Tansy E. Hoskins is an award winning author and journalist who investigates the global fashion industry. She’s the author of The Anti-Capitalist Book Of Fashion, Foot Work, and Stitched Up. This work has taken her to Bangladesh, India, North Macedonia, and to the Topshop warehouses in Solihull.

“I definitely believe at the moment that fashion brands, big fashion in particular, they just exist to exploit people. It's an excuse to exploit the poor, basically. I see fashion as part of this very extractive global economic society where 100, 150 years ago, that extraction was very obvious. You had the enslavement of people. You had taxation. You had literally armies turning up and occupying the land that they wanted and just taking resources or land. These days it's more subtle, but the brands are still following those colonial pathways.

I'm like sat here in London and, you know, there's a reason why British brands go to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, following the same colonial trade routes. It's also a system very much based on really unfair debt and a total lack of debt justice whereby Global South economies are having to earn foreign capital by opening themselves up to these export industries, whether that's cotton or coffee or garments. 80% of everything that Bangladesh exports are garments. It is a ludicrous position for an economy to be in. And it's very deliberate exploitation as well. Brands make these sourcing decisions very, very deliberately.

They go where they think that workers' rights will be suppressed and environmental legislation will be suppressed. And if anything does happen that the government will step in and do the suppressing and just give them a sort of carte blanche to do whatever they want.

So at the moment, it's very difficult to point at any part of the fashion industry and go, that's not exploitative. You know, that's exploiting the land, that's exploiting these people, that's based on fossil fuels. Those toxic dyes are going into the river. It's a deeply exploitative, industry.”

www.plutobooks.com/9780745346618/the-anti-capitalist-book-of-fashion/

www.amazon.co.uk/Foot-Work-What-Your-Shoes-Are-Doing-to-the-World-Tansy-Hoskins/dp/1474609856/

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Photo credit: Sarah Van Looy