Giada Nizzoli

hat is the real cost behind a £1 top? In this essay I am going to

introduce Bauman’s concept of ‘liquid life’ and use it to explain

frenetic consumerism. I will then proceed to explore the ‘hidden’

issues of manufacturing processes and labour that lie behind our consumption choices with a

focus on fast fashion; I am going to use the company Primark as my main case study to

provide examples of modern slavery, child labour, pollution and waste. Subsequently, I am

going to compare it to the fair trade and sustainability promoted by slow fashion, using the

ethos of the company People Tree as main example. I will then tie this back to Bauman’s

work to explain why so many customers still choose fast fashion despite its humanitarian and

environmental cost.Polish sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman saw global

capitalistic economy as a chaotic stream overwhelming its members, who are encouraged to

shift roles and position in a nomad attitude. Consequently, the life led in such a fluid society

can only be a ‘liquid life’: uncertain, precarious and constantly changing. We avoid long-term

commitments because we prefer living a ‘succession of new beginnings (Bauman, 2006, p.

2)’, like tourists of our own life.

W

This lifestyle and our frenetic consumerism are concepts that reinvigorate themselves.

Obviously, in a liquid life, possessions are also liquid: everything is disposable and has an

expiry date even when it could last much longer. We lead our chaotic lives so fast that our

secondary needs are constantly reshaped, and we feel the urge to buy more, especially to fill

emotional voids and feel better about ourselves. This is because ‘liquid life feeds on the self’s

dissatisfaction with itself’ (Bauman, 2006, p. 11).

In fact, a liquid society thrives on a multitude of other-directed people. As Riesman

defined them, they are personality types ‘dependent on other-direction’ (2001/1950, p. 8)

who are in constant need of validation from the rest of society: without that validation, they

would struggle to find their way in the world. It is not a coincidence that ‘one prime

psychological lever of the other-directed person is a diffuse anxiety’ (Riesman, 2001/1950, p.

25): their consumeristic choices are driven by the unsettling concern of being ahead of what

Bauman calls the ‘style pack’, that is the reference group whose approval can tip the scale

towards success or failure (2007, p. 82), for example parents, co-workers, friends, role

models, influencers and mass media. This style pack or reference group tells them what to

buy, what to wear and how to wear it, through peer pressure or persuasive advertisement.

Commercials and ads are aimed at making potential customers feel insecure and

unsatisfied, and they pledge a promise of happiness that can only be found if we buy certain

items. Nevertheless, as Sigmund Freud explained, ‘there is no such thing as the state of

happiness; we are happy only for a brief moment when satisfying a vexing need, but

immediately afterwards boredom sets in’ (as cited in Bauman, 2005, p. 39). This means that

‘each single promise must be deceitful, or at least exaggerated, if the search is to go on.

Without the repeated frustration of desires, consumer demand might quickly dry out and the

consumer-targeted economy would run out of steam’ (Bauman, 2006, p. 81). Therefore, all

the items that we buy in order to feel satisfied are not actually blessing us with the happiness

that we were promised. Instead, what they do is chaining us to the habit of compulsive and

constant buying, like a vicious cycle cleverly designed to keep us unsatisfied.

Consequently, the members of a liquid society are affected by a ‘consumerist

syndrome’ that has ‘sharply shortened the timespan separating not just the wanting from the

getting […], but also the birth of the wanting from its demise’ (Bauman, 2006, p. 83).

Customers buy items more frequently, but they get rid of them prematurely, because the

consumerist syndrome has ‘put the value of novelty above that of lastingness’ (Bauman,

2006, p. 83).

Unfortunately, on 23rd January 2008 Britain officially entered recession (Wearden,

2009). This led to an employment crisis and job insecurity, with illegal work and an increase

in temporary or zero-hour contracts. The recovery was slow, and in 2017 the economic

growth is still ‘slower than all other G7 and European countries’ (Chapman, 2017).

Furthermore, inflation has been rising at a faster rate than minimum wage, reinforcing the gap

between working and middle class: ‘coupled with low pay growth, the rising cost of living

means real wages are falling, […] and the Bank of England has expressed alarm about the

increase in personal debt’ (Kollewe, 2017).

In such a precarious and poorer situation, buying the same amount of goods has become

harder, but it does not imply that people are willing to heal from their consumerist syndrome.

