Eye opening and interesting story. It really makes you think about the purchases you make and how what feels like a small splurge can really affect someone far away.

I liked the flow of the story, starting from the beginning and breaking for each stage. I found some of the stories really hard to read but so shocking and really makes me re-think about the things I buy. This one will stick with me. I highly recommend it!

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

UNRAVELED

There’s a delightfully subversive question at the heart of Maxine Bedat’s book Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment: how much do you really know about where your clothes come from?

It’s a loaded question, albeit one to which people seldom give much thought beyond whatever the label on an article of clothing says (if there is a label at all). Yet Bedat’s point is that the fashion industry has become so fragmented and specialized that there is no longer any single “source” to speak of for many pieces of clothing, which has significant socioeconomic consequences for those involved in their manufacture and sale (particularly on the frontlines). More, those consequences extend far beyond the places where our clothes are made since there is a substantial secondary market for used clothes even after they’ve been disposed.

If it isn’t already obvious, Unraveled is a book with an activist orientation. It highlights for readers how the fashion industry has become a race to the bottom among the lowest cost producers, as well as the devastating impact this has had and continues to have on the environment. Of course, Bedat’s objective in bringing attention to such things is to advocate for change: so much more can be done for workers rights, not to mention to curb the environmental damage from microplastics and dye.

The book is certainly revelatory, though arguably less so for readers in the emerging markets where clothes are made (and where the issues described in Unraveled are for many part and parcel of daily life). Bedat is certainly effective as she takes readers on a globe-trotting adventure to highlight the fashion industry’s shortcomings, and as a legal scholar she is in her element when she laments how international trade policy has shaped the global garment ecosystem as well as how ineffectual government policies around the globe have been at curbing the industry’s “excesses.” Yet this is only to state the obvious: that the formal strictures of law and policy are only as good as the people who enforce them. To expect otherwise would be exceedingly naive.

Unraveled works best where Bedat offers her critiques of the fashion industry rather than her critiques of consumer culture; the latter don’t quite hit home as hard. Though her heart in the right place, Bedat fails to appreciate that perhaps the root of all these problems is not legal or institutional but economic: people like affordable and stylish clothes! They’re willing to spend for it! Yes, there’s a lot wrong with consumer culture the world over; however, at the end of the day, if the incentives are for firms to create waste and exploit labor because it’s profitable to do so, you can bet that’s what a lot of them will do.

It would be unfair to say that Unraveled is more shock value than substance; the uninitiated reader will learn a lot from the book that will help them become more critical consumers and producers of fashion products. Besides, there’s also something to be said for shock value as substance, too. Perhaps someday someone will write a book demonstrating that it is in fact possible to be responsible consumers of fashion products, and that it can be profitable to be producers at the same. But we will not get there without books like Unraveled laying bare what is wrong with the industry and its ecosystem today.

UNRAVELED by Maxine Bedat is subtitled "The Life and Death of a Garment" and Bedat uses nine chapters and a pair of jeans to discuss the various aspects of the clothing marketplace from growing cotton in Texas, through manufacturing (of both a textile and clothing), marketing, and distribution. She also includes chapters which cover purchasing decisions, disposal of used and donated clothing (Americans "throw out more than eighty pounds of textiles per person per year") as well as offering suggestions for future action. I was originally curious about UNRAVELED because there has been a great deal of student interest in this topic recently, with several students completing Junior Themes related to fast fashion and sustainability in the last few years. I have since learned that Bedat is Director of the New Standard Institute, a research and action think tank. Her work has been covered in numerous publications including The New Yorker, Vogue, Fast Company, The Nation and so on. I plan to definitely purchase and recommend UNRAVELED as it covers a 2.5 trillion-dollar industry which impacts all of us; consider the many people Bedat consults: "agronomists, climate scientists, historians, fashion executives, factory executives, and material scientists; labor experts, organizers and laborers; political scientists, toxicologists, psychologists, marketers and economists.” UNRAVELED contains extensive notes and a helpful index; related texts include: Fashionopolis by Dana Thomas and The Conscious Closet by Elizabeth Cline. 4.5 stars

Eye Opening, Yet Critically Flawed. Bedat does *phenomenal* work in this text when reporting what she has found in her investigations of trying to track even a "typical" cotton *garment* from the cotton seed to its eventual use and destruction. Using each chapter as a way to trace one particular step in the chain was truly a stroke of editing genius, as it concentrates just what is happening at that particular stage. And some of it - including the direct link, in Bangladesh at minimum, between garment factories and sex work (where in one particular harrowing tale, a source tells Bedat that when she gets in the van to be taken to a factory as a day worker, she sometimes finds herself at a massage parlor instead) - is utterly horrific. It is these sections of the book that are *so* strong that the book *had* to be rated fairly highly.

HOWEVER, when Bedat speaks almost at *all* of policy or her own opinions... well, this is when the critical flaws become apparent. To be fair, she *is* at least somewhat more balanced than many leftists, and outright points out things that ardent Bernie Sanders / AOC types won't want to hear. But in her attacks of "neoliberalist capitalism" - a running strawman throughout the narrative - ... eh, I'll be a touch gentle and go with "YMMV". If you happen to be on that side, you're going to love her commentary here. If, like me, you find yourself more an adherent of Milton, Mises, Hayek, Bastiat, etc (the so-called "Austrian School of Economics")... you're not going to like her commentary so much. The star reduction, to be clear, isn't from the fact that I don't like much of the commentary - but that I can so easily refute it, despite not being a trained economist (just a - clearly ;) - well read human :D).

And yet, the actual reporting here is simply too strong, too eye opening. This is a book that *needs* to be read for its current issues reporting, if for no other reason - and even if her commentary leads one to contemplate defenestration of the book. If you've read Hafsa Lodi's Modesty or Virginia Postrel's Fabric of Civilization (among presumably numerous other recent texts on fashion / clothing/ fabric), do yourself a favor and read this one too. Even if you haven't, do yourself a favor and read all three books. ;)