ICYMI, for the past week or so, a viral Esprit sweatshirt from Costco has been making the rounds on social media. My DMs and inbox were blowing up with questions about it, so I did some research and wrote a quick post about it.

Strangers have been insulting me on the internet for years because I speak about some uncomfortable truths. And one of them is this: we all have to change our habits if we’re going to make a difference in the environmental and human right disaster caused by fast fashion and general overconsumption of everything. And I mean EVERYONE: you, me, and every other person we know...even if you don’t think of yourself as a “fashion person” or an avid shopper.

It means buying less new stuff. Wearing things for longer. Rethinking social norms like quasi-disposable Halloween costumes and holiday decorations. And opting out of The Viral Product of The Week.™ It feels like a lot of change, but it’s possible. Many of us have been making these changes for years and we are always excited to help someone who is starting their own journey into slow fashion.

For the past few days, strangers have been calling me a stupid, miserable, joyless idiot on Threads because I looked into the true story of the viral Esprit sweatshirts at Costco, aka The Viral Product of The Week.™ And my verdict was “eh, I don’t think you need it because it’s not the good thing you remember.” One person even told me that I should focus my anger on billionaires instead of people...and I was kinda like “okay, clearly you’re new to Clotheshorse.”

The thing is: I am angry. Not at people who buy sweatshirts. Not even the strangers who call me stupid. TBH it's a step up from being called ugly.

I am angry at all of the greedy companies that are exploiting our anxiety and hopelessness by selling us enshittified nostalgic stuff.

To be clear, this is a calculated plan to gobble up our hard earned money and shift our focus away from the real problems in this world. For the last decade, licensing and repurposing nostalgic brands and products has been a gold mine for companies that wanted to make money without doing the hard work of building a brand or iconic product of their own. Gen X and millennial nostalgia is lucrative, with a long list of brand names to license: Delias, Von Dutch, Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Teletubbies, and more…

There are lots of "zombie brands" out there that are lowkey ripping us off by portraying themselves as the "real" brand they once were.

Esprit is one example. Those sweatshirts weren't made by Esprit because that company died a few years ago. It's no different than getting a bootleg Esprit tee made at a t-shirt shop at the Jersey Shore.

The Delias line that Dolls Kill was selling for years was just the Delias logo slapped on extremely low quality, ultra fast fashion.

These "zombie brands" are just licensed logos and intellectual property. The real brands are long gone, but there is still money to be made by selling stuff to customers who *think* they are buying the real brand.

I was explaining all of this to Dustin in the car yesterday: When a brand is still making their stuff, they are invested in making sure customers like it enough to come back again. So they have to think about quality, fit, and consistency, particularly if they are trying to acquire new customers.

When it's a licensed product (like the Esprit sweatshirts), it doesn't really matter. The licensee is just hoping to cash in on customers' emotional connection to the brand. They aren’t really thinking about the “long” game, just how they can maximize sales during the time frame of the licensing deal.

Because "renting" the logos and brand name cost money, the companies paying for the license need to keep the cost of making the product as low as possible to offset the licensing fees, while still being profitable. So customers end up with a lower quality product. Factories are pressed to provide the lowest prices, which means workers are paid less, too.

Some other zombie brands: Billabong, Juicy Couture, Reebok, Quicksilver, Roxy, RVCA, Limited Too, Champion, Lee, Dockers, Marc Jacobs...the list goes on beyond these examples.

The Esprit sweatshirts are just some licensee's attempt at cashing in on Gen X/elder millennial nostalgia. It works because nostalgia is comforting. Our entire lives, we have been told that buying stuff (especially specific brands) WILL make us happy and socially successful. Why not buy more stuff when the world feels like a dumpster fire? And what if you could get happiness for a mere $16.99?

The current holder of the Esprit license isn’t the only one out there making money off of our desire to get a quick dopamine hit from nostalgia. In fact, the landscape is so saturated with zombie brands and crappy licensed products, that one would almost begin to believe that the ONLY way to feel nostalgia is via shopping. That’s just not true.

A quick (and by no means exhaustive) list of experiencing nostalgic joy without buying something:

• Dig into physical media you already have like photographs, scrapbooks, or yearbooks. Watch old family videos or listen to music from the period you want to remember.

• Write about your memories.Studies have shown that actually writing down your memories is the best way to re-live the experience to its fullest. And it’s so good for your brain.

• Call a friend or family member and reminisce about a specific time.

• Or if you really just need that album, movie, or sweatshirt in your life as a physical item, find it secondhand (eBay is a great place to start).

• Browse Pinterest or other social media apps for scans and photos of old magazines, ads, catalogs, etc. <--I do this often and it’s so fun!

I say this is a person born on the Gen X/Millennial cusp: our entire lives we have been told (literally and subliminally) that buying the right thing will help us claim our place in the world.

Esprit sweatshirts in the 80s and 90s meant you weren’t poor and you might even be eligible for the popular group.

Getting a Cabbage Patch Kid or a Tamagotchi when every store was sold out meant your parents loved you a lot and you were going to experience temporary celebrity at school.

Doc Martens meant you were cool and “alternative.” JNCOs meant you were a raver.

We’ve been sold “uniforms” and status items since we were tiny.

The Esprit sweatshirt is also uniting in a time when most of us feel the loneliness of this very weird century. Buying the same sweatshirt as tens of thousands of other people feels like being part of something. I've even seen it pitched as a "Gen X revolution" or "Gen X women revolt" moment.

We really do need a revolution. And you have no idea how excited I get about the prospect of a revolution that is NOT led by cis men! It's long overdue.

But here's the thing: the revolution will not have a cute logo.

The revolution will not be for sale at Costco.

The revolution will not be a sweatshirt.

The revolution will not come with free shipping or a discount code.

The revolution will begin with hearing and accepting some uncomfortable truths.

The revolution will be admitting that we are fed up with the status quo.

The revolution will be changing the way we live our lives, divesting from systems and industries that only widen wealth inequality while polluting the planet.

The revolution will be reaching out to grab our neighbor's hand and saying WE WILL DO THIS TOGETHER.

And if you're wearing your newly purchased Esprit sweatshirt for the revolution: Wash it inside out in cold water. To prevent pilling, protect the embroidery, and avoid shrinking, air dry it flat.

Get the maximum wear out of it. And when you’re done with it, rather than dumping it in the trash or a donation bin, rehome it within your community. Someone out there will be so excited to give it another wear.

Six years ago, the first episode of Clotheshorse was released! It was recorded approximately two feet from my bed on a very hot day in Philadelphia. One very unglamorous thing about having an independent podcast? You can’t record anywhere near an air conditioner or a fan because it messes up the audio. So any time you listen to an episode that was released during the summer, know that I was sweating my ass off while I worked on it. Literally! Having a podcast has helped me discover just how much sweat my butt can generate.

But that’s not all I have learned along the way! From the technical stuff (Photoshop, editing audio) to the emotional stuff (setting boundaries, stopping my people pleasing habit) to actual hard knowledge about government regulations, private equity, clothing manufacturing, and more. Seriously I don’t know how my brain made space for everything I have learned!

It’s had its ups and downs along the way. The downs include death threats from vegans. Stalkers harassing me, my family, and my friends. A whole traumatic experience with Remake. But the ups have faaaaaaarrrrrrrrr outweighed any of the bad stuff: The Clotheshorse Jamboree. The live shows last fall. And most importantly, all of the amazing friends and collaborators I have met over the last six years, thanks to our shared passion for a better world!

I am so proud of the work I have done so far. It hasn’t always been perfect because I have been learning alongside all of you, but both my heart and mind have grown exponentially over the past six years.

I believe that it is our job to find meaning and purpose in our lives. For some of us, it comes through faith and spirituality. For others (like me), it comes through learning, exploring, and lots of thinking. And for most people, it’s a combination of all of these things. Regardless of how and where you find your purpose and meaning, figuring it out is a journey. I always had an inkling of where I might find it, but recently I have finally been able to name it: I want to leave this world knowing that I did my best to make it better than it would have been without me, for people, animals, and every other living thing on this magical planet. And that means reaching beyond “sustainable fashion” and into every aspect of being a concerned citizen. So I have continued to expand the scope and conversations you will find in the Clotheshorse world. After all, it’s all interconnected. And slow fashion extends beyond clothing…it’s a way of life!

A lot has changed (and a lot has NOT changed) around me in the last six years. Many sustainability accounts, podcasts, and organizations are gone. The world of sustainability and environmental action has lost most of its funding. Activists and creators have gotten burned out and moved on. I get it! It takes a lot of resources to show up every day in a world that operates in an outrage algorithm and a “like” economy: time, money, patience, and emotional fortitude. I’m going to keep showing up as much as I possibly can (without burning myself out).

Thank you for showing up alongside me year after year (and welcome to the newbies, too)!

xo, Amanda

she/they <— I am a nonbinary person.

About this post: As always, Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone. This post was LABORIOUSLY created using Photoshop, Figma, and my brain. The images are from the 1969 book Teddy Bears Book of 1-2-3. Putting these images together was epic because the book is very large and has a lot of damage. So every image involved piecing together 3-4 scans and a lot of clean up. Most of the stickers are scans of cute ones I bought in Japan last fall. This post took FIVE hours to create. I was up until midnight working on it last night, and got back into this morning. Most of the work was done while wearing a vintage teddy bear trucker hat, if you were wondering.

Please don’t screenshot and repost on your profile. It’s rude!

Last week, Dustin and I went to Mexico City.

It was a trip we had been planning for seven months! In October, I bought tickets to see two Belle + Sebastian shows as an anniversary gift to both of us.

Well, much like “rain on your wedding day” or “a black fly in your chardonnay” (neither of these things are ironic btw)...sometimes life just brings you some disappointing moments. And while we were on this trip to one of my favorite places in the world, I got sick with norovirus.

Really. Fucking. Sick.

Like “three days in bed sick.”

Like “crying because you are just so miserable” sick.

Like “wondering if I was going to die in another country” sick.

My digestive tract is the weakest part of my body, thanks to an autoimmune disease that has been attacking my guts since I was a kid. So when I get a stomach bug, it’s really horrible.

I missed both shows. I missed our dinner reservation at Rosetta. I missed art museums, tacos, and flea markets. But that’s just how life goes sometimes. I am lucky. I have had many incredible trips to Mexico City in the past. There will be other shows, good food, and art in the future.

But it gave me a lot of time to think…well, after I got through the phase of whispering “please don’t throw up” over and over to myself.

I was thinking a lot about enshittification: the systematic decline of a product or service.

About five years ago, Dustin and I were on a road trip. We don’t really eat very “junk food” as adults. My stomach can’t handle it. But at a gas station, we started eyeing up the Little Debbie display.

“Remember when these were just 25 cents?” We laughed at how we were starting to sound like grandpas. But we both had to agree: growing up poor in rural areas, we had eaten a lot of cheap Little Debbie snacks as kids. So we decided to buy a Nutty Bar (now called Nutty Buddy) out of nostalgia.

But by the time we each took a bite in the car, we were disappointed. Our lips were covered with a greasy film from the flavorless “chocolate” coating. The peanut butter filling was more like hearing someone say the words “peanut butter” and expecting to taste it in your mouth. We didn’t finish the Nutty Bar. And we also declined to add it to the compost can at home. It felt too “food science” for our garden.

Of course a disappointing experience like this was followed with a familiar conversation: Were we just remembering Nutty Bars as better than they really were? Had they actually gotten worse over time? Or perhaps the problem was us…maybe we had “outgrown” Nutty Bars as our palates changed. We decided we must be the issue.

But this situation played itself out over and over again with packaged foods, restaurants, tourist spots, trips to the mall, and so on. We always thought we were the problem: we remembered things as better than they really were. Avoiding disappointment meant forgetting our past experiences.

And yet, we could revisit something that had been preserved in amber for decades – a film, a beloved book, a favorite album – and those things were just as good, maybe even better than we remembered.

By now we know that many things are in fact, getting shittier (aka enshittification).

It’s easy to look around and spot the decreasing quality around us:

• Fast fashion clothes: mostly plastic, poor fitting, and short lived.

• Air travel: smaller seats, no free bags, no food on planes. As a kid, I flew by myself from Harrisburg, PA to Portland, OR and I was served FOUR meals, including a really great breakfast burrito.

• Packaged foods: smaller sizes and declining ingredients.

The thing is…this didn’t happen overnight. t’s all the result of decades of companies chasing higher profits year after year. That’s the thing about our current system: businesses are expected to be more profitable this year than last year. And next year, they will be more profitable than this year. And for a few years, it’s easy to do that by finding efficiencies and negotiating better prices. But after decades, it’s time to start cutting corners. And that’s where we are now.

The fast fashion clothes of the 00s were exponentially better quality than they are now.

Until 2008, you could check bags for free on flights.

And yeah, a lot of packaged foods WERE better twenty years ago.

How did we not notice things getting worse and worse, year after year?

I think we were distracted for a long time by new, exciting technology like social media, online shopping, apps, games, and streaming services. Maybe food and clothes weren’t feeling as “good” and satisfying as they once were, but now we had an endless array of things to buy on the internet. The world was at our fingertips (and on our phones). It felt like there was an infinite amount of music, movies, and shows to watch.

But over the past few years, the social media apps were flooded with rage bait, misinformation, and (of course) advertising. The quality of the streaming apps declined while the prices went up. The stuff we were buying online was plentiful…but increasingly disappointing. Blogs and journalism began to disappear from the internet, replaced by “advertorial” content with affiliate links. Even search results got kinda…well, shitty.

And now everything just feels…disappointing.

Last week, while I was shivering under two blankets, despite the May heat in Mexico City, my head was spinning with this decline of EVERYTHING. How much worse could things get? Would anything ever be truly good again? And where could we expect to find joy in an increasingly scary, unjust world? Over the next few days, as I shifted from this liminal state of miserable semi-consciousness to finally sitting up and eating a bowl of rice, I continued to ponder all of this.

On our last full day in Mexico City, I was well enough to get out of bed, take a shower, and go out into the world. We visited Museo Tamayo, a great contemporary art museum on the edge of Bosque de Chapultepec (“Chapultepec Forest,” one of the biggest parks in Mexico).

One of the current exhibitions is called “Futuros Arcaicos” (Archaic Futures). The show brought together work from modern and contemporary artists who found inspiration in the archaic, the cosmic, and the mythological as potential lenses for envisioning the future. Most of our glimpses of the future tend to be science fiction, shaped by technological advancement. The work of the artists in this exhibition imagined that human’s future would be shaped more by our past, by archaic tools and ways.

When I say that art is a precious gift to our world, a magical thing that can only be created by humans, I really, really mean that. Because art makes us feel (even when we don’t like it). And it makes us think (even if those thoughts make us uncomfortable).

And as I was looking at that art, thinking about it then…and then hours and days later…it slowly folded itself into my ruminations about enshittification. And I began to see some light. Some answers. A path forward.

It feels right now that we cannot rely on anything we once could to bring us joy. We’re always left a little hungry, a little disappointed, a little lingering feeling of “meh.”

But I am here to tell you that joy and satisfaction still exist. It’s probably not in our phones. Odds are high that you can’t find it in a mall or on an app. But it’s out there, and there’s a lot of it…plenty to go around.

Here’s what hasn’t been enshittified:

• Making something yourself. Whether it’s food, clothes, or art, making something yourself is about the joy of the process, sometimes more than the finished product. The same goes for repairing something.

• Finding the answer and learning something along the way. Learning is really one of life’s simplest pleasures.

• Connecting with the humans and animals around you, finding your community and your people. Working together on something or sharing your knowledge and stories with one another.