‘Poverty is also a social and psychological condition: as the propriety of human existence is

measured by standards of decent life practised by any given society, inability to abide by such

standards is itself a cause of distress, agony and self-mortification’ (Bauman, 2005, pp. 37-

38): because in a liquid society normality consists in consumerism, the struggling working

class does not want to be left out from that. No matter how badly people are struggling with

money, they cannot stand to be considered flawed consumers. Therefore, if the average

consumer has less money but still wants to buy more and more items, those items must be

cheap. Unfortunately, in order to produce extremely cheap items, companies often end up

using sweatshops, low quality materials and questionable environmental practices.

A perfect example of Bauman’s ‘liquid modernity’ and compulsive consumerism is the

clothing industry and, specifically, fast fashion. In fact, if people only bought what they

actually needed, they could wear the same jumper for a few years; certain items used on rare

occasions—such as swimming suits and scarves—could potentially last even longer. For the

clothing industry to survive, though, more frequent purchases are needed. Therefore, fast

fashion constantly comes up with design changes to follow the weekly trends started on the

catwalk. Through clever advertising campaigns and tactical use of social media and

influencers, fast fashion companies convince consumers that they must buy more items of

clothing, even if the ones they own are in perfect conditions, encouraging them to see those

cheaper clothes as disposable. As a result, from 2000 to 2014 the number of clothing items

purchased by the average customer each year increased by 60%, but they are kept for half as

long (Remy, Speelman, & Swartz, 2016).

Let us take Primark as case study. Founded in 1962, the Irish clothing and accessories

company currently counts 290 stores across Europe and the USA, 174 of which are based in

the UK. With its cheapest top costing only one pound, Primark is the emblem of fast fashion.

The low-quality fabric and garments used to manufacture clothes at such low prices make

them easily damageable (Bain, 2015), but customers do not seem to mind since they are

constantly encouraged to see their clothes as disposable.

To keep the prices low, Primark does not offer the option of online shopping nor

invests much in advertising. Its finance director John Bason explained that, in the past,

Primark relied mainly on word of mouth, confident of the allure of such low prices. Now,

‘with social media, word of mouth is increasingly powerful’ (as cited by Butler, 2014).

Primark has over 10.5 million followers on Facebook and Instagram alone, and it has also

created a platform called Primania, where customers are encouraged to ‘put your Primark on

and show it off’ (www.primark.com/en/primania). Fashion pictures on social media are an

effective means to reinforce Bauman’s concept of ‘style pack’ and encourage customers to

buy more clothes to look like specific influencers and make a statement.

Furthermore, it is now a Youtube trend to do compulsive shopping in Primark and post

videos to show all the items bought: these are called ‘Primark Hauls’. A popular example is

Youtuber Zoella, who currently counts over 12 million followers and targets teenage girls.

Her video ‘The Biggest Primark Haul I've Ever Done’ (Zoella, 2017) reached over 3.7

million views. Remembering Riesman’s concept of ‘other-directed people’, it is easy to see

how these viewers looking for a role model can be influenced by similar videos and acquire

the practice of compulsive buying in fast fashion stores. Zoella’s wardrobe-clear-out videos

(MoreZoella, 2016) also reinforce the idea that clothes are disposable and that her followers

should buy more than they need just to chuck most of it away after a few months.

Basically, Primark is so popular because it allows people with less money to buy more

items. This compulsive buying will allow the poorer working-class consumers to experience

several moments of illusory happiness before going back to the chronic dissatisfaction

promoted by liquid society itself. However, let us repeat the initial question: what is the real

humanitarian and environmental cost behind a £1 t-shirt?

The process of globalisation resulted in ‘cross-border arrangements that multinational

companies operate for designing, sourcing, manufacturing, distributing, and retailing goods in

a way that maximizes efficiency’ (Williams, 2014, p. 54). The factories are usually based in

third world countries, where labour is cheaper. For example, Primark sources mainly from

poorer countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia and Ethiopia (‘Brand: Primark’,

2017). These multinationals do not own nor control the factories: they are managed through a

network of contractor and sub-contractor firms to minimise costs.

