While this may be where the garment was finally sewn
together, it has already been to several other countries. In fact, it's quite
possible this piece of clothing is better travelled than you..
The material used to create it came from lyocell - a
sustainable alternative to cotton. The trees used to make this fibre come
mainly from Europe, according to Lenzing, the Austrian supplier that Zara-owner
Inditex uses.
These fibres were shipped to Egypt and then sent to China
where it was woven into a fabric. This fabric was then sent to Spain where it
was dyed, in this case pink. The fabric was then shipped to Morocco to be cut
into the various parts of the dress and then sewn together.
After this, it was sent back to Spain where it was packaged
and then sent to the UK, the US or any one of the 93 countries where Inditex
has shops.
From dresses to t-shirts and trousers, most items of
clothing sold around the world will have similarly complicated journeys.
Most Inditex garments are made close to its Spanish
headquarters or in nearby countries such as Portugal, Morocco and Turkey. This
is what helps the firm achieve its famously fast reaction times to new trends. Most
of its rivals' supply chains are far less local.
Regardless of where they're based, most factories are not
owned by the fashion brands that use them. Instead, they're selected as
official suppliers. Often these suppliers subcontract work to other factories
for certain tasks, or in order to meet tight deadlines.
This system can make tracking the specific origins of a
single item difficult. I contacted several big clothing brands including
H&M, Marks and Spencer, Gap and Arcadia Group last week to give me a sample
example of the journey of a t-shirt in their basic range from seed to finished
product.
Only Inditex was able to respond in time to meet the
deadline for this article.
"I imagine companies don't want to respond because they
have no clue where the materials they buy come from," says Tim Hunt, a
researcher at Ethical Consumer, which researches the social, ethical and
environmental behaviour of firms.
The difficulties were highlighted devastatingly by the 2013
Rana Plaza disaster where more than 1,100 people were killed and 2,500 injured
when the Bangladesh garment factory collapsed.
In some cases, brands weren't even aware their clothes were
being produced there.
According to the "Behind the Barcode" report by
Christian Aid and development organisation Baptist World Aid Australia, only
16% of the 87 biggest fashion brands publish a full list of the factories where
their clothes are sewn, and less than a fifth of brands know where all of their
zips, buttons, thread and fabric come from.
Non-profit group Fashion Revolution, formed after the Rana
Plaza factory collapse, is leading a campaign to try to force firms to be more
transparent about their supply chains. Every year, around the time of the
disaster it runs a #whomademyclothes campaign encouraging customers to push
firms on this issue.
Fashion Revolution co-founder and creative director Orsola
de Castro says the mass production demands of the fashion industry and the
tight timescales required to get products from the catwalks on to the shelves
as quickly as possible means the manufacturing processes have become
"very, very chaotic".
While newer and smaller fashion brands are creating products
with 100% traceability, she says it's a lot harder for the established giants.
Yet just over a decade ago, Pietra Rivoli had no problems
tracking the journey of a single $6 cotton t-shirt she'd picked out of a sale
bin in a Walmart in Florida. Starting with the tag at the back of the t-shirt,
she tracked its journey backwards from the US "step by step along the
supply chain".
"A shoe leather project," is how Prof Rivoli
describes her journey, which resulted in a book, The Travels of a T-Shirt in
the Global Economy.
As a teacher of finance and international business at
Georgetown University in Washington, Prof Rivoli wanted to investigate her
assumption that free trade benefited all countries.
Her travels took her from the cotton-growing region of
Lubbock in Texas to China, where the t-shirt was sewn together. Eventually, she
ended up in Tanzania on the east coast of Africa, which has a thriving second-hand
clothing market.
Her assumption was that the complicated supply chain was
driven by cost and market forces.
She concluded that a lot of brands' decisions about where to
buy supplies and make their clothing was actually driven by politics. She cites
US agricultural subsidies for cotton growers and China's migration policies
encouraging workers to move from the countryside as examples.
"Rather than a story of how people were competing - how
do I make a faster T-shirt, a better T-shirt, a cheaper T-shirt - what I found
is that the story of the T-shirt was really about how people were using
political power," she says.
The current backlash against global trade is a direct result
of this kind of political interference. This kind of consumer anger could
eventually drive change among fashion firms. Prof Rivoli notes that many firms
now list all their direct suppliers and she says there is a move towards
developing fewer, longer term supplier relationships.
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| Pietra Rivoli travelled from the US to China and Africa to track the journey of a single $6 t-shirt |