• Experiencing the magic of this planet, whether it’s going outside or growing some herbs on your windowsill. Seriously I kinda can’t believe how all of this exists!!

This is just the beginning of the list of good things left in this world. One thing they all have in common? They are all pretty archaic. This is stuff humans have been doing kinda forever. We tend to expect that things that are “archaic” feel out-of-date and would be completely out of place in our current times, much less in the future. Yet reconnecting with our humanity, the power of our brains, our creativity, and our communities feels more vital and powerful than ever. And sure, technology can be helpful for finding your community, learning new stuff, making a new friend, or getting some answers. But none of it means anything without humans, our brains, and all of the archaic stuff we’ve been doing for the last 300,000 years.

Realizing that we already have the tools to find joy and satisfaction makes me feel hopeful in a way that I have not in a long time.

Yes, there are obstacles.

Yes, we have our work cut out for us.

But I believe that the future can be better than any of us have been picturing. And if I can’t have the high tech, post capitalism future of Star Trek, at least I know that what we do next can and will be good.

About this post: as always, Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone. First, I outlined this post on the flight home yesterday. Today and I sat down and wrote it. The images in this post came from a vintage craft magazine called YOU CAN MAKE FURRY NOVELTIES. I scanned them and then edited them in Photoshop. The post was assembled in Figma. The entire process from beginning to end took 4 hours. Thanks for reading it!

I am a very anxious person.

I cannot remember a moment in my life when I wasn’t just worrying and worrying about ten different things. I credit an abusive, chaotic childhood for that. Having cancer as a kid probably didn’t help, either. But to be honest, living in this century (particularly the last decade) is pretty anxiety-inducing in itself!

Anxiety brings worries, but it also brings wave after wave of fear. Imagine standing on a beach, watching the tide offer reason after reason to be afraid. That’s what it is like to live in my brain sometimes. I would say that one of my talents is recognizing the 50 ways something could go wrong, long before something actually exists/is happening. (And p.s. before someone leaves a comment suggesting therapy, please realize that I wouldn’t be able to write any of this WITHOUT the help of therapy).

That fear kept me quiet for a long time. In the years I worked in the fast fashion industry, speaking up meant losing my job. Standing up to people in my personal life could bring the end of the relationship or worse, physical violence.

In 2020, something changed inside of me. When I lost my job in the beginning of the pandemic, the worst case scenario was already playing out. I no longer had health insurance (during a global pandemic), I wasn’t sure how I would be able to pay my rent and support my family, and I know that my next job was years off (if at all). The waves of fear were now just a massive tsunami of everything going wrong all at once.

For the first time in my life, I let that deluge of fear turn into anger. It felt so strange to sit with my feelings and know that I was full of rage. I had been trained since birth to keep my anger inside, that it was ugly, “unbecoming of a young lady,” etc. And in our house, my mom showed that anger could hurt other people. You never knew if her sudden burst of temper would lead to broken dishes or a chunk of hair being torn out of your head. So I always swallowed any inkling of anger before it blossomed into something I didn’t want to be.

But in 2020, I was fucking enraged. I saw how the wealthiest people in the world were feeling safe and secure, while the rest of us lived in constant fear and struggle. I guess I had known that all along, but now I got to finally really, really think about it. And the industry that had employed me almost my entire adult life was a case study in how greed and injustice was hurting people around the world: the exploited workers, the wasted resources, the landfills filling with crappy plastic clothes.

Clotheshorse was born from that rage. I knew I was taking a big risk. I was going to finally speak up about the fashion industry…and I knew that meant my career in fashion was essentially over, because no company was going to hire a person who was loudly telling the truth about it. The thing is…I wasn’t scared. Not at all. For the first time, I felt like what I had to say was more important than the personal repercussions I would experience.

And you know what? Yes, my career in regular fashion was over. But standing up and being authentically myself? It actually opened my life in all of these new ways that I never saw coming. I ended up finding other work with all kinds of amazing small businesses that share my values. I met amazing people around the world (including you) who are also dreaming of a better future. And while yes, I have had to experience some of the worst elements of humanity via social media (death threats, trolls, and creeps), I have had far more positive life-changing experiences. Nothing brings me more joy than someone saying “Hey, listening to what you had to say changed me and the things I do.”

That doesn’t mean that I am any less anxious. Every time I post something on social media or release an episode of the podcast, I find myself holding my breath for a few seconds, afraid of what will happen next or how it will all go wrong. And I know that is something many of you experience, too. In fact, it is the fear of getting it “wrong” and then being the subject of a social media pile-on that keeps a lot of us quiet. To be clear, I feel that fear almost daily. And even in the six years of working on Clotheshorse, I have still stayed silent (at least on social media) about things that I was very passionate about…because I was afraid of what would happen next.

I know that dreams about flying are pretty standard nighttime fare. But for me, the only dreams I ever had about flying…involved being on an airplane. One time I even dreamed about being on an airplane…while actually flying on a different airplane IRL! Sometimes these dreams were just a series of annoying, liminal spaces (lines, boarding, rude passengers). And other times, nightmares of the plane plummeting until I woke myself up.

But for the past couple of years, I have started having dreams about actually flying on my own. And they always start with me being “WTF how is that I am just suspended in mid air right now,” then being picked up by an air current and sort of tumbling around out of control. I would literally experience that “big drop” roller coaster feeling in my stomach as the wind kind of tossed me around. It was terrifying (but not as bad as the plane crash dreams). The first few times I had these flying dreams, I would just kinda curl myself into the tightest fetal position. I hoped that if I just waited it out, I would be gently dropped to the ground, where I could shift gears into dreaming about something more mundane, like waiting in line at the post office. But that never happened. The dream just got scarier and scarier.

Recently, the dreams have changed a bit. After a few moments of freaking out, I give myself a pep talk. “You just have to stop being afraid. Then you’ll actually be able to control where you fly.” I slowly extend my limbs. I stretch out my neck. I look around me…and I’m literally flying wherever I want to go. And then it’s a blast! I see Dustin down below and wave hi. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” I shout to him. I fly over farmland, rivers, mountains, and out to the ocean. In one dream, I got as far as Japan…and then I realized I forgot to bring my wallet and extra clothes. I landed, found a pay phone, and asked Dustin to wire me some money.

A few weeks ago, I was watching some vultures coasting around in air pockets over the field next to my house and it reminded me of my dreams. Just these massive birds fearlessly letting the wind lift and drop them.

In case you’re missing it (or I am doing a bad job here), these dreams are a metaphor for being brave and standing up/speaking out. During the 2024 election cycle here in the US, I saw accounts/people spreading misinformation or just generally trying to confuse people into not voting. Maybe they were confused themselves. I’m not here to re-litigate that. I stayed silent for the most part because…I was afraid. And my mental health was not in a place that could handle even more shittiness from the internet. But also, I was so angry and frustrated. I just didn’t know what to do.

After the election, I knew that I could never hide away and stay quiet again. My platform isn’t huge, I’m kind of a nobody, but if even one person sees me speak up, they might be motivated to do it, too. The same can be said for all of us. We have major influence in our social circles and communities, no matter the size of them. And I am not just talking about politics, either. Although one could argue (correctly) that everything is political: healthcare, AI, clean water, voting rights, wealth inequality, workers rights, plastic pollution, overconsumption, all of the -isms and -phobias that seem to control quality of life for everyone.

It’s scary to stand up and speak out. The fear never goes away. But what I have learned over the years is that the benefits outweigh the scariness: you find your people, your people stand up for you, and even more people get involved.

Listen, speaking out isn’t always easy. Like I mentioned earlier, I deal with some of the ugliest aspects of humanity on social media. And I’m 99% certain that speaking out about AI cost Dustin a job.

But nothing changes when we stay silent, when we’re too afraid of change. A lot of the stuff I see around me right now (like fast fashion, generative AI, fascism) are relics of a past and present that are NOT part of the future I want for all of us. They exist because of greed, selfishness, and a fundamental loss of humanity. And these systems depend on all of us sacrificing our humanity to keep them going.

Fortunately, there are far more good people than truly bad people. And we get to build the future WE want when we speak up, stand up, and work together.

Let’s be brave.

Let’s stretch out our arms and legs as long as they will go, look forward, and fly into a better future as one massive flock of radically awesome people. We might get all the way to Japan and realize we forgot our wallets, but we’ll figure it out together.

About the images in this post: the animal graphics are from the 1968 Froebel-Kan children’s book OUR NAUGHTY PETS (what a name)! The stationery in the background was thrifted last month at the Re-uzit Shop of Morgantown. This post took more than five (!) hours to make: 90 minutes of writing, another 45 of editing, then the rest of the time designing it in photoshop.

What happened?

On April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-story factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed.

1,134 people perished that day. Most of these people were the young women working in factories, making clothing for Western brands. There is no doubt that their final moments were anything less than horrific. An additional 2,500 people were injured.

How did this happen?
It’s easy to say, “oh, things are different there.” “It was an accident. No one planned it. It was just bad luck.” But this accident was the result of many ethical failures on the part of the fashion industry.

The primary driver of the Rana Plaza collapse was the global obsession with low cost clothing.

We pay less for clothing now in 2026 than we did in the 90s, nearly 30 years ago...while every other aspect of our life has increased in price by about 60%.

The fast fashion model--based on selling us as much stuff as possible, as often as possible--fuels/encourages this desire for low cost clothing, as fast as possible.

The math of fast fashion (low prices, high profits) does not math without cheap labor.

• As labor in high wage countries (the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe) became more expensive in the 20th century, more and more garment manufacturing moved overseas.

• And while we think of China as the biggest manufacturer of our clothing, Bangladesh is second in line, with $34-45 billion in business each year. Bangladesh has been able to swoop in and pick up more business as China has slowly grown more expensive.

• The monthly entry level wage of $104 in Bangladesh is about a 25-40% of China’s minimum wage.

• Entrepreneurs in rural areas in Bangladesh are aware that while they don’t have a lot to offer in terms of natural resources and capital, they have a wealth of ready and willing workers who will work for pennies. This included the owners of the Rana Plaza factory complex.

• The mayor of the town was notorious for overlooking safety issues and signing off permits just to move things along faster. The building wasn’t up to code. It was built atop a filled-in pond. It was originally supposed to be for commercial use, but it was illegally converted to industrial use. An additional three floors were added on top without approval. The building materials themselves were below standard.

• In general, public officials in Bangladesh--and other countries--are so fearful of losing overseas business that they do not push for safety code adherence. If they shut down a project, it will simply move somewhere else. The fashion industry doesn’t have a lot of patience.

The fast fashion model knowingly operates without care for workers...even if brands say otherwise.

Brands want more product, much faster. So they might say, “Hey, we don’t want forced overtime or children working.” But then in the next email say, “I need 10,000 pairs of leggings by next week and I need the cost to be lower than the last time.”

What’s the factory going to choose? Definitely the financial reward of producing 10,000 pairs of leggings in a jiffy.

If that order is late--even by one day--the brand can legally cancel the order or demand a discount on the already unrealistically low cost of that order. Factories are under intense pressure to work as fast and cheap as possible.

The push for low prices creates a murky supply chain.

• The industry’s demand for low prices means that often agents and factories that were chosen by the brand are subcontracting to someone even cheaper. One thing that came up over and over again in the Rana Plaza press coverage was that none of the brands whose stuff was being made there knew about it..because there is little visibility into this process of subcontracting.

• And these subcontractors--like the owners of the Rana Plaza factory--are willing to offer those bargain basement prices, by cutting wages and building shoddy factories. And they will get it done fast for the retailer. In the case of Rana Plaza, the building’s owners ignored warnings to avoid using the building after cracks had appeared the day before. Garment workers were ordered to return the following day. Why? Because they had deadlines to make and they didn’t want to risk losing business. The building collapsed during the morning rush-hour.

The human cost of cheap clothing rises each day.
It’s not just the workers across the globe, from factories to warehouses to stores...it’s the environmental impact of the manufacturing, shipping, and disposal of the clothes we briefly wear, before tossing aside. It’s the wild amount of water required to make and dye our clothes, while other humans suffer through brutal drought.
Company leaders are able to dismiss this by telling themselves that these people are somehow less valuable, less important than profitability. Racism, sexism, and classism permeate the industry, justifying the cruelty of its decisions.

In all of the trainings I attended in my career as a buyer, we never talked about the human impact of our decisions. The focus was profits, branding, and staying on the right side of the law.

What we can do...

If reading this made you feel really sad and/or angry, I get it. I cry every time I think about the last moments of the humans who died in Rana Plaza. And what about the families and friends they left behind? No one should die for fashion.

But the good news is this: like a lot of the unjust systems and situations that exist in our world right now, we have the power to change them.
Conversely, if our decide to throw up our hands and say, “well, there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” and then kinda mentally file away the story of Rana Plaza, nothing ever gets better. Maybe the situation gets worse. Companies continue to make and sell low quality clothing using exploited labor. Landfills fill with shitty, plastic clothing. And essential resources like water are used to make even more shitty, plastic clothing.

So let’s do something about it!!

Opt out of the fast fashion system as much as possible.

The most sustainable, ethical thing we can do is buy less new stuff.

• Shop secondhand first when you can. Trust me, there is enough rad clothing out there for all of us.

• Wear your clothes over and over again for a very long time. Mend them when needed.

• Change up your shopping behaviors and habits. Not only does the fast fashion system rely on cheap labor to keep it going, it also needs us to buy a lot of stuff as often as possible. Let’s break the habit (and then, break fast fashion). In the slow fashion community, we know that the conversation starts with “Who made my clothes?” But it continues with

  • “Why am I buying this?”

  • “Do I really need/want it?”

  • “Am I prepared to wear this long as possible?”

  • “Do I love this enough to repair it and launder it properly?”

Share your knowledge & passion with your community!

Every week I receive emails from people who are building apps and AI tools that are supposed to “fix” fast fashion’s problems. But you know what will REALLY fix fast fashion? Getting involved with our communities!!
Yes, the real solution to fast fashion is mending clubs, repair fairs, and clothing swaps. But also:

• Teaching others how to successfully secondhand shop.

• Mindfully rehoming things when you no longer want/need them.

• Sharing your expertise about fabric, laundry, repair, and alterations.

• It’s even as simple as telling people about Rana Plaza.

Fast fashion thrives when we are lonely and bored, so even just spending time together is VERY powerful!

But also...don’t forget to demand better from brands.

Have you noticed that most big brands are talking about sustainability a lot less? Yeah, that’s because they think we don’t care.

So don’t be afraid to ask “Who makes your clothes? How much are they paid? Are the factories safe?” Ask again and again until you get an answer.

Brands who can’t answer...well, that’s a red flag. And often if they don’t care about their garment workers, they also don’t care about the corporate, retail, and warehouse staff either. Fast fashion is anti-human at its core. And there’s nothing cute about that.

The good news? If you do need to buy something brand new, there are tons of rad brands out there that CAN tell you all about who makes their clothes. Just ask!

The fast fashion/fast everything system exists because of unchecked greed, lack of government intervention, and a fundamental disregard for our planet and its people.
But it also exists because we keep showing up to buy it. We are handing over a portion of our paycheck to these companies that don’t care about us, because they don’t care about anyone.

Do your best to be good for this world.

As a person who worked inside this industry for most of my adult life, I know firsthand that we have so much power to change it. Without our money, these companies are forced to either do better or go out of business. And while dismantling an entire industry sounds daunting, it’s actually as simple as buying less new stuff. That’s something all of us can afford to do.