Unfortunately, to attract investments from foreign multinationals, third world countries

‘come under pressure to relax the supposed regulatory burden for fear that if they do not do

so, multinational companies will transfer their activities to countries that will’ (Williams,

2014, p. 56). This means that most of the factories based in these countries are in fact

sweatshops: they force workers to excessively long shifts, child labour, discrimination and

dangerous working conditions. In this way, multinationals like Primark manage to produce

extremely cheap pieces of clothing to satisfy the consumers’ tight budget, but are also

responsible for the lowering of labour standards around the world.

In 2006 Primark joined the Ethical Trade Initiative, ‘a leading alliance of companies,

trade unions and NGOs that promotes respect for workers' rights around the globe’

(www.ethicaltrade.org). Furthermore, the Irish clothing company compiled an ethical Code of

Conduct to promote high standards of labour: its guiding principles are based on both the

ETI’s Base Code and the International Labour Organization conventions, and include fair

wages, legal working hours and workers’ rights (Hendrilksz, 2017). This is handed out to

factories and suppliers abroad, which must adhere to it if they want to keep doing business

with Primark. It also repeatedly stated that that they do not use sweatshop and that ‘it’s the

job of our Ethical Trade and Environmental Sustainability Team, a group of more than ninety

experts based in key sourcing countries, to monitor compliance. They audit every factory at

least once a year, sometimes more, to check whether international standards are being met’

(“People and Production”, n.a.).

Unfortunately, it is merely a formality. ‘This written down reality says nothing about

what is really happening within the supply chain,’ explains one of the Campaign

Coordinators of the Clean Clothes Campaign. ‘More transparency is needed to verify if the

claims being made in Code of Conducts are really true’ (as cited by Hendrilksz, 2017).

However, there is not enough transparency, since Primark does not publish its audit reports

nor its supplier list. It is unlikely that remote factories adhere to the Code of Conduct when

they are not actually closely monitored and when many of their employees are illiterate,

especially in countries like Ethiopia, where less than half of the adult population can read

(Unesco, 2017). Despite Primark’s frequent claims of not using sweatshops and regularly

monitoring its suppliers, there have been several episodes that proved otherwise.

In 2008 a Panorama report showed footage of children in Indian refugee camps forced

to sew clothes. This confirmed that some of Primark’s suppliers were indeed using child

labour. Broadcast by the BBC, the documentary reached 4.2 million viewers, that is 19% of

the available audience in primetime. Many horrified customers protested, especially outside

the busy branch in Oxford Street, London. Nevertheless, even though Primark fired three

suppliers in India, the overall situation did not improve (Hopkins, 2008).

Sweatshop conditions were found even in a Primark supplier in the UK, as shown by

an investigation by the Observer and the BBC in 2009. A Manchester-based factory was

paying its employees only £3 per hour (while, at that time, the minimum wage was £5.73),

forcing them to endure 12-hour-shifts, and promoting illegal immigration (McDougall, 2009).

Although the case survived longer in the local press, it quickly lost national attention.

A stronger wakeup call came on 24th April 2013, when the collapse of the Rana Plaza

building in Bangladesh killed 1,134 people and injured around 2,500. The eight-storey

factory complex manufactured for several fast fashion brands, including Primark (Hoskins,

2015). It clearly did not follow the safety regulations included in the Code of Conduct, and it

was not monitored properly. Broadly reported across different media, the episode sparked

controversy around the world, and finally got people to start questioning how ethical the

clothes they buy actually are. Primark paid compensations that amounted to $14 million

(‘Primark long-term compensation’, 2015). Despite some protests and attempted boycotts,

though, Primark’s sale rose by 20% in the three months following the Rana Plaza disaster

(Neville, 2013). This proved once more that Bauman’s liquid life and consumerist syndrome

go beyond humanitarian ethos.

The sweatshop controversy went on. In 2014, a customer found a cry for help in the

pocket of a pair of trouser bought in Primark’s Belfast store. Wrapped in a prison identity

card, the note was handwritten in Chinese and stated that the prisoners of the jail were forced

to work fifteen hours a day to produce clothes for export, with worse food than pigs and dogs;

its author also pled for the international community to denounce China and get them some

help (BBC, 2014).

It is not surprising to find that, two years after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building,

only 4% of Primark’s suppliers were rated as grade one, that is ‘with good systems in place

to ensure ethical compliance, and a limited number of minor issues’. 65% were rated as grade

two—‘evidence of some good systems in place, however, the suppliers had not achieved full

ethical compliance’—whereas 31% were still grade three, which means that ‘ethical

compliance was not met and significant and numerous issues were found (‘Brand: Primark’,

2017). This proves that most of the employees are still working in sweatshop conditions:

underpaid, exploited and lacking human rights.

