Made in Italy by China: Human Impacts of Globalization on Modern Garment Production in Prato

Abstract

Fashion employs more people on earth than defense and agriculture combined, and contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than all of Europe, making it a conspicuously key actor in the global economy and a villain in the health and sustainability of the planet. Humans today consume more clothing than ever before. As a result of this demand, garment production systems have been reorganized globally to provide the cheapest, most efficient workforce possible. Reliant on global connectivity, the industry exploits labor from marginalized communities who restructure their lives around the requirements of modern fashion—extreme flexibility and the ability to work grueling hours for low wages. It is well established that the fashion industry poses a threat to the environment. However, also implicated in garment consumption and production practices are the health and safety of workers that make clothing. In this article, I investigate how and why Prato, Italy is home to a significant population of Chinese migrants producing a specialized kind of low-cost fashion, pronto moda, often under hazardous conditions that have led to tragic factory disasters. Utilizing a theoretical framework of transnational relationships and localized distributions of labor, I analyze how migrants in Prato created a system of clothing manufacturing that significantly changed fashion fabrication, and the potential for disaster that exists therein. This case study is crucial in understanding how our culture of consumption has led us to these dangerous extremes and the global implications of our purchasing tendencies on both the natural world and our fellow humans. I argue that beyond implementing improved health and safety regulations in factories, the path toward an equitable fashion system—free of disaster—requires a societal and cultural reevaluation of how and why we buy the clothes we do.