We have to stop leaning on tired excuses like “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.” I know that being alive right is really @#$%ing hard. I constantly feel as if I’m five seconds away from vomiting or crying. But nothing will ever get better if we’re just drowning our sorrows in shopping, drinking, or being shitty to strangers on the internet. Real change happens (and will happen) when we keep showing up. When we recognize that there are more good people in this world than bad people. When we take a minute to remind ourselves that WE HAVE THE POWER BECAUSE THERE ARE MORE OF US.

Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. If you need to buy something from Old Navy or some other fast fashion brand, go for it. Just take care of it. Repair it, wash it carefully, wear the heck out of it. And when you no longer can wear it/want to wear it, give it to another human to wear the heck out of it. But also: Vote. Show up for your community. Do your best to be good for this world. Anything is better than nothing. I promise.

We can’t shop our way to a better world.

But guess what? There IS a direct line between the brands we buy regularly and a lot of the bad stuff happening in the world right now. Shifting our spending away from companies that don’t share our values is an extremely powerful act when we are all doing it together.

But first, we have to know who really owns the brands we buy...and sometimes it’s really surprising!

Let’s take a look at some of the mega corporations that are creating an illusion of choice in grocery and big box stores…

Is SC Johnson & Son not only a megacorporation, but also a MAGA-corporation? Yep!

• SC Johnson & Son has its own PAC (political action committee), the SC Johnson & Son PAC. The company also directly donates to this PAC. Total PAC donations per election cycle tend to be about $400-500K. 2/3 of this money is donated to Republican candidates.

• The CEO and Chairman, Herbert “H” Fisk Johnson III, was appointed to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in 2019 under Trump. His net worth is approximately $5 billion.

• H was one of the biggest donors from Wisconsin during the 2024 election cycle, donating more than $1.6 million to Republican candidates.

This means when you are purchasing what seems like a “better,” more sustainable option like Method or Mrs. Meyers, you’re really just indirectly supporting a political party and candidates that don’t believe in climate change.

Is Unilever not only a megacorporation, but also a MAGA-corporation? It’s not as clear cut and obvious as SC Johnson, but the company’s decisions around Ben & Jerry’s don’t look good.

• Unilever’s policy bans any political donations from the company. But the company’s decisions regarding Ben & Jerry’s tell a very partisan story...

• Unilever has been engaged in lawsuits with Ben & Jerry’s since 2021, when Ben & Jerry’s pulled its products out of Israel. Unilever decided to get around this by licensing out the B&J brand in Israel: another company would be making the ice cream, but selling it in Ben & Jerry’s packaging. This prompted a lawsuit.

• In 2024, things intensified as Unilever made Ben & Jerry pull posts speaking out against the genocide in Gaza, along with anything anti-Trump. This censorship continued through 2025.

Like I said, there are no direct political contributions here, but I think we can all agree that silencing Ben & Jerry’s activism IS a political choice.

Is Proctor & Gamble not only a megacorporation, but also a MAGA-corporation? Not overtly…but I would say that making any contributions to Republicans in the past few years is definitely not a neutral decision.

• Unlike many other corporations who removed DEI programs, Proctor & Gamble has publicly announced its continuing commitment to DEI. The company has also been outspoken about Trump’s disastrous tariff policy.

• Proctor & Gamble has its own PAC (political action committee), the P&G Good Government Fund. It is strictly funded by voluntary employee donations. The PAC splits its donations pretty evenly between Republican and Democratic candidates. But it does raise the question: why is a mega corporation running its own PAC and how are its donations impacting elections?

P&G might be evenly splitting its political donations, but it’s still funding Republicans (which is a strong statement these days). And we don’t need one company owning half the personal care and cleaning aisles.

Is Estee Lauder not only a megacorporation, but also a MAGA-corporation? OMFG yes.

• Ronald Lauder, the sole heir to the Estee Lauder Companies, is a longtime friend of Donald Trump. He is credited with convincing Trump that the US should annex Greenland.

• Lauder has pumped millions into Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, along with Ron DeSantis’ 2018 and 2022 gubernatorial campaigns.

• Lauder donated $5 million to Trump’s Super PAC, MAGA Inc., in March 2025.

• TBH this is the the beginning of a long list of racist, unethical behavior on the part of Ronald Lauder and the Estee Lauder companies!

This one was painful for me! I’ve been a longtime user of The Ordinary. But there is no way I can continue to give money to this brand after learning more about Ronald Lauder and the Estee Lauder companies.

Ultimately, many of the brands we see in big box stores and mass retailers are actually owned by a small group of megacorporations. These companies give us the illusion of choice...but our money ends up funding the same bad companies and people.

The good news? We DO have choices! We just have to look elsewhere for them. Change can be scary (or at least uncomfortable), but it is worth the extra effort.

So now what?

• First off: DO NOT throw out the products from these brands that you already own. That just wastes resources and money! Using every last bit of them is actually an act of defiance.

• Next: start looking for alternatives. Lisa of Retro Housewife Goes Green just shared a great list on her Substack. There are also many other bloggers, writers, and content creators out there that are doing the work of sharing better options. And lastly, I have found social media spaces a great resource for this kind of information. Reddit helped me find some alternatives to The Ordinary!

• Most importantly: progress takes time. You don’t have to reboot all of your habits overnight. And you don’t have to do it perfectly! Set achievable goals for making swaps over the next few months.

You can learn more about all of this in last week’s episode of the podcast, featuring Lisa of Retro Housewife Goes Green This episode is part one of two. The second half of the conversation (coming later this week) will be full of megacorporation alternatives!

As always, Clotheshorse is an AI-free zone. Graphics in this post came from the 1982 children's book Kittens, part of the Story Time Pals series.

This is a follow up to this post, so go check that out, too!

In the past few weeks, I have read countless posts from small businesses announcing that they are closing down or taking some time off to reorganize/reevaluate their business. This is not a new phenomenon, because I have been seeing posts like this continuously over the last few years.

Why is this happening so often?

It's not because these businesses aren’t making nice stuff that people want to buy.

It’s not because the business owners are untalented.

It's not because people aren't showing up and buying it.

It's not because the business is a bad concept.

It's because these business owners have been underpricing themselves for so long that they haven't been able to pay their bills.

In many cases, these small business owners are racking up debt. They are subsidizing their artificially low prices by not paying their other bills and/or running up their credit cards.

They are subsidizing these low prices by not having health insurance, skipping healthcare, never taking time off, rarely going on vacation, or not really doing anything to care for themselves.

They are sacrificing their quality of life and financial health so that their customers can have low prices.

They feel this pressure to keep prices low because their customers expect things to be cheap. All of us have had our perception of value and price turned upside down by the fast fashion/fast everything era.

If so many businesses cannot make these low prices work, do you really need any more proof that the prices offered by fast fashion/fast everything are artificially derived from exploitation and cut corners?

The problem with these low prices is that they are actually bad for EVERYONE.

If one small business underprices their products, then every other business has to follow suit or lose out on sales. So then every business owner is forced to underpay themselves. They also cannot hire anyone to help them with their work, so they often become burned out very fast. And they can’t create good jobs for other people. That’s a really bad thing because small businesses historically have been incredible job creators.

These unrealistically low prices devalue the work involved in making products and running a business, reinforcing the illusion that this work is unskilled. That helps fast everything companies get away with continuing to underpay and exploit workers all around the world.

Not only is the work of all those small businesses being devalued, all of our work is being devalued.

If making an item that you can buy has low value, of course then the services, skills, and experience that you can offer also have a lower value.

That means that ALL of our work, whether it is sewing, writing, painting, child care, health care, writing, teaching, accounting...ALL WORK, is being collectively devalued by the fast fashionification of everything around us.

If you feel like people try to pay you as little as possible for your work or try to get free work out of you, you can thank fast everything for melting everyone's brains and devaluing everything that we do. And yes, on a near-daily basis, someone tries to get free work out of me!

The widespread devaluing of our work only enriches billionaires and widens wealth inequality.

More than ever, it’s up to all of us to dismantle “fast everything.” And the first step is resisting the artificial low pricing and low value proposition created by fast fashion/fast everything.

That means we don’t expect fast fashion prices from small businesses...and small business owners stop offering prices that don’t allow anyone to be paid a living wage for their work.

“But if I price something in a way that actually pays me for my work, no one will buy it.”

I suspect that is actually NOT true (people will still show up to buy what you are selling). But I understand that feeling.

For one, our own perception of price and value is also broken. So we are afraid of seeming “expensive,” even when we know deep down that the prices of fast everything are an illusion based on low quality and human exploitation. All of us have a lot of work to do to undo the damage of the fast fashion era.

But also: if you’re AFAB, queer, trans, or anything other than a cis white dude, you’ve probably been made to feel inadequate your whole life. And you’ve also been conditioned to “sacrifice” for everyone around you, putting your own needs and happiness after everyone else. There is probably a combination of imposter syndrome and guilt preventing you from asking customers to respect your true value by raising your prices.

The good news: your customers already think you are great. And they don’t want you to sacrifice your general wellness and financial health for them.

And also: in an AI world, we are starting to value human work a lot more.

Sure, there are a lot of people who are still making all their “art” on ChatGPT and then placing an order with SHEIN.

But other people are coming out of the haze of all of these artificial prices and AI-rendered “art.” And their perceived value of human work is gradually increasing. This is a really good time to remind the world of the humanity of your work.

“I don’t pay myself because I want people to be able to access what I’m selling.”

I'm going to say this again: when you underprice, you're holding back every one of your peers who now can't price high enough to pay themselves. And when we lift ourselves up by charging the right price, we lift up everyone around us.

Unless you somehow have this massive trust fund or a partner who supports you financially, why are you working for free? How are you getting by? Why would you do this to yourself? Your customers don't want you to work for free. Your small business should not be a volunteer job.

Inevitably, you will become burned out by working for free. If you really believe that you are in service to your customers and you bring something invaluable to them, then you want to sick around for them. And that means paying yourself.

Billionaires and mega corporations love when another small business closes its doors.

Why? Because when small businesses disappear, people are left with few options (mostly just big, shitty companies). These companies have built their businesses off of human exploitation and low quality. And then...our work gets devalued even more and wealth inequality worsens. We are sold even crappier stuff, more humans are exploited, and the landfills fill up faster. That’s why I believe a better future means more small businesses.

Many of you have reached out to get my thoughts on the closure of Remake.
And yes, it’s really complicated for me. I have spent a lot of time reflecting on this over the last week. It took a long time to get my thoughts together.

The message in this post is from the part of me that works really hard to be a source of hope and motivation. The part of me that cries every time I think about Remake decided to shut itself in the bathroom until I was done writing this.

But both parts agree: this is not the end of the slow fashion movement…it’s just part of the growth and awakening many of us have been experiencing over the last few years.

To be fully transparent: it’s hard for me to be completely neutral about Remake. My feelings are just too complicated. A few years ago, the organization’s carelessness became an incredibly traumatic experience for me. It started with an instagram post shared without my permission that heavily implied that my bipolar disorder had led to shopping addiction. The organization could have just pulled the post and apologized. But instead it turned into a full-on nightmare that included bullying (via email and Zoom) from the CEO of the organization and a follow up instagram post that painted me as a fame-hungry liar. Behind the scenes, I was engaging in self harm as a coping mechanism (I can still see the marks on my left arm) and very seriously considering ending Clotheshorse.

That experience changed me forever. I still feel nervous standing up for myself online.. I have a great deal of paranoia about my work being stolen/copied. And I have been intensely distrustful of anyone involved with Remake, which has made me turn down opportunities and potential friendships. I still find myself intentionally separating myself from those involved with the organization.

However, all of this work advocating for humans is done by humans. And that means it will sometimes be imperfect. People make mistakes and hurt one another accidentally all the time. What Remake did to me does not cancel out the years of impactful work done by the organization, its ambassadors, and its larger community around the world.

While Remake has been an integral part of many campaigns and projects over the years, its most important legacy is the community that developed around it. So many people found purpose, connection, and personal growth via Remake’s community organizing. From afar, I have watched so many of you literally change the course of your lives after getting involved with your local Remake chapter. I do not want that to end.

I do think (and I say this as a person with a podcast literally called Clotheshorse) that a lot has changed over the past few years, both in the slow fashion movement and the world at large.

We can no longer view the fast fashion system and its human impact as a separate, specific issue. Fast fashion is part of a larger set of interconnected issues that threaten our planet and our future: uncontrollable greed, the rise of fascism, widening wealth inequality, lack of oversight and repercussions for the wealthiest in our world, and technology wielded as a tool to divide us.

It’s no coincidence that we see fashion and cosmetics billionaires like LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault or Ronald Lauder supporting Donald Trump.

It’s no coincidence that Les Wexner (so many mall brands including Bath + Body Works) is found all over the Epstein files.

It’s no coincidence that we see executives from fast fashion conglomerates like URBN (Anthropologie, Free People, Urban Outfitters, Nuuly) donating to Republican candidates.

Fascism and fast fashion are just fruits of the same poisoned tree. A tree that grows from unchecked greed and disregard for other humans.

A tree that regards humans merely as workers and wallets.

A tree whose roots suck up all of the water, resources, and sun...leaving little for everyone else.

A tree that ultimately destroys everything and everyone around it as it grows and grows.

The thing is: we CAN cut down that tree. It’s not easy.

The ax is super heavy. It will require a lot of chopping.

One person or organization can’t lift the ax. And it’s easy to get tired from all of that chopping.

It will require patience. Hard work. Time. But most importantly...we need EVERYONE helping to get the job done. And that means extending our work and our community outside of slow fashion.

Politics, human rights, anti racism, feminism, animal rights, environmentalism, childcare, small business, education, research, healthcare, food…we must join forces with everyone who cares about these things (and more because this is not a comprehensive list). That’s how we get the work done.

Community and solidarity are the way forward. I am worried about who will be the “connector” now that Remake is gone. But I am also excited to see how we can build even larger communities when we extend our work and passion beyond dismantling fast fashion.

I always say that slow fashion is a way of life: Being a concerned citizen. Voting. Organizing within our communities. Educating others. Running for office. Sharing our time and expertise. Showing up for our neighbors. And of course, changing our own relationship with shopping, clothes, and “stuff.”

All of us who care about dismantling fast fashion want a better world. I know we can make that happen.

I believe in us.

I spend a lot of time working on pricing with small businesses. What seems like a very simple, straightforward project is actually super complicated. It’s not just making the math MATH, it’s also finding a price that customers are actually willing to pay. And that price is called “perceived value.”

A customer’s perceived value of any product or service is directly influenced by the other prices and products swirling around them. And when you know that, it’s easy to see how a world of $20 dresses and $3 tank tops can make all of us think that everything should be super cheap.

The problem with these low, low prices? They are built on exploitation and low quality. Unfortunately, it’s forcing small businesses to underprice, too.

How could someone ever make a living selling a dress like this for $150? The answer is…no one could make a living selling that dress for $150. Let’s think about the expenses associated with making and selling that dress:

1. 8 hours of sewing

2. Fabric

3. Any trims (zipper, buttons, hook and eye, elastic, label, etc)

4. Packaging for shipping

5. Platform fees (whether it’s sold on Etsy, Shopify, Square, or any other platform, someone is taking a cut)

6. The time spent creating the listing, doing customer service, posting on social media, sending out marketing emails, taking photos, sourcing fabric, creating a pattern, testing the pattern, and so on.

If somehow 2-6 were free (spoiler: that’s just not possible), that means that someone was paid $18.75 for the highly skilled, physically demanding work of sewing that dress. That’s not a living wage. And if you think $18.75 is “fine,” I want to ask you: are you willing to sew all day for $18.75/hour?

But even worse: we know that the fabric was not free. We know that the platform took a cut . We know that the packaging cost money. We know that there was a whole lot of extra labor involved. A small business owner selling a dress for $150 is probably making minimum wage, at best. And we know that is not a living wage.

