A review by katehoward
Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes by Dana Thomas

informative medium-paced

2.0

This book is not for the average person wanting to make their wardrobe more sustainable, it is for an incredibly small portion of the population who can afford to buy a $1,000 dress or $600 white graphic shirt from Stella McCartney. There is a lot of innovation from fashion industry that is showcased but it is mainly focused on luxury brands. The book has a tone that is out of touch with the everyday consumer leading more to a continuation of Dana Thomas’s book on luxury fashion- which I haven’t read and don’t plan to.

I have never had a visceral reaction of annoyance towards a nonfiction book. The information in the book is well-researched, but Thomas is an incredibly privileged white woman who believes that people have a $3,000 yearly budget to buy clothes and should just rent luxury items from fashion rental companies. If Thomas believes that the only way to be sustainable about fashion is too spend thousands of dollar on very few items of clothes than she should have discussed and analyzed how that is a problem for the average consumer who buys more fast fashion than the people buying designer labels.

Thomas’ one answer in the whole book for people who have “champagne taste but […] are more on an H&M budget?” should just “wait to get it in a sale or a sale of the sale of the sale.” It was literally three sentences.

There was also no mention of the racial and classist history of the cotton industry in America, never mentioning slavery, segregation, etc. in the South. There is even a point where there is a “cotton picking party” were they were laughing and singing in the field.

There is a large focus on Stella McCartney, and Thomas granted her less scrutiny compared to other brands even though McCartney ignored her own company’s philosophy of not harming animals by creating and making pieces out of silk, or arguing that faux leather is better than real leather even though faux leather can also harm the environment as it is made from PVC (although I do believe McCartney was working with one of the brands mentioned to create faux leather from something other than fossil fuels). Thomas could have used those instances as example of even the most sustainable high-quality brands aren’t yet 100% sustainable and use it as an opportunity to further educate readers as it is more common to know about the harm animals go through for leather than for silk, or the damage that faux leather can do to the environment when there are debates surrounding the topic.