The Hidden Cost of Luxury Fashion

Of the 32 employees working at a garment factory in Italy, nine of them didn’t have the required documentation to work legally. Of those nine, two of them were illegal immigrants from China. The workers slept in the factory, where there would be shifts of people who continued to work overnight, to ensure 24-hour production. The safety mechanisms of the equipment the workers used were taken out so they could work faster. What would you do if I told you that this factory belonged to Dior, one of the top luxury brands? The bags produced by this factory cost Dior only $52 to make, and yet the average price is over $2,000. Even with new laws, the fashion industry continues to violate basic human rights.

In the U.S., 80% of employers do not pay their worker's minimum wage (cite). One employer has been reported to only pay $1.58 in a state where minimum wage was $15. Across the globe, less than 2% of the 75 million people working in retail manufacturing make a living wage (Department of Labor 2023).

This is also common in Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Indonesia, where the majority of wages are only a quarter to a half of what is needed to survive. In Bangladesh, there were over one hundred documented human rights violations over the course of less than half a year. Of the top fifty-five most influential and known brands, almost all claim to be following the right practices, yet only twelve of them pay their workers at or above minimum wage, but . Around 27 million people worldwide are affected by sicknesses caused by the poor working conditions they face in the fashion industry. More than 5% of fashion workers will experience a work-related injury, a number that is expected to rise.

People in the fashion industry struggle to survive off of the wages they get paid, some being less than a quarter of minimum wage. Of these, almost three quarters are young women between the ages of 18-24. Even in the rare case where the companies pay the minimum wage of the country, most of the time minimum wage is not equal to a living wage, which still keeps the workers in poverty. The low wages cause the children of fashion workers to be forced to start working as well at a young age, which prevents  them from receiving formal education and keeps them in a cycle of poverty.

Child labor is also rampant in the fashion industry. Over 71% of child labor is in agriculture, so most that is found in the fashion industry is during cotton production. 

I find this issue so frustrating because it is not going to affect the companies by a large margin to fix, as all they would have to do would be raise their prices by 1%-4% for the majority of companies. This implicates nearly all consumers, because it is almost impossible to avoid shopping at brands that treat their workers negatively due to the lack of them. 

If fashion brands don’t start stepping up to fix this issue soon, the damage could become irreversible. Even with all the research on the violations of rights occurring in the industry, no one is stepping up to take responsibility for this issue. Although this isn’t a problem that one person can fix by themselves, we all need to come together as a community to raise awareness and advocate for stricter laws on violations of human rights.