I always say “It’s cheap because someone didn’t get paid.” But also, sometimes it’s still too cheap for someone to actually get paid fairly…even when the price is a lot higher than SHEIN or Zara. That’s just how much exploitation and cut corners are baked into the fast fashion model. Fast fashion prices are really that far away from making sense!

I have been working with small businesses for five years, as a coach, advisor, and teacher. The problem I encounter most often? Business owners who are not paying themselves, or paying themselves so little that it feels cruel.

Sure, sometimes when you’re starting a business you just can’t pay yourself. I get that. But what I see happening is this: the business starts off with pricing that will never accommodate anyone getting paid to do the work of running that business and making the products it sells. And at some point, it begins to feel “too late” to fix that.

Why are businesses offering these unrealistically low prices?

• Fast fashion has turned our perception of price and value completely upside down. Customers have a new baseline for price expectations and anything above that is deemed “too expensive.”

• Of course, here in the slow fashion community we know that fast fashion prices are built on human exploitation and low quality. But we are still in the minority. We need more people to know the truth about those prices: that they are actually a bad deal for everyone (the planet, the workers, AND the customers).

• That said, even small businesses who know the truth about fast fashion pricing (and how it is melting everyone’s brains) still feel that pressure from customers to keep things “affordable.” The problem with these “affordable” prices? They are great for customers and bad for everyone else.

• To make matters even more complicated, many small businesses are community minded…and they want to keep their products accessible to everyone. And in a world where everyone (except for billionaires and executives) is underpaid, overworked, and feeling broke, that means that prices need to stay low in order to be accessible.

The implications of these low prices are all around us:

• These low prices have a halo effect: if one small business underprices their products, then every other business has to follow suit or lose out on sales. So now EVERYONE is unable to pay themselves, much less pay someone to help them.

• These unrealistic prices from small businesses just reinforce the validity of the artificially low prices that fast fashion offers.

• Even worse, these low prices just devalue the work involved in making products and running a business, reinforcing the illusion that this work is “unskilled,” something that anyone can do well. And that helps fast everything companies get away with continuing to underpay and exploit workers around the world.

• Small businesses close up shop because they can’t make enough money to stay in business. Or the owner gets so burned out from working 24/7…and still finding out they can’t pay their bills at the end of the month.

• When small businesses close, that pushes customers toward the same fast “everything” megacorporations that have built their businesses off of human exploitation and low quality. This just exacerbates economic inequality.

And to be clear: every human deserves a safe, happy, healthy life. And in a capitalist system, that means they need to be paid enough to afford food, shelter, healthcare, clothes, and fun. Furthermore, they need to be able to take time off, to rest, to get inspired, to spend time with loved ones. That means being paid a living wage for their work.

If you’ve read this far, either you’re already drafting up a spicy response for the comment section…or you’re wondering what the solution is. How do we fix this disconnect in pricing and customer expectations?

I wish I could say it was something simple. “Do xyz and voila! Everyone gets paid and no one ever leaves a comment on a small business post about something being too expensive.” Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

There is a path forward, but it involves work from EVERYONE: small business owners and customers alike. And this work is worthwhile because our current expectations about price are…super unethical.

What small businesses can do:

• Take the time to sit down and work out how much a product actually costs you to make…if someone were being paid a living wage to make it. That includes materials, platform fees, packaging, and LABOR. Does the price you are charging customers actually cover that? If the answer is “no,” now is a good time to create a plan to get there. It will never happen if you don’t start working toward it now.

• Increasing prices is actually a great opportunity to educate your customers about the work that goes into making your product and running a small business. Remember: most people just don’t know. Fast fashion has warped their perception of price and value. And a lot of people think robots and machines are making most of the stuff we buy. Is it fair that you have to do this kind of work? No. But this is where we are. And if you’re stuck on how to market your business, sharing this kind of information and education can turn into a ton of social posts and emails.

• What about accessibility? I get this. I also want everyone to have access to high quality, ethical stuff. But I often see small business owners not paying themselves so that they can offer the lowest prices. How is that fair? It’s not fair to the small business owner…but it’s also not fair to the customers who will watch the business disappear when the owner is burned out and can no longer continue. I recommend reserving a portion of every drop/collection for sliding scale pricing (if this is something you can do). You also don’t have to do this. It’s up to you!

My final advice for small businesses: when one business underprices, it forces everyone else to underprice. And so pricing your products to cover a living wage actually lifts up every small business around you. We have gotten used to the artificially low prices of fast fashion because we are surrounded by cheap, low quality goods. We can get used to paying ethical prices when they are the rule, not the exception.

What everyone else can do:

• We have to rewire our own perception of price and value. Once again, the prices of fast fashion/fast everything only “work” because they are built on a foundation of human exploitation and low quality. Just about nothing we buy should be this cheap. These brands are not doing us a service by offering low prices. Instead, they are making us complicit in wage theft, forced labor, and human exploitation. They are making us sign on to dangerous and unhealthy working conditions. And in exchange, they are giving us low quality stuff that won’t last very long.

• When I encounter something from a small brand that feels too expensive for me–because yes, even I have to do this work to rewire my brain–I ask myself: “What price would make this affordable to me? Does that price make sense when I think about the time to make something, the materials involved, the work of running a business?” And most times I realize that no, it does not. If I can’t afford that item new, I look for something secondhand. Or I wait and save my money. The thing about moving away from fast fashion is…we have to slow down the process of buying. Fast fashion relies on us being impatient and thoughtless. We can and will do better.

• One of the other aspects of our behavior that fast fashion has changed? It has made us think that we need a steady stream of new, trendy stuff. Guess what? We actually don’t! One good dress > five unsatisfying dresses. And when we prioritize quality over quantity, suddenly the higher prices of small businesses don’t seem so wild, because we need less. YES, THIS CHANGE IS DIFFICULT. But it’s actually how we lived our lives before the fast fashion era.

• Spread the knowledge! Remember, most people don’t know that fast fashion pricing is one big exploitative scam…ripping off workers AND customers. We have an amazing opportunity to create a better future. It starts with talking to the people around us.

• Don’t be a jerk. If you see something cool that feels too expensive, just walk away. Saying something about it to the seller or in the comments section is not only rude, it actually reinforces those artificial fast fashion prices for everyone who hears or sees your comment. And it means you’re inadvertently doing free PR for fast fashion.

This is part four in a series. You can find the first two parts on my profile. And if you would rather listen to me tell you this story (with a lot more detail and backstory), then you should listen to the last two episodes of the podcast (available anywhere you listen to podcasts).

Way back when my partner Ryan died a few months before our child was born, I thought my life was over. Every dream or plan I had for my life was destroyed. I couldn’t imagine any future at all. And I think for a long time, I lived without letting myself have dreams. I just survived because so much depended on me and my ability to keep going. Every once in a while, someone would ask me what my goals were, what I would like to do someday, and I had no answer. I didn’t care about marriage or owning a house. And I felt like dreams and goals were just something for rich people.

Fast forward to now, and I do feel like somehow I am living a dream that I didn’t know I had: I work with all kinds of interesting, talented people. I meet rad people every day thanks to Clotheshorse. And I do something that really matters to me. I actually find myself dreaming about what comes next, something I haven’t done since I was very young.

Last week, someone on Threads told me that I and everyone who works in fast fashion deserve to die. That we are terrible people. And while yes, I did work for and with some unsavory characters over the years, the vast majority of my coworkers were kind, smart, and stuck in a shitty system thanks to debt, money, and fear. Remember, only the people at the top of fast fashion win. Everyone else loses.

I hope sharing my story has helped you think about something new. Meanwhile, I have the feelings you get after throwing up: a little relieved, a little nervous, and very, very raw. Thanks for letting me be vulnerable with you.

2020 rolled around. On a family vacation to the desert over New Year’s, Dustin and I had a serious talk while Dylan was in the shower. I wanted to leave the rental job. I would apply and interview for other jobs, but I really felt that the best way forward was to save as much money as we could over the next year. And then I could leave at the end of the year. We could use that money to move out of the city–maybe to Lancaster county–and then I could figure out what I wanted to do next. We were both pretty excited about the future.

And then it was March. I don’t need to tell you what happened in the world that year: the COVID pandemic. One day we were told to pack up our stuff because the company was going to “try” to work from home for one day. It would be a test, in case the pandemic situation worsened. I never worked in that office again. I’m so glad I took my plants home with me!

A week later, we were told to cancel everything we had on order, whether it was actively being sewn right then or already at the port here in the United States, ready to head for the warehouse. This was not open to negotiation.

Vendors and sales reps cried as I spoke with them. They lost their jobs and businesses. I knew the effects of these cancellations would ripple all the way to the bottom of this supply chain…factory workers would not be paid and might even lose their jobs. It was sickening. It felt so WRONG to me because this company had the money to pay for these orders, but refused to do so. When I brought this up with my boss, she was sort of like “you can’t let yourself care about these things.”

How could I not care? How could ANYONE not care? I was an active part of ruining people’s lives…all in the name of profits, executive bonuses, and shareholders. And I just couldn’t believe that it was happening.

Of course, I don’t know why I couldn’t believe it was happening because I knew better. I had worked for this company as a part-time sales associate. I had seen them fire a guy because he let someone use his employee discount on a pair of jeans. The company sued him for $10,000 and won, ruining his financial life for like a decade…all over a $30 discount on a pair of jeans.

I had seen how they would squeeze every last bit of work out of the salaried employees. How they thought we were all criminals and thieves. How little they thought of us.

This was the company that always bragged about having an extra hundred million dollars in the bank at all times…telling us to just rip away any sort of financial stability from all of these people all around the world.

This was the moment that I realized my entire career–practically my entire adult life–had been based on these really fucked up power dynamics. My employer always had all the power…and not just over me. Everybody else who worked alongside me. Everybody who worked in every store and every warehouse. Everyone overseas who had been making this stuff in their factories.

There was this illusion that we had some freedom, that we took part in the decisions. But really…we had nothing and we were nothing. We were just columns in a spreadsheet that could be deleted in an instant. No one was allowed to say “no” to the company.

By now you probably know that no matter what I said or what I thought, every brand and retailer cancelled all of their orders in March of 2020. And I can’t even begin to imagine what the ripple effects were globally, the human impact of it all. Around the world, people lost their money, jobs, and livelihoods overnight. This wasn’t a little thing. Somewhere between 300 million and 430 million people are employed by the fashion industry. Did people lose their homes? Did people go hungry? Did people die?

When people talk about fashion being sort of frivolous or not a political thing, I always come back to moments like this when YES, it was actually a life and death situation.

While every brand/retailer cancelled the orders, many bowed to public pressure (from people like you and me), reinstating orders or at least paying for them.

But URBN, meaning Free People, Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters, and Nuuly, never did. The company never responded to any pressure publicly.

While every brand/retailer cancelled the orders, many bowed to public pressure (from people like you and me), reinstating orders or at least paying for them.

But URBN, meaning Free People, Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters, and Nuuly, never did. The company never responded to any pressure publicly.

We should not forget that this company–along with a lot of others–basically said “fuck you” to the customers pressuring them to do the right thing. As I said in the previous part of this series, these brands do not respect their workers…but they also do not respect their customers.

We should not forget this because a company that operates without ethics and accountability should not have access to our wallets.

The problem is that many, many people have forgotten that this happened. Or they just don’t care. I still get messages from people all the time telling me how they just can’t stop shopping at Free People or Anthropologie because there’s nowhere else for them to shop. They are “obsessed” with these brands or these brands really “get” who they are as individuals.

Sometimes I feel so angry and frustrated about this.

I work hard to create a shame-free environment. Making people feel bad about fast fashion doesn’t lead to any positive change. And I give people a lot of grace when it comes to fast fashion because I understand how hard it can be to avoid. I understand that there are a lot of complex issues of accessibility, affordability, and size inclusivity.

And I also understand that we are addicted to fast fashion. For years and years, we have been led to believe that we need a steady stream of new, trendy clothes in order to be happy, successful, and loved. Fast fashion is entangled in our mental health. Shopping is portrayed as a form of self care. And the fast fashion system has done a really good job of convincing us that we should sacrifice our planet and its people in favor of cheap, cute clothes.

What makes it all even more complicated, more difficult to quit, is that we have emotional connections to these brands. We will say things like “I LOVE Free People” and “I’m an Anthro girl.” These emotional relationships were created by these brands with some really smart and sneaky marketing. If you’re ever found yourself defending a massive company owned by a billionaire on social media, know that you are not alone.

However, this love and devotion for fast fashion brands DOES make me angry, because I know that these companies really don’t care about humans at all. What happened in 2020 is just one example. They waste resources, churning out low quality, short lived clothing that will be clogging landfills very soon. These companies steal from artists, designers, and small businesses all the time. It’s well documented. And these brands do not respect us. They sell us things that don’t fit well, in fabrics that make us feel uncomfortable and sweaty. Yet we just keep showing up day after day to give them more of our money. We deserve so much better.

When I was furloughed at the end of that month, I felt a complex set of emotions. On one hand, we were about to experience a lot of financial trouble (I wouldn’t receive my first unemployment benefits for months). On the other hand, I didn’t have to go to this horrible place again. I didn’t have to be complicit in general shittiness any more. I could live with myself. But it was also hurtful. I was the first person hired for the buying team. I had hired and trained everyone else who worked there. I had picked out literally everything that was on the site when it launched. And I was the only person from the buying team that was furloughed. I was also the only person who ever spoke up about the bad things that happened in the office. I knew that that was not a coincidence.

Eventually I was let go permanently at the end of July, a few days before the internet filled with headlines about my employer’s “surprise profits” in the midst of a global pandemic.

Those profits came at the expense of people across the world: corporate workers like me, store associates, warehouse workers, and garment workers.

That profit was derived from the fear and pain of so many.

I was given a specific time to go back to the office to empty out my desk. There was actually very little there because on our last day before the world shut down, I had this inexplicable feeling I was never coming back.

As a loss prevention officer watched me pack up my pens, folders, and papers, I looked around at all of the empty desks. Dead plants everywhere. Random items of clothing tossed on a big table. The smell of dust. I was sad, because it felt like a rejection. Like when the person you’ve been wanting to break up with…breaks up with you first. I felt angry, for being let go with two weeks of severance after working for that company more than twelve years cumulatively. But I also felt…excited because maybe now I could be free.

This is when Clotheshorse began.

I was finally free to talk about what I had experienced. And I had the time to learn more about the impact of fast fashion. I finally had space to think about it all and see the big picture.

Almost six years later, I’m still doing this work that is Clotheshorse. I have been learning all of this alongside you. Some days are hard, some days are exciting and rewarding. Some days I get death threats from vegans, and other days one of you reaches out to say that something I said or did made you think differently and change what you are doing.

That said–the work of Clotheshorse is primarily unpaid. And yes, that does make me feel like a gigantic loser sometimes. Especially six years into it, seeing other podcasts put out one episode a month and bring in tens of thousands of dollars in Patreon support and ads. Yes, I cry about this sometimes. I think about quitting all the time, but I just keep coming back to it.

This whole “fast everything” system depends on us. We do the work that fuels these companies…then we turn back around and fuel it with our wallets. This whole system that can’t exist without us thinks of all of us as disposable, as columns on a spreadsheet. Whether we’re the workers or the customers, the system does not respect us. It doesn’t want to give us good things, whether we’re paying for them or working for them. Why are we continuing to participate in it?

I want everyone to see a future that doesn’t include a steady stream of cheap, trendy clothing.

I want everyone to experience a future of joy, community, and care for other humans.

