Overdressed

今シーズン初のプチトマトとナスが採れました。

First cherry tomatoes and eggplants of the season.

I finished reading Overdressed by Elizabeth Cline, which was the last Colette Book Club book.

Hmmm, where should I start. First, reading Overdressed was like reading my own senior thesis (I was a sociology major). The author had done a lot of research and had a lot of statistics and research results to talk about. But the story is so shallow. I expected a bit more in depth story, especially when she was visiting factories and garment district on her own and had first hand impression to report.

It felt like she was stretching the story too much to make it a book. Anecdote here, statistics there, but what is being told is the same: Americans are obsessed too much with fast fashion, which can only be achieved by abuse of cheap labor overseas. We all know that; that is the principle of capitalism. What I wanted was the author to tell the "story" instead of some statistics.

The contents are also not organized very well. Her field research stories are haphazard, and often redundant.

So that was a bummer. I think the whole book can be shaved down to a few page magazine story and that would have been better.

As a subject matter, the book had a few points that I had never thought of. One was that all the polyester garments that I own and so prevalent in clothes these days are not biodegradable. Never thought of garments as ever-lasting garbage.

The other thing was the growth of Chinese economy and Chinese labor not being the cheap labor anymore. The author raised a good point about other developing country not having the technological and labor capacity to fill in China's shoes.

The last bit it got me was actually mentioned at the very first part of the book: that industry garment sewing, despite being done in a big scale factory, is still done by people. I mean, at all other mass production, factory workers just push buttons and machines do the job automatically. But when it comes to garment sewing, the sewing machines, no matter how specialized, are only tools, that require workers to operate one-on-one.

The book had such hypes a few years ago, so my expectation was high. I guess my impression of the book would have been different had I read it when it first came out. The subject matter, the "shocking" part of the fast fashion, has already gone stale. I wouldn't call it irrelevant, but it was an old story. The book would have had more lasting effect if the author focused more on the in-depth report or use more book appropriate writing.