4 The Nation. May 20, 2013 The Nation. Bangladesh and Us EDITOR & PUBLISHER: Katrina vanden Heuvel PRESIDENT: Teresa Stack In March 2011, I traveled undercover as a MANAGING EDITOR: Roane Carey LITERARY EDITOR: John Palattella garment buyer to Dhaka, Bangladesh, to do research for my EXECUTIVE EDITORS: Betsy Reed, Richard Kim (online) book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. SENIOR EDITORS: Richard Lingeman, Emily Douglas (online) COPY DIRECTOR: Rick Szykowny I found the garment industry there to be very incestuous and COPY CHIEF: Judith Long opaque. I thought I’d arranged several garment factory tours, ASSOCIATE LITERARY EDITOR: Miriam Markowitz ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Liliana Segura yet twice I ended up in the smoky offices of slick-looking, gold- ASSISTANT COPY EDITOR: Matthew Grace ring-wearing “middlemen” who told me COPY ASSOCIATE: Lisa Vandepaer MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Francis Reynolds COMMENT they owned a portfolio of factories. “Clients COMMUNITY EDITOR: Annie Shields never want to see the factory,” they told me. RESEARCH DIRECTOR/ASSISTANT EDITOR: Kate Murphy ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR: Barbara Stewart One middleman tried to sell me H&M clothes that the brand INTERNS: Alleen Brown, James Cersonsky, Catherine Defontaine, Andrew Bard Epstein, had never picked up, the idea being that I could sell them il- Luis K. Feliz, Elana Leopold, Alec Luhn, Anna Simonton (Washington), Cos Tollerson, Sarah Woolf legally. “No thanks,” I told him. I left deeply cynical about this WASHINGTON: CORRESPONDENT: John Nichols; REPORTER: George Zornick international racket to produce cheap, disposable clothes. NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: William Greider In fact, I remember having the distinct feeling that it was only EDITOR AT LARGE: Christopher Hayes COLUMNISTS: Eric Alterman, Melissa Harris-Perry, Naomi Klein, Katha Pollitt (on leave), a matter of time before something terrible happened—some- Jessica Valenti, Patricia J. Williams, Gary Younge thing like the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory on DEPARTMENTS: Architecture, Michael Sorkin; Art, Barry Schwabsky; Corporations, Robert April 24 that left more than 400 dead, with the toll rising every Sherrill; Defense, Michael T. Klare; Environment, Mark Hertsgaard; Films, Stuart Klawans; Legal Affairs, David Cole; National Security, Jeremy Scahill; Net Movement, Ari Melber; day as the bodies of workers are extracted from the wreckage. Peace and Disarmament, Jonathan Schell; Poetry, Jordan Davis; Sex, JoAnn Wypijewski; I did manage to visit a few garment and textile factories in and Sports, Dave Zirin; United Nations, Barbara Crossette; Deadline Poet, Calvin Trillin CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Kai Bird, Robert L. Borosage, Stephen F. Cohen, Marc Cooper, around Dhaka, the capital city, on whose outskirts in the indus- Arthur C. Danto, Mike Davis, Slavenka Drakulic, Robert Dreyfuss, Susan Faludi, Thomas trial suburb of Savar the collapsed Rana Plaza building was lo- Ferguson, Doug Henwood, Max Holland, Michael Moore, Christian Parenti, Richard Pollak, Joel Rogers, Karen Rothmyer, Robert Scheer, Herman Schwartz, Bruce Shapiro, cated. They looked to untrained eyes like any other factory I’ve Edward Sorel, Jessica Valenti, Jon Wiener, Amy Wilentz, Art Winslow seen. Nothing stuck out as unsafe or exploitative. Herein lies CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Ben Adler, Ari Berman, William Deresiewicz, Lee Fang, Liza Featherstone, Laura Flanders, Dana Goldstein, Eyal Press, Lizzy Ratner, Scott the problem. Currently, big fashion brands audit their suppliers Sherman, Kai Wright a few times a year at most, hiring someone to walk through with BUREAUS: London, Maria Margaronis, D.D. Guttenplan; Southern Africa, Mark Gevisser a checklist—fire extinguisher, check; clearly marked exit signs, EDITORIAL BOARD: Deepak Bhargava, Norman Birnbaum, Barbara Ehrenreich, Richard Falk, Frances FitzGerald, Eric Foner, Greg Grandin, Philip Green, Lani Guinier, Tom check; code of conduct and workers’ rights posted on the wall, Hayden, Ilyse Hogue, Tony Kushner, Elinor Langer, Deborah W. Meier, Toni check. At an Umbro factory I visited in downtown Dhaka, the Morrison, Walter Mosley, Victor Navasky, Pedro Antonio Noguera, Richard Parker, Michael Pertschuk, Elizabeth Pochoda, Marcus G. Raskin, Kristina Rizga, Andrea Batista emergency fire-exit plan was posted in English, which the work- Schlesinger, Dorian T. Warren, David Weir, Roger Wilkins ers could not read. Does any of this do any good in a country ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, SPECIAL PROJECTS/WEBSITE: Peter Rothberg lacking in basic building codes and things like fire escapes? ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/DEVELOPMENT: Peggy Randall DIRECTOR OF FINANCE: Mary van Valkenburg Bangladesh is an extremely poor country, separated by great HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR: Jeanne Perry swaths of geography from the modernized, developed world. VICE PRESIDENT, ADVERTISING: Ellen Bollinger ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Amanda Hale Dhaka is a winding, bustling snarl. The power lines look like VICE PRESIDENT, CIRCULATION: Arthur Stupar balls of yarn, and at the time of my visit, the electricity was cut- CIRCULATION MANAGER: Michelle O’Keefe AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT & DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER: Katelyn Belyus ting out an average of six times a day. The roads are so clogged VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCTION/MARKETING SERVICES: Omar Rubio with rickshaws, buses, animals and cars that it takes hours to PRODUCER/WEB COPY EDITOR: Sandy McCroskey PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: Mel Gray travel anywhere. When brands like Walmart and Benetton said DIRECTOR OF NATION BUILDERS/INVESTOR RELATIONS: Joliange Wright they didn’t realize their clothes were being made in Rana Plaza, NATION BUILDERS ASSISTANT/AD SALES PLANNER: Loren Lynch PUBLICITY DIRECTOR: Caitlin Graf it didn’t surprise me at all. When I visited, I scheduled a meet- CIRCULATION/BUSINESS ASSISTANT: Vivian Gómez ing with a labor leader who was traveling from the factories DIRECTOR, DIGITAL PRODUCTS: John W. Cary DIGITAL PRODUCT MANAGER: Joshua Leeman in Savar to Dhaka, but the gridlock was so bad he eventually TECHNOLOGY MANAGER: Jason Brown called and said he wouldn’t be able to make it. Benetton later BOOKKEEPER: Maura MacCarthy ASSISTANT TO VICTOR NAVASKY: Mary Taylor Schilling admitted to placing a single “one-off” order with Rana Plaza. DATA ENTRY/MAIL COORDINATOR: John Holtz Who knows what else happens in Dhaka once the brands’ rep- ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT: Kathleen Thomas COMMUNITY COORDINATOR/BUSINESS ASSISTANT: Sarah Arnold resentatives leave? The garment industry, just like the city, is ADVERTISING ASSISTANT: Kit Gross unregulated and haphazard. ACADEMIC LIAISON: Charles Bittner The Bangladeshis I met understood acutely the opportunity PUBLISHER EMERITUS: Victor Navasky to make money by anticipating Western needs and tastes. It’s LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: E-mail to [email protected] (300-word limit). Letters are subject to editing for reasons of space and clarity. all about appearances there, which often don’t hold up under SUBMISSIONS: Queries only, no manuscripts. Go to TheNation.com and click on “about,” then “submissions” for a query form. Poetry may be mailed to The Nation, 33 Irving Place, New York, the slightest scrutiny. The amenity-less, hospital-like hotel I NY 10003. SASE. stayed at in Dhaka, called Lake View Plaza, is described online INTERNET: Selections from the current issue become available Thursday morning at TheNation.com. as an “International Standard Deluxe Hotel,” yet there was Printed on 100% recycled 40% post-consumer acid- and chlorine-free paper, in the USA. often no electricity in my room and my balcony faced a slum. May 20, 2013 The Nation. 5 There was something familiar about Rana Plaza, owned by an- cessful, unionized factory in the Dominican Republic that pays other slick-looking, gold-ring-wearing wannabe entrepreneur a living wage [see Peter Dreier, “Another Factory Is Possible,” (luckily the man , Sohel Rana, was arrested on April 28). From November 7, 2011]. Get that? The company is not subcon- the outside, Rana Plaza looked quite impressive for Bangla- tracting. It actually owns and takes full responsibility for the desh. It was eight stories high, and the facade had ultramodern factory that makes its products. And its products cost the same windows. But it was destined to be a pile of rubble. as those of its rivals (Nike and Adidas). I hope in the coming As beautiful as Bangladesh is and as gracious as the people months we see major fashion brands adopting similar practices, are, I couldn’t think of any reason an international corporation or coming up with their own innovative and ethical alternatives would do business in such a place except cheap labor. These to the cheap-fashion juggernaut. As the tragedy in Bangladesh fashion companies and the entire American economy have has shown, it’s long past time. ELIZABETH CLINE formed a corrosive and now deadly reliance on cheap consumer goods. Corporations have persuaded consumers that cheap Elizabeth Cline is a New York–based journalist and the author of Over- prices are fair. And this paradigm has hollowed out the middle dressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. class and led to the exploitation of both people and planet. I am an impassioned advocate for small-scale, locally pro- duced fashion. But where are the large fashion companies willing to take a risk and reinvent their brands around ethical MoMA’s Demolition Derby fashion production? It’s time to trust that the consumer, all things being equal, will buy an ethically made product. We’re Imagine that the Guggenheim Museum