This work is important. I can’t stop doing it because we need everyone to realize that we have the power in this system when we work all together against it. Maybe someday this work will stop being important, because everyone will have figured it out and things will be changing. And when that happens, I won’t need to do this work anymore.

So now that you know that Clotheshorse isn’t a paying job, how do I really survive financially? I make my actual living as a consultant for a variety of small brands and businesses making all kinds of things, from clothes to accessories to food…all trying to do things in a better way. I help them with product planning, financial stuff, data analysis, even marketing. I take all of the skills that I learned working in fast fashion (like strategy and finance) and help them make better decisions. I spend a lot of time doing spreadsheets, teaching strategic methods, and playing therapist when things are hard. I actually feel like I’m part of something bigger, building a better future.

Nothing is easy. This is challenging work and there is no paid time off or sick days. I keep my hourly rate far below market value so people can afford me, which means I have to work very long hours in order to pay kid’s tuition, cover my healthcare, etc. And yes, I still have nightmares about logging into my checking account and finding zero dollars. Some things never change.

And yet…I never even consider talking to another recruiter about a corporate job. I don’t want it. Yes, I worry all the time about what will happen next…but this is still a pretty happy ending (although, I really think that I’m just at the beginning of what happens next and the ending is hopefully really far away).

It was a long journey to get here, but I hope I get to keep doing this for a long time. Thanks for being here with me.

This is part four in a series. You can find the first two parts on my profile. And if you would rather listen to me tell you this story (with a lot more detail and backstory), then you should listen to the last two episodes of the podcast (available anywhere you listen to podcasts).

When I was a kid, I dreamed about all kinds of futures for myself.

Astronomer (I wanted to be the first person to meet aliens).

President of the US (yes, I really did want that job, but mostly because then I would get to find out the truth about Area 51 and aliens).

Writer, traveling the world (and maybe meeting aliens).

There was a point where it felt like I could be anything I wanted. The world was wide open for me. But with each year, it closed up a little bit, as I realized that people like me didn’t get to be anything we wanted.

Why did I keep working in fast fashion when I did not choose that path for myself? Because I was afraid. Every time I had a moment to try to find a job in a different industry, no one would hire me. No one could understand why I would leave fashion. And I also think that they assumed I was kinda flighty, kinda vapid, and probably not very smart. I was stuck.

I got unstuck eventually, but I still haven’t met aliens.

Breaking up is hard to do.

I finally left the “feminist” brand in early summer of 2018.

After months and months and MONTHS, of holding it all inside, the dam of emotions broke loose one morning while Dustin was driving me to work. We were sitting in our very cute cherry red 1980s Volvo wagon, parked just outside the “feminist” brand’s office, when I just started sobbing. “I can’t do this anymore. It makes me wish I was dead. I dream about being dead.”

I remember Dustin being surprised, but maybe he was just shocked that this was happening at 8:50 am. There’s no way anyone who had spent any time with me in the last year couldn’t tell that something was “off” about me. When I met with my boss (the CEO) to tell her I wanted to come up with a plan together to transition me out of the business, she smirked and said “Oh good, I wanted to fire you anyway.”

I threw a “retirement” party to celebrate my departure, complete with snacks, artisanal jello shots, punch, and kiddy pools. It was really just such a great day.

But the fear was there. After all, the only fashion jobs in Portland were with Nike and Adidas. I knew I didn’t want to do either. I did meet with a Nike recruiter, but I felt the mood sour when I asked “Is it a good work culture for women and nonbinary people?” I already knew the answer anyway.

I decided I was finally going to work for myself. I started working with small businesses around town, using what I had learned in my career in fast fashion to help them. It felt like I was finally living the life I wanted: I named my hours, I worked on interesting things, I had the time to exercise, see friends, garden, read books, work on other projects. For example, I was writing a business plan to open my own store/brand that would carry cute, unique gifts inspired by all the kawaii gift shops in Japan. It was called Dream Day. There were a lot of reasons to be excited and optimistic!

But…it still felt financially unstable. Dustin had just started to build a career as a UX designer (after years of being a professional sound guy and touring musician). He was in the early stages, which meant he didn’t make much money. We were dealing with intense medical bills and my kid would be starting college in a few years.

I was making it work for now, but then (and now) I live in constant fear of losing it all. I have regular nightmares about logging into my checking account and finding that the balance is $0. Being poor is traumatic. You never stop worrying about being that desperate and vulnerable again.

When Urban Outfitters (URBN) came a-knocking with a new rental brand they were launching, I was intrigued. The idea of working on something that could actually be sustainable was really appealing. The recruiter told me that they were ready to move fast…which was kinda inconvenient because I was going to Japan in less than a week. I was leaving Tuesday morning, from Portland. The recruiter asked if I could fly out to Philadelphia Sunday night, interview all day Monday, then fly home Monday night. I agreed to it only because I was so curious about it.

The trip to Philadelphia was less than 24 hours. I interviewed with half a dozen people. And it was okay, for the most part. I ate lunch alone in the big URBN cafeteria, feeling that loneliness from a decade ago all over again. I couldn’t decide how I felt. On one hand, the idea was interesting. They would pay me some decent money. I could send my kid to college. On the other hand, this campus had always made me feel yucky and shitty.

I was kinda like “okay maybe I’m super into this job offer” until my final interview of the day, with the company’s Chief Creative Officer. It was so horrible. Her disdain and disgust for me was so apparent that I thought about just walking out and catching the bus to the airport. She couldn’t even look directly at me. And her contempt for me, for this new rental brand was almost physically painful. I could feel my face burning, feeling shame for something I could not name. How could I work in an environment where people felt that kind of behavior was acceptable?

I flew home with a churning stomach. When Dustin asked me about the interview I could only respond with “I don’t know.”

The next day, as planned, we flew to Tokyo. And that trip started by taking a tiny plane out of Portland to Seattle. It was the kind of plane that doesn’t have a jetbridge, so you walk across the tarmac and up the stairs to board. And as we reached the top of those stairs, I turned and said to Dustin, “I’m not going to take that job if they offer it to me. I just have a bad feeling.”

He responded, “Good, don’t do it.” And he was proud of me for making that decision, because he knew how deep and intense my financial anxiety always was.

We were in Japan for two weeks and every day, I expected to wake up to an email from the URBN recruiter, wanting to follow up on the interviews. After all, they had wanted to “move fast.” I was excited to say “no.”

Two weeks later, no response. A month later, still nothing. And the money fears were creeping up again. For no real reason other than: Dylan was going to go to college in a few years. I was scared about how I was going to pay for that. I started interviewing for other jobs, all of them kinda boring and fast fashion-y. But I couldn’t turn down a conversation with a recruiter. Maybe I just wanted the opportunity to say “no” to someone since URBN hadn’t given me that chance.

And then…the URBN recruiter called to ask me if I was still interested. But the job would be different (a little). Rather than being the head of buying, I would be the Senior Buyer. That was a demotion in terms of title, but they were willing to pay me what I had been making as the Director of Merchandising at the “feminist” brand. If I stuck it out, I could pay for my kid’s college. We would have decent health insurance. There would be some sense of security.

I said “yes” to a job I did not want.

Well, from day one I knew I had made a mistake. The vibes on that campus were worse than ever. I felt my eating disorder coming back at rapid velocity. The headaches and stomachaches returned. I felt like such an outsider and I was super lonely.

I witnessed egregious (and definitely illegal) instances of bullying and harassment.

People said the most fatphobic and classist shit, and no one pushed back. There’s nothing like seeing billionaire nepo babies make fun of poor people on Slack. Or hearing a stylist say that it’s impossible to make anything look cute on a size 10 model.

My boss told me that I would be “more successful in my career” if I stopped caring about the people who worked for and with me. I think if someone had said this to me five, ten years before that…I would have felt guilty or ashamed for having empathy for others. Because let’s be honest: in companies like this, in an industry like this…empathy is considered a flaw, a weakness.

But somehow, hearing this from my boss made me feel like I had to be louder and more outspoken about how others were being treated. It meant that I had to show up for others twice as hard. I knew I wasn’t going to fit in here–one of my direct reports wore a Cartier watch to work and my boss couldn’t understand why I didn’t fly first class every time I travelled. So why not at least know that I was being the best person I could be?

That Chief Creative Officer–from the horrible interview– not only refused to acknowledge me in meetings, she stared through me as I weren’t there speaking. As far as why she hated me so much? I can only assume it was because of how I looked. It certainly wasn’t related to my talent or experience. And once again, if I had to deal with her five, ten years earlier…I would have felt that I was the problem. But suddenly it was dawning on me that I was not in fact the problem . And that company was super fucking lucky to have someone as smart and talented as me there to make decisions and teach others.

Something was breaking through in my brain. It was a little seed sprouting and poking through the earth. It was something telling me that I could–and would–do better than this. That I didn’t belong there because I was too smart, too caring…and that was just fine.

And clothing rental? Well, it wasn’t as sustainable as I had hoped. If you want to know all of the reasons why, you have to listen to the Rental-sode episode of the podcast. But needless to say, it’s just not sustainable (or ethical) to rent out fast fashion clothes that can’t survive being worn over and over again. And of course there was no discussion of the working conditions in the factories where these clothes were made, much less the impact of propping up a fast fashion system via rental.

But also: fast fashion had gotten really fast.

Being back on that campus after years working for other companies made me see with clarity just how fast and fucked up the industry had become.

Everyone was making super cheap clothing, super fast. I was so shocked by how little we were paying for everything. How could the company be paying LESS to make clothing than it had been ten years ago? It just made no sense to me.

And while we had once planned our buys 3-6 months in advance, we were encouraged to place orders one month or less before delivery. Everything was shipping via airplane.

And every friend I had in the industry from my previous jobs was saying the same things: too many new products to design and buy, not enough time and people to do that well.

And another thing I had been observing passively for close to two decades really came into focus: none of the executives at any of these companies (except, once again, Modcloth) actually had any respect for the customers. The executives thought that the customers were stupid, desperate, and just didn’t know well enough to have standards. So we could shovel anything their way and they would scoop it up. It didn’t have to fit. It didn’t have to last long. And most importantly, it didn’t have to be something that these executives would ever actually wear themselves.

I saw this early in my career at Urban Outfitters, when nobody in management or above would dare to actually (ew) wear clothes from Urban Outfitters. They were shimmying around the office in $1000 Danish sweaters and Celine shoes that cost more than my rent, visibly cringing at the acrylic/poly blend sweaters and literal plastic shoes that we were making and selling.

At Nasty Gal, the CEO wore $10,000 worth of clothes to the office every day, while telling us that the customer would surely love “vegan suede” if we told her to. She just wanted to take direction from us. She didn’t know better. And if we photographed the clothes just right, the customer would think they were a lot nicer than they really were.

The CEO of the “feminist” brand didn’t think the actual product or how it fit mattered. The marketing was the most important thing. If we could have the right marketing and hype, we could sell our customers anything. Once again, there was this idea that customers don’t actually know anything and they are just waiting for us to tell (or trick them) into buying something.

At the rental brand, my boss would see and touch the lower price point fast fashion we were renting out to customers and scoff “ew, cheapo creepo.” But then admit that the customers were kinda too stupid to know just how shitty these clothes were. And once again, it was all about the styling. “Let’s create the illusion that these clothes are nice and the customer will never figure it out.”

You know the weird stomachache you get after eating too much candy? I was having that nonstop. Just this unpleasant constant discomfort…with no obvious source.

I reached a point where I needed Dustin to drive me to work every day just so he could hold my hand and reassure me until the very last moment when I had to get out of the car and scan my keycard into the building. I had to keep working at this job so my kid could go to college. So we could afford food and rent. Survival meant…doing this for as long as possible.

The survival of my family meant being okay with how fucked up everything was around me

Part five coming next week…

P.S. I am sending postcards of hope to members of the Clotheshorse community because I want you to know I am thinking of you. If you would like to receive one, add your address here.

This is part three in a series. You can find the first two parts on my profile.

So yeah, my name is Amanda Lee McCarty and I’m a scaredy cat. I literally cannot think of one moment in my life when I wasn’t drowning in anxiety. I would not characterize myself as a brave person. I’m getting there...I do things that scare me every day (like share posts like this), but it’s a process.

And last week when @a_brooklyn_babe rightfully called me out in part two for not talking about garment workers enough in my series about working in fast fashion, I was reminded me of what a cowardly dumb baby I have been for most of my adult life. And yes, I laid in bed that night feeling like a bad person. But also...the reality is that I didn’t really start thinking about what might be REALLY happening behind the curtain in the fashion industry until around 2016. I was just working, surviving, trying to find moments of happiness, maybe even get into a romantic relationship. And of course, I was afraid of asking the bigger, scarier questions. Working at the “feminist” brand and no longer having other layers of managers above me in the buying org meant that I HAD to start asking those questions. And the answers were...not very informative.

I am a people pleaser.

And yes, my seemingly uncontrollable desire to ensure everyone is happy, satisfied, and content is often damaging to my mental and physical health. It actually took becoming a “content creator” and dealing with the (un)happiness of many strangers around the world to force me to start unpacking that tendency within myself.

I can look back now and see that this need to make everything “okay” for everyone started when I was a child. My home life was chaotic. Adults were a source of unpredictable rage and punishment. I figured out pretty fast that it was my job to anticipate anger before it happened and do everything I could to prevent it. Should I fail in this mission, it was also my responsibility to absorb the rage and its consequences, hopefully learning to do better in the future.

And really, this kind of behavior is learned in situations with uneven power dynamics. Parent-child is the first experience we have in power dynamics. If you have a bad parent, you feel like property, powerless in every way. You make no decisions of your own, except for when you decide to do your best to survive by taking on the responsibilities of the people pleaser.

My home life made me feel sick. It was a stomachache and headache that was always there. I never knew what each day would bring. Would I be hit? Stand in a corner for hours on end? Maybe just screamed at for a while about what a bad kid I was. Or perhaps I would just get to watch my brother be punished instead. I tiptoed around the house, doing extra chores, trying my hardest to be the perfect daughter, student, and household help.

If I did my best, in theory, no one would be punished. No one would scream that day.

When you grow up like that, people pleasing is an easy habit to repeat over and over again as an adult. In my 20s, I had two relationships that mimicked that endless anxiety of childhood, of never knowing what you were walking into when you came home. I never felt calm, content, or even loved. Just kinda…nervous. The power dynamics were a fucked up. I was afraid of something, even if I couldn’t always name what it was. Fortunately I haven’t been in a romantic relationship like that in a long time.

But where I did get to experience those fucked up power dynamics over and over again was…at work. An executive at UO threw a rolling rack full of hangers and scarves at me in a meeting (WHILE I WAS LITERALLY PRESENTING THE NEXT SEASON’S BUY), scratching up my face and creating a new outcome to worry about at every future job. But generally, I just feared losing my job or being humiliated. Both were always possibilities. Without a job I would…well, I don’t know what I would do. But the repercussions would affect my entire family.

(By the way…that executive would go on to run J. Crew into the ground, to the point of near bankruptcy. The last I heard, I he was living in South America, shunned by just about everyone back home).

In fact, in the offices of many of my employers, that culture of fear impacted everyone, ratcheting up an already toxic culture, forcing people to betray their peers regularly.

At the “feminist” brand, my people pleasing and anxiety levels were off the charts. The migraines and stomach problems never stopped. I was exhausted, but I could not sleep. I had eczema all over my hands and arms. My doctor gently suggested that I consider looking for another job. The CEO was unpredictable and punishing, I felt like a ten year old trying to make my mother happy (or at least less angry) every single day I was in the office.

This is why I was ordering feminist t-shirts on my way to my wedding.

