitations, the building of theaters, the methods of socially educating children, the solution of scientific problems, the creation of new styles, will vitally engross all and everybody. People will divide into parties over the question of a new gigantic canal, or the distribution of oases in the Sahara Such parties will not be poisoned by the greed of class or caste. All will be equally interested in the success of the whole. The struggle will have a purely ideologic character. It will have no running after profits, it will have nothing mean, no betrayals, no bribery, none of the things that form the soul of competition in a society divided into classes. But this will in no way hinder the struggle from being absorbing, dramatic and passionate. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise. 1
This was Trotsky s vision for Soviet society in 1924. As we all know, this society did not come about. The Russian Revolution became isolated on the world stage, Stalin s theory of Socialism in One Country prevailed and the state disintegrated into a bureaucratic dictatorship. Power was taken away from the working class, a political genocide ensued and most of the leaders of the Russian Revolution were eventually executed in the Great Purge. Trotsky himself was driven out of Russia and assassinated in Mexico in 1940 by one of Stalin s many assassins.
The same century also saw the successful rise of fascism in Germany and another major world war with untold death and destruction and an even more horrific genocide. Many movements across the world, from Africa to Asia to South America, fought for a better world and were betrayed in one way or another. The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, which meant that whatever remained of the achievements of the Russian Revolution was finally and fully betrayed. Capitalism as the world s main social system has survived to this day not necessarily because of a lack of revolutionary will or movement but because of a lack of genuinely principled revolutionary leadership. We have not reached the end of history, we are not living in some perfect new age, hyper-modern cyber world or some sugar-coated alternate reality or a third-wave feminist spiritual dawn. We have carried all the tragedies of the past century over to ours, minus the global war so far but one can t rule that out. Our environment is at the brink of ecological collapse. On this earth eight billionaires have more wealth than the bottom half of the world s population. Poverty, hunger, ignorance, depression, illness and epidemics have not been eliminated. Our technology has improved immeasurably but in so many ways we have undergone a great cultural and intellectual decline. My generation has grown up surrounded by social regression not progression.
Yes, there is now more diversity at the top and more minorities have representation in the upper echelons, but this is not real progress. Today we confuse personal career advancement with great social advancement, but a few people winning the lottery or even a hundred people or even a thousand people from all different backgrounds, genders and colours is not the same thing as millions and millions of people seeing a very real and tangible improvement in their standard of living. Radical wealth distribution would save transgender lives, not just a change of words or attitudes or a change in the casting of roles in film and television which identity politics often achieves through intimidation and attacking artistic freedom.
Still, when I read the above-quoted words it gives me great hope for art, fashion and our collective future. We also can t disregard the fact that even though the Russian Revolution did not deliver the society we would all hope for, it gave birth to remarkable principles as well as advancements in economic planning, science, art and culture.
I often surprise men on dates with my political education, or journalists or friends. To most people, modelling and Marxism live in two separate worlds and should never, ever mix. Tansy Hoskins has done a good job of applying Marxism to fashion. Trotsky was applying Marxism to the art of his times. Fashion might have built for itself an incredibly elitist, cold-hearted, overly polished and unnecessarily bitchy image, it might be, as Tansy quotes, capitalism s favourite child and a ruthless, profit-hungry industry in its own right, but it is still an art form. The designer still creates. I would compare fashion most of all to architecture because feeling takes a back seat to technique, construction and outer aesthetic, whereas of course in music, theatre, film and painting feeling is central. However, feeling, empathy for the world, an understanding of the times, an understanding of history and a love for humanity usually makes every art form and every person only better. The Bauhaus understood this. Too much of fashion today is about items of clothing and not enough about the human being clothed. As a result of the cultural decline and the domination of capitalist thinking, most creative fields today suffer from a lack of respect for humanity, but this is especially so in fashion. As a result, we have not produced great art or artists or thinkers. Where is the Shakespeare of our age? Where is the Shakespeare of fashion?
My new-age spiritual friend tells me I m not a real Marxist because I shop at Walmart. He was probably joking, but either way this type of thinking is indicative of a whole layer of radical middle-class people. Progressive consumerism is where they begin and end. The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion clearly shows that the problem is bigger than one company or two or three or a dozen. Progressive consumerism is nice, if one doesn t lecture or judge working-class and poor people with much less buying power, but real structural change cannot happen without an organised and progressive assault on the whole system. That assault is only possible with the power of a conscious working class imbued with socialist goals. Creativity plays no small role in lifting and sensitizing consciousness.
As a result of Covid-19 I moved to New Mexico and got a part time job as a waitress. In America my position is that of a food runner, I am at the bottom of the restaurant hi