Other manufacturing issues found in fast fashion multinationals like Primark concern

their lack of sustainability. Fast fashion is in fact one of the dirtiest industries in terms of

pollution, second only to oil (Sweeny, 2015). Pollution is perpetrated through large emissions

of tonnes of greenhouse gases (especially because of the ginning, transport and processing of

cotton, and the creation of synthetic fibres). Due to the expansion of its network, Primark’s

emissions have increased by 15% from 2014 to 2016, when they released 395 tonnes of

greenhouse gases (Associated British Food, 2016).

Sustainability is far from being reached because of its strong water footprint, too. ‘More

than a half trillion gallons of fresh water are used in the dyeing of textiles each year. The dye

wastewater is discharged, often untreated, into nearby rivers, where it reaches the sea,

eventually spreading around the globe’ (Sweeny, 2015). In three years, Primark’s use of

water increased by 6% (Hendrilksz, 2017).

To keep up with the liquid world of fast fashion and the ever changing trends,

Primark’s stores and warehouses are left with unsold items. Despite recycling the majority of

its waste, 5,000 tonnes of surplus ended up in landfills in 2016 alone (Hendrilksz, 2017).

Furthermore, more waste is originated by products that have actually been bought, but

quickly disposed of. The textile waste at council tips has risen from 7 to 30% in five years

(Tibbetts, 2008) and media have labelled these dangerous figures ‘Primark effect’.

In opposition to the manufacturing and labour issues concerning fast fashion, other

brands responded with the sustainable concept of ‘slow fashion’, ethically sourced and made

to last longer. Safia Minney pioneered these fair trade ethos when she founded the clothing

company People Tree in 1996 in Japan, and expanded it to the UK in 2001. In 2009, she was

made Member of the Order of the British Empire thanks to her ethical work (Báez, &

Michels, n.a.). Furthermore, People Tree was the first international clothing company to be

awarded the FairTrade product label by the World Fair Trade Organization, a ‘global

network of organisations representing the Fair Trade supply chain’ (“About WFTO”, n.a.).

The slow fashion company abides to ten fair trade standards: creating opportunities for

economically disadvantaged producers, transparency and accountability, fair trading

practises, payment of a fair price, ensuring no child labour, commitment to gender equality,

ensuring good working conditions, capacity building, promoting fair trade, and respect for the

environment (“Fair Trade Standards”, n.a.). Despite having suppliers in poorer countries like

Primark, People Tree conducts regular checks to ensure that no sweatshops are employed:

they ‘work closely with people in developing countries to build viable businesses that can

sustain communities (“Who makes our products”, n.a.) and they make ‘50% of payments in

advance to help them doing the job’ (“Ethical Retailer”, 2013).

People Tree and other slow fashion companies produce clothes that are designed to last

longer and do not follow trends, to avoid unnecessary waste and compulsive buying. Putting

the value of lastingness above that of novelty, slow fashion is the opposite of what is

encouraged by the consumerist syndrome. Nevertheless, the use of quality garments, green

practices and fair payments comes with higher prices. For example, the cheapest People Tree

dress is over £50 (www.peopletree.co.uk/dresses), whereas Primark’s is only £3

(www.primark.com/en/products/category/women,womens-clothing,dresses). There is

obviously a higher humanitarian and environmental cost behind a £3 dress, but it is easily

hidden or, better, conveniently overlooked.

In conclusion, Bauman’s concept of ‘liquid life’ offers a timely frame to understand

popular consumption choices, especially in times of job insecurities and wages that do not

match the growing rate of inflation. As shown from this analysis of the clothing industry, the

frenetic consumer—encouraged by the style pack and social media—prefers to buy many

items of clothing at a cheaper price, but higher humanitarian and environmental cost. The

opposite solution, that is buying fewer items at higher price but much lower ethical cost,

deprives dissatisfied consumers from the opportunity to experience the illusory happiness of

compulsive buying. The several scandals that proved that Primark and other fast fashion

companies use sweatshop and pollute more showed that those ‘hidden’ issues are not actually

‘hidden’: sadly, people prefer to pretend that they are.

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