This is why I showed up to work every day, even after a night in the emergency room with pneumonia and kidney issues.

This is why I continued to work in the office very day, even though the photoshoots (with constant flashing lights) happening ten feet from my desk were giving me blinding headaches and nausea.

I worked for that company from 2016-2018, an already shitty, scary time. But also, the way people organized, shared information, and raised awareness was changing in a good way. Rather than merely using social media to share pics of vacations and acai bowls, more and more of us were finding education and community. And it meant that conversations were growing about topics that had once been limited to smaller groups.

One thing that people were discussing more and more? Who made our clothes and how those workers were treated. Yes, Rana Plaza had collapsed in 2013, killing 1134 workers (mostly women)...but few people outside of the fashion industry (or the activists working to change it) knew about it. Social media made it easier to share information like that, to reach more people and get them involved.

Because the “feminist” brand’s customer base was very plugged into human rights…and because fashion IS a feminist issue…our customer service person was starting to receive emails asking about who was making the clothing we sold and what were the working conditions in our factories. These emails were forwarded to me because I was the Director of Merchandising (meaning: I was in charge of all things product related for the company, basically the head of buying).

I nervously asked my boss (the CEO) what I should tell people. Because I didn’t know much.

Our t-shirts were printed across town, but the blanks came from a wholesaler…and who knows where they were made.

Our clothing was made through a vendor who worked with a lot of fast fashion brands. All of that stuff came from China. But I was never in touch with the factories. There were at least 2-3 layers of people separating me from the actual manufacturing.

The CEO was like “well figure out something good to tell people.” Her overall stance was that the customers asking these questions were just being annoying, but ignoring them could turn into a PR issue.

Now I’m here to tell you that garment workers were just not something we discussed in any of the buying departments in my career. Yeah, that’s fucking sad. And I guess the fact that I wasn’t thinking about it that often means that I’m a person who was so focused on my own survival that I couldn’t think about the big picture. And that’s bad, too. Obviously I want to be better than that. The thing about being a people pleaser is…you’re often focused on pleasing the wrong people. The worst people.

There were some things I knew. Like, I remembered that Kathy Lee Gifford had a clothing line with Walmart in the 90s. And at some point, an investigation revealed that underage and underpaid workers in Honduras and NYC were making those clothes. Nike had been busted numerous times for using child labor and exploiting workers around the world. By the 2000s, most companies were adding clauses to their vendor agreements forbidding child labor. But no one was actually checking.

In the 2010s, one of my employers actually invested money in developing a vendor compliance department that would include factory inspections. They did a test run of inspections on vendors that had the highest likelihood of abusive, dangerous working conditions…and found that yes, those vendors were bad. One of them had made hundreds of thousands of bedazzled mesh slippers, cotton mary janes, and slip-on sneakers that we had sold through the 00s. My employer phased out that vendor, replacing them with other manufacturers. I have no idea if they continued to do these inspections, weeding out other factories, because that just wasn’t something they discussed with the buying team.

At Modcloth, my boss went to China to visit some factories that were making the Modcloth in-house brand clothing. When she returned, she told me that one of the factory owners had seemed shady, saying weird stuff about how they had made the factory a lot safer and cleaner just because she was visiting. The whole scene had given her a weird feeling, so she made the decision that we would stop working with them. That was great, but our Modcloth in-house brand was only a small percentage of what we bought and sold every day. What about everyone else?

Modcloth and Nasty Gal both bought a lot of fast fashion clothing that was made in LA, which implied better working conditions. But through the bathroom window at Modcloth, I could see women in the building across the street sewing all day without air conditioning. I asked a friend who worked in production at another brand if garment workers in LA had good working conditions. Her response was, “I don’t know. They don’t let us see the factory floor. But with the pricing we demand from them, it’s hard to imagine that anyone is being paid well.”

By the time I set out to figure out who was making the “feminist” brand’s clothes, I realized I just didn’t know what to believe.

It felt like the actual production of clothing was a secret from everyone, even those of us who were responsible for managing it all.

And sure, I could trust my employers to care about garment workers, but with the way I had seen retail and corporate employees treated over the years…why would I?

I reached out to the vendor who was making most of our clothes to see if they were doing factory inspections, have any certifications, proof of working conditions, etc. She said, “we have satisfied Nordstrom’s Code of Conduct for manufacturing, so we are fine. No child labor or anything.” She reassured me that Nordstrom’s code was “the gold standard” and that we didn’t have to worry. She sent me a copy of it and it…well, on the surface, it seemed fine, until you realized that really it was basically getting vendors to say “sure, we don’t use child labor or forced labor and our factories are safe” without any actual documentation. In the event of another Rana Plaza disaster, Nordstrom could push the blame on to the vendor for lying.

Next I reached out to the t-shirt wholesaler to ask about where the blanks we were using were made.

“Well, some of them are from Honduras, some downtown LA, and we do a little bit in Bangladesh and Vietnam.”

Were there any factory inspections? “We don’t use child labor,” she said curtly before shooing me off the phone.

I reported back to my boss about what I had learned, fearing punishment for not finding a good, clear answer. She was surprisingly chill about it, telling me that I should just put together a response that mentioned that our vendors had been audited by bigger companies with more resources and did not use child labor. And that I should really lean into the fact that our tees were “made” in town.

I didn’t push her on that. Because I was scared. I didn’t want to get humiliated or lose my job. I didn’t want to become her next target for bullying. And I just wanted to make it through another day at work.

I would have to be okay with being a coward.

But it was just another thing that ate away at me, alongside not having health insurance, watching other people get humiliated regularly, tiptoeing around the CEO’s moods, sitting in meetings and hearing the most fucked up shit being said by people who were supposedly feminists. Yet it all added up: if this company didn’t care about us–the people they saw every day in the office and stores–they certainly didn’t care about the faceless people half a world away that made the stuff we were selling.

A few years later I would finally have the time and space to really dig into who really made our clothes. The exploitation and abuse. The unhealthy and unsafe working conditions. The casual cruelty of it all.

But I still had to face one more fast fashion job before I got there...

Part four coming next week…

P.S. I am sending postcards of hope to members of the Clotheshorse community because I want you to know I am thinking of you. If you would like to receive one, add your address here.

January isn’t over yet and it feels like this month has lasted seven years. I can’t remember what it feels like to feel remotely relaxed.

I was sitting at the kitchen table with Dustin on Saturday, drinking coffee and getting ready to go out to run a ton of pre-winter storm errands. And then I watched the video of Alex Pretti being murdered by ICE agents in Minneapolis. As I watched, I just started sobbing uncontrollably. And this proceeded to happen to me over and over again for the next few days. It was like I could no longer hold in the sheer level of grief, rage, and terror that I have been feeling consistently for more than a year.

On Sunday, I was supposed to be working on an episode of Clotheshorse…but I just couldn’t do it. I could not stop crying at random intervals. I knew that anything I put out into the world at that moment would not be beneficial to anyone. I want to be strong and hopeful for all of you.

I’m still working on coping with everything around me. But I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve been having today…

If you’re feeling this sense of overwhelming doom right now, you are not alone.

Leaning into doom and just giving up feels easy. We don’t need to take any action. We can carry on as usual until…the end? And if we assume the worst outcome for every situation, we save ourselves from disappointment. I definitely do this. My motto has always been “assume the worst, be pleasantly surprised when the outcome is slightly better.” It feels safe, protecting me from the agony of disappointment.

We are hardwired to default to doomerism. Seriously, it’s a part of our evolutionary psychology. If we believe that there will always be five saber-toothed tigers outside our cave (no matter what we do), we’re more likely to survive because we will adapt to never leaving the cave. It gives us a sense of predictability in an unpredictable world. But there is no cozy cave for us right now. We have to work together to chase those predators away.

I work hard to stave off the doomerism because I KNOW that we need to take action if anything will change. And these days, staying hopeful requires a lot of effort. But I also know that when we give up, the worst case scenario becomes a reality. And we normalize the worst things by discussing them as an unavoidable fate.

A few days ago, we received more than a foot of snow at my home in Lancaster County. Our house—which does not have central heat—is cold and drafty, but cozier than the sub-freezing temperatures outside. I’ve been feeling trapped and claustrophobic. Yesterday, I noticed how my raised garden beds had disappeared, buried in ice and snow. A wave of melancholy swept over me. It felt like it would always be winter, that there would always be snow covering everything, and that it would never again be warm enough to spend the afternoon outside, harvesting vegetables and filling the bird feeders. I would have to accept this grim fate.

But then I shook myself out of it. For one, yes, winter is long, but not endless. Spring is just a few months away, followed by summer. The snow will melt. The leaves will return to the trees. New birds will arrive in the yard. I will be able to spend the afternoon outside doing any number of chores. And like winter, the bad times never last forever. Good times follow. But unlike winter, how long the bad times last depends on us. The longevity and “goodness” of the good times requires work from us.

Because while the snow will melt and the barn swallows will return to my yard in spring, whether or not I have vegetables to harvest depends on me. I have to do the work of composting, raking, planting, weeding, and watering to make the garden grow. The end result of the garden is directly related to the care and work I put into cultivating it.

What happens next is dependent on all of us. We can do the work, protect our neighbors, and fight the systems and people that seek to destroy and doom us. Or we stand up now. We connect with and care for our communities. We call our Senators. We speak out loudly and proudly to anyone who will listen.

We are the warm light of hope in a winter of doom.

THIS IS PART TWO! Go read part one or none of this will make sense.

Writing this has actually been more difficult than I imagined, because it has forced me to revisit so many difficult times. It’s scary to be so transparent about my life. Thanks for giving me the chance to feel safe being vulnerable with all of you.

The recurring theme of how and why I worked in fast fashion? How out of control I felt. How trapped I was. Even though I was at work making big financial decisions every day, it always seemed as if I didn’t get to make decisions when it came to my own life. I think this is a feeling many of you an relate to, no matter where you work. Capitalism is a treadmill and jumping off is rarely an option (unless you have a financial safety net).

Part three will be coming next week, but if you just can’t wait, you can find it on Instagram.

So did I know that I was working in fast fashion?

I’m not sure if Urban Outfitters was exactly fast fashion (yet) when I started working as a buyer. Yes, we delivered new items to stores every month, but it was a reasonable number. Things stayed at full price for months (usually 3-6 months) before going on sale.

The workload was doable. At the same time, we were always selling stuff at a high markup that was not good quality. But the markup would increase as the quality declined over the next 15 years.

Also, I was surrounded by this sort of “corporate hype” that what we were doing at Urban Outfitters was cooler and more important than other big chain/brand out there. And while I’m pretty resistant to that kind of corporate culture, I definitely DID think UO was different from Forever 21.

By now you have seen many people use the analogy of the frog in a boiling pot of water to describe many different scenarios, including climate change and the rise of fascism.

Basically the water gets warm so slowly, that the frog doesn’t notice and then boils to death.

It turns out that is an urban myth, but to use that analogy anyway…the fast fashion-ization of an entire industry didn’t happen overnight. It happened so gradually that I could only see that I was a buyer in fast fashion in hindsight.

The real change began in 2008, with the global financial crisis that spurred a recession. Urban Outfitters anticipated decreasing sales, but the executives felt we could protect stock prices (and keep shareholders happy) by increasing the profitability of the things we sold. So we were required to reach out to every vendor and ask for a blanket 15% discount on our orders. That was a really fun day (jk). The company also cut costs by putting a freeze on raises and promotions. Our benefits were also cut and our health insurance became more expensive. And you know what? The company had a year of record profit.

The workload increased. We bought more and more different styles and jammed the stores (and our website) with more and more new products. I was given more categories to manage (sold to me as a “great opportunity”) without a raise or change in title. When coworkers left, a replacement was not hired. Rather, their work was given to the rest of the team.

One day a coworker whispered to me, “Do you ever stay awake at night thinking about how all of this stuff that we buy is just going to end up in the landfill?” We locked eyes, sharing our sadness. And then I nervously laughed, “we can never talk about this in the office again.”

But the fact was, more and more often I found myself struggling with the suspicion that we were doing something bad. All of the waste that would clog the landfills. All of the resources being used to create that near-future waste. And what about the way the company treated all of the people who made and sold that near-future waste?

I had to jam those thoughts to the back corner of my brain in order to get up and work another day. Without this job I had nothing. I would end up in the trailer park with my mom, growing more bitter and hateful with each passing day.

Why didn’t I go work for a “nicer” clothing company?

Now is a good time to address a question I receive quite frequently: why didn’t I go work for a “nicer” clothing company? Maybe something more high end (and in theory, more ethical)?

Well, that’s just not how it works in the industry. You could maybe go from Chanel to Urban Outfitters, but you will NEVER go from Urban Outfitters to Chanel.

There is a high level of classism within the industry. So if you are working at a brand with less prestige, you are unlikely to be considered for a job at a company with more prestige. And of course, now I think that is laughable because even luxury brands have adopted the fast fashion model. But that’s just how this industry works.

Eventually I moved on to other companies. My first foray out of the UO bubble was Modcloth. There we launched new items EVERY DAY. Our catalog of styles was virtually infinite, so we went to see vendors every week in order to find more and more new styles to sell.

That said...Modcloth was without a doubt the best employer I have ever had. We had great benefits and the culture was kind and supportive. I was actually excited to go to work every day.

On a personal level, my relationship with my family back home in Pennsylvania was weirder than ever. They seemed to think I was “rich,” so suddenly I was paying my whole extended family’s phone bill. No one would pick me up at the airport when I came home to visit unless I paid them to do so. Meanwhile I was still living paycheck to paycheck.

Next I moved to Nasty Gal, in pursuit of more money and a higher level title. I knew I needed to keep moving forward (and up) if I was ever going to be able to send my kid to college. On my first day, I read through the sales reports on my desk and I thought “this company is fucked.”

Beyond the mismanagement and chaos (or maybe BECAUSE of it), there was no work/life balance. Team size was constantly shrinking while we chased down more and more things to buy. We had weekly meetings in a room called (aptly enough) Mean Girls, where we would be torn to shreds by the CEO and her monstrous cronies.

I starved myself in new and innovative ways. I often ate lunch in the bathroom so no one would judge me for eating food. I felt like I had a permanent headache and diarrhea.

Now is a good time to mention something very important: yes, I worked with some terrible people through my career. But I also worked with (and befriended) incredibly talented, super smart people. And I feel so lucky that I had the chance to work alongside them and get to know them. Specifically, I met some of my favorite people in the world while working at Nasty Gal.

There are plenty of amazing people working in fast fashion who feel trapped just like I did.

When I was finally laid off from Nasty Gal because the company was running out of money, I felt relieved. Maybe I could finally figure out something else to do that would be better for me. My friend Kim was laid off about five minutes after I was, so my new-ish boyfriend Dustin (!) picked up from the office and took us out for drinks.

We were free...but scared!

Another good thing had been happening in tandem with my career in fashion: I was using every minute of free time to write. And over the years, I had written pages and pages about my experiences (primarily personal--I didn’t think anyone would be interested in hearing about my job). For about a year in LA (while I was at Modcloth and Nasty Gal), I even published a zine called Sandy with a friend.

I also volunteered every week at a kitten rescue shelter.

The level of joy that I got from writing and volunteering almost (but not quite) cancelled out some of the frustration of my career.

I interviewed for so many different random jobs after Nasty Gal. My thinking was like “hey, I have tons of professional experience and clearly I’m great at problem solving, so why not shift to another industry?”

Every interview went the same way: “Wow, you have a lot of great experience? Why would you leave fashion?”

“Oh, I’m just looking for a new challenge.” That sounded neutral enough. It felt better than “Why wouldn’t I leave fast fashion? I’m caught in an ever escalating whirlpool of work, stress, plastic clothes, and horrible abuse from out-of-touch executives who can’t believe people buy stuff using their phones. I have a constant headache and stomachache. I only let myself eat once a day, partially because I want to be thin enough to get ahead, but partially so I don’t have diarrhea at work.”

No one believed that I would leave the “glamour” of fashion behind and they were quite blunt about that. So I couldn’t escape.

I ended up taking another buying job with a “feminist” fashion brand in the Pacific Northwest.

When I arrived back in Portland, I thought this was my chance to merge my desire for a better world with my professional experience. Sure, this brand sold clothes just like all my other previous employers. But it felt exciting to challenge the status quo of gender and clothing. And while you will never see me in a suit and a button up, I wanted to make the best versions of these for people who wanted them. After all, the fashion industry had been ignoring them forever.

But that job ultimately broke me. It turned out it was just another version of the toxic “girl boss” feminism of Nasty Gal, just wearing pants instead of a leather mini skirt. All the same bullying, chaos, and diet culture. We exploited people’s desire to do good by selling them lots of “fundraiser” t-shirts that didn’t really benefit anyone except the company. We used the same exploitative supply chain that every fast fashion brand used. And we wasted fabric and resources at the same rate.

I accomplished many things there and the business grew exponentially under my product leadership. I AM good at what I do.

But I was miserable. In addition to an incredibly toxic and uncomfortable work place (we didn’t even have real desk chairs, just stools from Ikea), the job did not offer health insurance. Meanwhile, we were allegedly donating all this money to fund women’s healthcare via Planned Parenthood. It made no sense.

And while I had ACA insurance for myself and my kid, when Trump was inaugurated in 2017, rates when through the roof while coverage declined. In one terrible year, both my child and I had serious illnesses that required hospitalization and treatment. I was drowning in medical bills and considering bankruptcy. My job was not paying me enough to get by...and yet, I was trapped. If I left, I could not support my family.

I began fantasizing about taking out a big life insurance policy and then jumping off the Burnside Bridge. It seemed like a win-win: my family would be cared for financially, and I wouldn’t have to make another feminist tee again.

Part three coming next week!!

One of the questions I get most often is “why did you work in fast fashion if it’s so bad?”

Yes, I think sometimes people ask this to discredit me, to paint me as a hypocrite. But I also think people are curious. Why would someone choose to work in such a messed up industry? Why would they stick around?

The answer is...survival. Ironically fast fashion never really gave me financial security, but at least it tamped down my fears of living on the streets with my kid or having to move back into my mom’s abusive home. And that was enough to keep me in it, even when it was toxic and miserable.

That said….I am an existentialist, which means that I think it is my job to find my own purpose and meaning in this very silly, complicated, and often unfair world. And in a weird way, working in fast fashion helped me start figuring that out. You’ll hear more about it in part two!

I know this is a long story and I hope you will have the patience to read it. This is part one, with part two coming next week.

Writing this has actually been more difficult than I imagined, because it has forced me to revisit so many difficult times. It’s scary to be so transparent about my life. Thanks for giving me the chance to feel safe being vulnerable with all of you.

Portland, Oregon seemed like the right place to start over.

There was something about the snow capped mountains, the trees bigger than any I had seen before, and even the way the air smelled that made me feel like this was a place that was alive with possibility. It was so different from any place I had ever experienced. Lava was churning under Mount Hood. Mount St. Helens occasionally filled the sky with steam. The forests felt prehistoric with enormous ferns and constant mist in the air. Everything was living and growing. It seemed that just existing in that environment would make me feel alive again.

This was the place where I could get better. My heart and brain would heal. I would recover from the events of the last year and a half, when every vision of my future had been turned upside down and then shattered.

I didn’t believe in love at first sight until I met Ryan.

I was dating his friend Andy, but it was just a fun thing that I did not think would last very long. When he told me he had invited a friend out with us one night, I didn’t think anything about it. In fact, I invited my roommate along as a weird kind of double date. When I opened the door to let Ryan in, well, I can’t explain what happened. But I was struck with this sense of heat and dizziness that I still cannot explain. There was just something about him that set off explosions in my brain.

I loved Ryan in a way that you could only love someone when you are very young, when every feeling is so huge, you only have the space to feel one thing at a time. And when things were good between us, I was the happiest I had ever been. When things were bad, I wondered how I could continue living in such pain.

And then I was pregnant.

When I discovered I was pregnant, it felt like a sign that he really was the one and only for me. My whole life I had been told I would never give birth to a child because cancer had rendered me infertile. And I was okay with that. Having kids never felt like a dream to me and I reasoned that I would adopt children if I changed my mind.

But being pregnant was….wow, shocking but also…amazing? Like I was going to have a child with the most magical and brilliant person I have ever met? But if there is one thing life has continued to teach me over and over again…the good times always end. Fortunately the bad times always end, too.

The magic ended abruptly.

Decades later I still struggle to share that experience with words, so I’ll just say this: Ryan died, just a few months before our child was born. Everything was gone all at once. I felt as if I could not see or hear or think anything beyond a raw sense of pain. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I left my life behind to move home with my abusive and manipulative mother while I tried to figure out what would happen next.

I knew that staying in Pennsylvania with my mom was not a good long term solution. It was terrible for my mental health. I knew there would be no opportunities for me. And I knew being a good parent meant taking my child somewhere where we could thrive together.

By the time I stepped off that plane from Baltimore to Portland, I could only think of two decisions I had every full made on my own: becoming a parent and moving to Portland. Just about every other change in my life had been a matter of survival, not choice.

I grew up poor in a very chaotic and abusive home. I changed schools constantly. There were always new stepfathers, new houses (really: apartments and trailers), and new arrangements. Obviously these were not my decisions. And I longed to be a grown up, when all of the choices would be mine. But I reached adulthood, only to find that the options are few and far between when you come from nothing. The world chooses for you.

That made moving to Portland a big deal for me. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but it was my move to make. When there is no safety net, no safe place to call home…relocating thousands of miles to a place where you barely no anyone feels no less risky than moving one town over.

We moved to Portland with a few hundred dollars.

It was beautiful and amazingly cheap (for living in a city). I didn’t mind the months of rain because the air felt so lush and verdant, even in the winter. We spent our days walking around the city, visiting the library to check out more and more books. And I applied for job after job.

But eight months later, I still didn’t have a job. Everyone had the same experience as me. But I had no connections. Baristas and retail associates watched me turn in my application with a toddler in my backpack and I could see already that their minds were made up. Why would they hire someone with a kid? I was selling my books and clothes to pay rent and buy groceries. I found myself in an abusive relationship with a man who provided some financial assistance.

And then…I got a part time seasonal sales associate job at Urban Outfitters.

I swear the day I got the call offering me the job—part time, temporary, and minimum wage—I felt as if the clouds had finally parted and the sun was shining just for me. WE WERE GOING TO SURVIVE.

On my first day (which was also my birthday), the manager parked me at a cart at the fitting rooms, where I helped customers try on clothing all day. Count the items in and out of the rooms. Check the rooms for tags. Rehang and fold items.

I did this for twelve hours under a freezing air conditioning vent because the managers forgot I was there. And when they finally sent me home apologizing for forgetting about me, I was ecstatic. I had just made about $90, which was the most money I had seen in years. This job would not have been my “first choice,” but it’s not like there were any other options on the list.

I showed up for work everyday. I worked hard. I tried to forget that the company made us feel like thieves, searching our bags and pockets every time we left the store. We had to ask a manager to let us in and out of the bathroom, just in case our plans to steal involved the toilet. I unpacked plastic shoes wrapped in plastic that smelled like Cancer: the fragrance. I folded and hung and straightened and worked so fucking hard every day, for just over minimum wage.

Eventually I became a manager. And while the insurance and consistent paycheck were great, the hours were horrible. As a salaried employee I was expected to be at the store as long as necessary, usually 9-10 hours each day, but often more like 12. And I was paying for childcare for those hours, so I was kinda just as broke as I was before I was a manager. I couldn’t afford the bus, much less a car, so I was transporting my kid and our groceries around town on my bike. I was writing checks “creatively” to pay for diapers and food before payday when my account was empty.

Everything felt so tenuous…we were only one stroke of bad luck away from homelessness. That said...I do consider this one of the happiest times of my life. I had great friends and did cool creative things. I loved living in Portland.

The store had a very important visit from executives from the Home Office. This was a rarity in the Pacific Northwest, because we were so far away from the headquarters in Philadelphia, PA. We spent weeks cleaning and organizing, dressing and redressing the mannequins. And when the day arrived, I gave a walkthrough of the women’s department to these executives, as was expected. I talked about what customers requested most often, where I thought we had an opportunity to expand on certain ideas, and how we could merchandise those ideas. Just doing my job. But at the end of the walkthrough, one of the executives asked me “How would you like to move to Philadelphia to be a buyer?”

I laughed because it seemed unlikely. And also, wtf was a buyer?! But a week later, I was flying across the country for an interview.

For the interview, I wore a thrifted Boy Scout shirt, a brown corduroy jumper from the sale section at Urban Outfitters, and the green cowboy boots that I had worn every single day for years.

I was interviewed by at least half a dozen people that day. I knew nothing about “fashion” but I knew that I loved clothes and style. When someone asked me my favorite designer, I said “Marc Jacobs,” because that was the only name that came to mind. Luxury brands and high fashion were not part of my life. My friends and I were all super stylish, but our inspiration came from thrifting, vintage, old movies and magazines, and our favorite bands. The clothes we wore were a creative expression, not a commodity.

TBH I assumed I would not get the job because I wasn’t “fashion” enough, so I was very surprised when I received an offer.

I took the job because it felt like a chance to reach some level of financial security and give my child a nice life.

My first choice would have been to stay in Portland, but once again, survival was the priority. Things I learned immediately included:

• What a buyer does (lots of spreadsheets, applied mathematics, critical thinking, presentations, creative problem solving)...it turned out I was really good at all of those things.

• Most of my coworkers came from highly privileged backgrounds and definitely thought that store employees (including me) were kinda stupid and unimportant.

• Buying didn’t pay well. My first job paid $4000/year more than I was being paid in Portland. This meant things were very rough for the first few years. I was eating a lot of canned food from the Dollar Tree. Over time, I made more money, but I wasn’t paid a living wage for someone with a child until I became a Senior Buyer years later at Nasty Gal.

Did I like my job?

Yes and…no. By then I had come to accept that work was something we did to survive, not something we did for pleasure. I didn’t mind the actual work part of it (I love a calculator and some data to dissect), but the social aspects of it were difficult. I felt like an outsider as a low income single parent. I had never been skiing or on family vacations to Europe. I had never even been to Disney World (still haven’t), which always seemed like THE vacation for happy middle class families. I could not afford the clothes my company sold, so I was usually thrifting or going to Forever 21. I had imperfect teeth and my mom lived in a trailer park. I was never going to be thin or pretty enough to truly get ahead.

I told myself that my work would stand for itself, but I know that was only 50% true. I was permanently anxious. My eating disorder spiraled for years, as I created more and more rules about when and how I could eat in an effort to feel like I had control over something in my life.

Yes, I worked with some horrible people who seemed to have watched The Devil Wears Prada and thought it was an educational HR video on how to behave in the workplace. I saw women making other women cry in meetings just about every day.

But also...I worked with some cool, smart, and hyper talented people, who are still my friends to this day! And over the years of my career in fast fashion, I continued to meet more amazing and brilliant people.

Still, that took time. For the first six months at my job, no one talked to me. Not even my boss. She just emailed me all day from ten feet away. I ate lunch alone, reading a book in the big URBN cafeteria. Slowly friendships formed, mostly with the guys who worked in the mailroom. Through them, I met cool people who worked for other brands on the campus. And things got better, less lonely. I still pined away for my friends and life in Portland, but it hurt a little bit less.

A few weeks ago–within minutes of one another–I read a post on Reddit where someone declared that they only shopped from B Corporations…and then an article about how fast fashion brand Princess Polly had just attained B Corp certification..and I thought my brain might just explode.

B Corp certification is another creation of the cause marketing/triple bottom line/brand with a “mission” era of the 00s and 2010s. Certification is granted by a nonprofit organization called B Lab, which was founded in 2006. The first 82 B Corps were certified in 2007. And for a long time, it really stood for something because it means that companies met verified standards of social and environmental responsibility, accountability, and transparency. Certified companies must score 80+ points on B Lab’s assessment and legally commit to considering stakeholders beyond shareholders.

Earlier this year, Dr Bronner’s made headlines by releasing a statement explaining why it would no longer be renewing its B Corp certification, saying, “The integrity of the B Corp Certification has become compromised and remaining certified now contradicts our mission. The increasing certification of multinationals including Unilever Australia and Nespresso in 2022 followed by Nestle Health Sciences in 2023 demonstrated that B Lab is not committed to protecting the integrity of the B Corp Certification and movement, nor ensuring that the certification won’t be used to mislead consumers.”

This was not completely a surprise to B Lab, because Dr Bronner’s (along with a long list of other B Corps) had published an open letter expressing concerns about B Lab certifying companies that frankly should not have been certified. At that point, Nespresso had just been granted B Corp status. And the letter calls out why that is such a problem: “Although Nespresso has achieved the minimum currently required for certification, scoring 84 out of 200 points, Nespresso’s abysmal track record on human rights from child labor and wage theft to abuse of factory workers is well documented by the media and NGOs. Indeed, Nespresso’s extractive business model is publicly known to be fundamentally at odds with the ethical and just future B Corps want to build and should have structurally been a barrier to Nespresso’s B Corp Certification…Instead, the fact that Nespresso can achieve a score that allows them to be Certified as a B Corp and use the Certification to greenwash its business model and practices demonstrates that the B Impact Assessment scoring system and certification process is in serious need of repair.” And to be clear: not only were the signors of this letter concerned about child labor, forced labor, and wage theft in Nespresso’s supply chain…they were also concerned about a company that makes most of its revenue from selling single use coffee pods.

Now, I posted about this on Instagram the same day that I saw Princess Polly had also achieved B Corp status…which um, fast fashion should NEVER be able to pass that certification. Someone really came for me, accusing me of not doing my research when it came to the Nespresso pods…which actually means two things: 1. That person didn’t do THEIR research and 2. Nespresso’s greenwashing is so convincing that it makes people show up to fight with strangers on the internet…which we know means that the emotional branding is really effective.

The fact is that per Nespresso itself, only about a ⅓ of their coffee pods are ever recycled. And that number has not been independently verified by anyone. Other experts think the recycling rate is actually more like 5%! The pods are made of complex layers that mean regular municipal recycling facilities cannot handle them…so they must be sent to Nespresso by customers. And of course, most are not doing that. Furthermore, these pods tend to grow mold because of …well, wet coffee grounds…and that renders them unrecyclable, too.

To put this into perspective, a 2020 Guardian article calculated “with a conservative estimate of 14 billion capsules being sold each year, and 0.9 grams of aluminium per capsule, that means 12,600 tonnes of Nespresso aluminium end up in landfill annually, enough for 60 Statues of Liberty.”

Furthermore, the crux of Nespresso’s more “premium” branding and greenwashing claims is that because these pods are made of aluminum, not plastic (like Keurig), they are all around better in every way. But actually mining aluminum is a resource intensive process that creates toxic byproducts in the process. Just check out this piece from Fair World Project about Nespresso that includes this zinger about Nespresso’s partnership with mining company Rio Tinto:

“Rio Tinto is a mining giant dubbed ‘a poster child for corporate malfeasance’ for their lengthy rap sheet of environmental, labor and human rights violations as well as corruption and bribery.”

Oh that’s cool.

Wait…why are strangers ready to fight me about Nespresso on the internet? Sick branding!. Ah okay.

Nespresso is the most controversial company to receive B Corp status, but like I said, they have also given that certification to a literal fast fashion company…and several MLMs!!!

And these controversial choices are indicative of much of the criticism (or at least skepticism) B Lab has been facing for the past few years:

• B Corp certification relies on self-assessment, which means companies can spin the data kinda however they want. This means that they can avoid bigger, more complex issues within their business practices, while spotlighting smaller, less significant wins.

• Because companies only have to provide a snapshot score every three years (also, that score–once again–is self assessed), it means they can do whatever sketchy shit they want in the years in between.

• B Lab itself has never been accredited by a third party organization, which has raised concerns that maybe certifications are not being granted consistently (bending the rules for some) or even if funds from the certification fees are being used appropriately.

• And while losing B Corp certification could be embarrassing, there are no real repercussions for losing it (and why would you when you’re the one grading yourself).

• Lastly–but definitely not least–at this point it seems like B Corp certification is a great way to greenwash the rest of your business because people just assume that you must be doing great things. Nespresso is an extreme example of this, but what about the other big companies who have managed to be certified?

I do want to take a moment here to say that there are plenty of amazing companies who are doing things the right way because they genuinely care that have B Corp certification…but there also many who do not because the process to be certified (that self assessment process) is intense and does cost money and time that many businesses cannot afford. In 2018, I worked with a client who was working on B Corp certification and it was intense. Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) had to be documented, from the kinds of towels being used to clean the bathroom at the office to transparency into pay structures, ensuring that no one was being paid less due to gender, race, or disability. This company was amazing and already super sustainability minded, but even they had to make some changes to get the certification. And they were paying me and other staff members to work on the self assessment, which took months. That work cost the company money!

Whether its Nespresso and its B Corp certification, feminist tees with a giveback, or even asking to round up your purchase at Petco…the intention is always clear: creating more good vibes with customers, in hopes of gaining some loyalty (and maybe even motivating someone to defend your business on the internet). And you know what? It works!

Although maybe now, it’s starting to lose its luster? Like a lot of things we talk about here on Clotheshorse, most people don’t really know about greenwashing. There’s no shame in being sort of beguiled by greenwashing…because it’s a proven successful technique for marketing a brand. And for those of us who know the full story, it’s kinda our job to share what we know with others. So get out there and tell people about it!

This is post is an excerpt from part three of the series “I’m with the brand,” Episode 241. You can listen to it anywhere you listen to podcasts, on YouTube, and at clotheshorsepodcast.com

P.S. I am hoping to turn the “I’m with the brand” series into a book in 2026. And no, I don’t want to self publish it because I need the marketing and editorial support of a real publisher. So if you know a literary agent who would be a good fit for me, please reach out.

The last few weeks of December are when everyone’s best #SlowGifting intentions fall apart.

In my experience, it is the last minute gift shopping and super stressful holiday environment that leads to some of the least intentional gifting. But I have good news for you: there are lots of thoughtful and excellent gifts you can give at the last minute that embody all of the values of slow gifting AND require minimal trips out into the wild holiday traffic.

One thing that I mention in this post is gifting classes and workshops. With so many of these being virtual, the recipient won’t have to leave the house, either! And getting cozy while learning something new in January and February is...well, it sounds amazing to me! The same goes for patterns for new projects. January/February are great times to make something new.

Have any other ideas? Know some great sources for patterns, classes, mending services, and styling services? Share them in the comments! And thanks for being a part of the SLOW GIFTING REVOLUTION!

And P.S. if you’re new around here and you’re like “WTF is slow gifting,” check out the Tumblr post linked in the first sentence of this post, go on over to Instagram, or listen to episode 144 of the podcast.

It looks like we aren’t going to be doing anything to celebrate the holidays in my household this year. We’re dealing with some family stuff and I have shingles right now (but I think the worst might be over) Yes, I might be a grinch about plastic waste and overconsumption, but I love holidays. So I’m a very sad about it. This will be my last holiday themed post for this year. Hoping for a better 2026! Happy holidays to all of you who celebrate!

Earlier this year, a friend/client of mine–who is a small business owner–was incredibly blatantly and intentionally knocked off by TJ Maxx. TJ Maxx is an “off price” chain with more than 1300 stores in the United States. It is just one brand owned by TJX, the multinational megacorp that also owns Home Goods, Marshalls, Sierra Trading Post, Winners, Homesense and TK Maxx. Last year, TJX reported $56.36 billion in revenue.

My friend’s business? Run by her and her husband, literally supporting their family. All of this came to light when an influencer–who actually also lives in Lancaster County–shared a video of a bunch of new arrivals at our local TJ Maxx. Someone tagged my friend in the comments, then she shared the video, then I watched it…and wow, these were exact replicas of her products.

Now, you know by now that fast fashion is constantly knocking off every brand out there–even other fast fashion brands. And TJ Maxx is no exception. What made this especially striking (and a slam dunk of a case) was that TJ Maxx had actually reached out to my friend just a few months earlier about potentially carrying her products or working together on some specific items just for them. So there was a clear chain of intent. My friend also copyrights all of her designs, so TJ Maxx was in a whole heap of trouble.

The whole premise of TJ Maxx (or more like, the whole illusion of it all) is that everything in TJ Maxx is actually leftovers from designer brands and overstock from department stores. And while that certainly was the case for TJ Maxx in the past, in this century, not so much. Why? Because off price stores have blown up and expanded in this century. Beyond the TJX stores filling strip malls across the US, there are also Ross, Nordstrom Rack, Saks Off 5th, Macy’s Backstage…even Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus have their own off price chains of stores. And of course, there are also outlet malls near just about every tourist destination here in the US. How could there possibly be enough overstock and slightly irregular products to fill them all? The answer is: there’s not. And now the bulk of the inventory in all of those off price stores is made specifically for those stores, even if it has a “real” brand name label like Nike or Calvin Klein.

To make this disconnect between the available overstock inventory and the number of stores it would need to fill a little bit more clear, let’s use Nordstrom as an example:

The concept of Nordstrom Rack is that it sells overstock from its Nordstrom department stores. And sure, there is a little bit of that in each location, grouped together with a sign that declares “from our stores.” But there are 258 Nordstrom Rack stores in operation right now. Meanwhile, there are only 93 Nordstrom department stores. How could those 93 stores generate enough “extra” inventory to fill 258 Nordstrom Racks? They couldn’t. And so the store is filled with other stuff: some online returns, “excess” inventory from San Pedro apparel mart brands (I call bullshit on it being true overstock because of the sheer volume on the racks in each store), some overstock from brands that are way overproducing, but mostly, product that was made specifically for Nordstrom Rack. And you’ll see this across the store in every department. To be clear, I know this concretely because I have friends who literally work for companies that make private label product for Nordstrom Rack, TJ Maxx, Ross, and so on.

If you look closely on the TJ Maxx website, the company even says it is doing this. “Some of our merchandise is manufactured for us and some we design, particularly when what we see in the marketplace isn’t the right value for our customers, meaning the right combination of brand, fashion, price, and quality.” And by the way, the price is why TJ Maxx is likely to knock off a small brand because a small business will never be able to meet TJ Maxx’s pricing requirements.

This can be kind of confusing to customers because nothing in a TJ Maxx store has a TJ Maxx label, right? So you don’t know what was made especially for them. But that doesn’t mean that there are “label-less” products just chilling at TJ Maxx. Everything has some kind of brand on it. For me as a seasoned professional, the sort of “fake brands,” (aka private label) are really easy for me to spot. A private label product is one that a retailer gets produced by a third-party but sells under its own brand name…or in the case of many of these off price stores, it might have labels that these manufacturers already use for all of its private label production. That manufacturer (vendor is another term for them) might have a license for a brand name they can use, too. Maybe they even licensed the name from someone like Authentic Brands Group. Or it might use some brand labels that TJ Maxx or Nordstrom Rack already own.

For example, back when I was an accessories buyer at Urban Outfitters, we did not have a design team or production department for accessories. So instead, I would go to these showrooms in NYC that made accessories and jewelry for EVERYONE, from Macy’s to Forever 21 to TJ Maxx to Anthropologie. I would either pick products from these showrooms lines and tweak them to make them right for Urban, or I would develop something from scratch (sort of being the designer myself). Either way, each item would get one of the Urban Outfitters brand labels: Ecote, BDG, Silence + Noise, Kimchi Blue, etc. At my other jobs, including Nasty Gal, some items might be designed in house and our production team worked directly with the factory to make it happen. Others were developed by me (the buyer) with vendors at the San Pedro Apparel Mart, who would sew in our Nasty Gal labels. This is a very common practice and just about every retailer out there is doing this in one way or another.

In the case of what happened with my friend and TJ Maxx, clearly the buyer had sent photos of my friend’s stuff to one of their vendors, who decided that making exact copies was a good idea. And to be fair, my friend may have never discovered this if that influencer hadn’t posted that video, and then the algorithm hadn’t served it to someone who recognized her work.

I saw that video when my friend shared it and while I was stunned by how exact the knockoffs were, I wasn’t exactly surprised. I had seen this happen a few times last year, with artists who sell their art either on Etsy or on their own websites, walking into a TJ Maxx or Home Goods store and finding exact copies of their art on coffee mugs, wall art, and other items. And every time these artists posted about it on social media, the comments section was kinda mixed: 50% people being angry and supportive of the artist, the other 50% being angry…and supportive of TJ Maxx.

“Why didn’t you trademark your work?” Btw–the fees for trademarking a design start at (in total) about $400-ish per use of the art, and that doesn’t include paying a lawyer to do it.

“This is just how business works and you should grow up and accept it.”

“You are obviously bad at business if this happened to you.”

“It’s not TJ Maxx’s fault…they just buy excess inventory so someone else did this to you. Stop blaming TJ Maxx.”

Even people saying “BRB running to TJ Maxx right now to buy some of these for myself.”

And to be honest, this is what you see on every post where an artist, maker, or designer (always small businesses) shares that a big company knocked them off. It’s so gross and frustrating to me that so many of us will show up to defend the honor of SHEIN or Home Goods!

When I saw this video of my friend’s stolen designs, obviously I had to jump in right away to leave a comment, talking about how disappointing this was, how her business was literally run by and supporting her family, and how her stuff is actually better quality, too. Pretty innocuous, but just wanted to be one of the positive comments at the top.

So that all happened in March. In late June, I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee with Dustin as I do every morning. It was early and I was in my pajamas. And my phone just started blowing up as someone named “hummingbird4e” was tagging me over and over again. I had no idea who this person was and their comments weren’t making any sense…until I realized that she was responding to my pretty innocuous comment on that video…that video from three months ago!

Okay, well first off hummingbird4e: tariffs are actually going to destroy our local economy, one small business at a time.

She was also responding to other people’s comments on that post (including the original comment from my friend saying “hey, those are copies of my work”). She was giving my friend advice like “you should know that this is just how business works and hopefully you’ll learn a lesson and trademark your work next time.” To others, she was saying “this isn’t TJ Maxx’s fault, this is whoever they bought it from.” I tried to engage with her nicely (this was when I was still in my “be nice to rude people” era) explaining my work experience, how TJ Maxx really gets their products, etc….but she just kept going and going. And eventually I just had to block her.

But once again, I found myself asking, “why would someone spend hours fighting with strangers on the internet on behalf of TJ Maxx?” After all, it’s not like TJ Maxx –a huge brand that is a part of a mega corporation–would return the favor, showing up to defend and protect hummingbird4e in traffic altercations and small claims court.

Oh right….branding!

Let’s think about it for a minute:

• TJ Maxx’s core customer is a woman, often 25-54

• She tends to be middle to upper income

• She sees herself as fashion conscious, but too smart to pay full price for it. Even hummingbird4e has “passion for fashion” in her instagram profile. TJ Maxx literally has invented a term for its customers: Maxxinista, merging fashionista with Maxx to illustrate that its customer is stylish but smarter than regular fashionistas because she never pays full price. Even on its website, TJ Maxx says, “we’re smart shoppers, just like you.”

• She feels as if she is getting a good value for her money because TJ Maxx has told her, “Unlike more traditional retailers, we generally don’t do promotional pricing activity like sales, coupons or other gimmicks – just exciting merchandise at amazing prices, every single day!”

• In fact, she kinda feels like TJ Maxx is doing a service in the public good, right? Finding the best stuff, selling at the “real” prices, rather than the higher prices of those greedy department stores with their merchandising and gimmicks. “We love our bright, modern stores, and our lean, no-frills way of working helps us pass spectacular savings onto you. So, don’t expect fancy extras in our stores – just amazing merchandise at fantastic prices.”

And if your only exposure to TJ Maxx is shopping there, maybe following some Maxxinista accounts on social media that post their latest finds or seeing commercials on television…well, why wouldn’t you think that TJ Maxx is amazing and worth protecting!

The fact of the matter is that TJ Maxx, like a lot of the big corporations out there, is not a good company. Customers have complained of declining quality of products over the years, along with less “real” brands in the store. It literally encourages customers to overconsume, with no talk of sustainability or ethical manufacturing. The company cancelled orders in 2020 and refused to #PayUp when other retailers bowed to public pressure and did the right thing. Last year the Center for Environmental Health published a report that said while other retailers have worked hard to adapt their supply chains to avoid lead in products, off price retailers (including TJ Maxx) have not done so. In California, last year TJ Maxx workers filed a class action lawsuit alleging that they were forced to work through unpaid breaks and were not given the correct sick day accrual.

Is TJ Maxx any worse than any other big company out there? Probably not, but it’s also maybe not worth spending the day fighting with strangers on the internet. Think of the time, energy, and emotional impact of all of that!

But that’s the power of branding: it makes you feel like you are part of something, that your appreciation and consumption of that brand says something about you. While some brands are successful because they are “cool” or “premium,” TJ Maxx has taken a different approach…and it’s just as powerful. The question remains: does TJ Maxx really need your defense, after all it’s a big corporation, not a person. And would TJ Maxx return the favor should you find yourself in hot water on social media. Hmmmm…well, when you put it that way… What brand would you be happy to defend on social media for a few hours?

This is post is an excerpt from part two of the series “I’m with the brand,” Episode 240. You can listen to it anywhere you listen to podcasts, on YouTube, and at clotheshorsepodcast.com

Today I am beginning the journey home from Japan after a month here. And in that past month, I have visited tons of museums and looked at a lot of art and pieces of history. I have also combed through thrift stores, secondhand clothing shops, and epic multi-floor complexes of collectibles. I have seen walls of unwanted gachapon toys in plastic bags. People waiting in lines around the block for blind box stores. I have checked out free boxes on the sidewalk and tiny pop up flea markets.

And the truth is…I have always been obsessed with other people’s stuff. What I see in thrift stores and at yard sales back home tells me stories about my neighbors. The conversations I see in Facebook groups and subreddits that are focused on specific brands/aesthetics help me understand human nature.

I have been thinking a lot about what we leave behind when we are gone. Future generations of humans will build stories about who we were, how we lived, and what mattered to us when they excavate our landfills and storage units.

What stories will our stuff tell?
What stories do we WANT to tell?

I am living in this moment, so it’s a lot easier for me to see who we are, what matters to us, and how we live. What will future generations think of what we have left behind?

I was motivated to post this question after seeing a post in a Selkie Facebook group about creating spreadsheets to track the dresses in one’s collection to avoid buying the same dress a second time. It turns out that a lot of people are doing that, even devoting rooms in their homes solely to storing their dresses. And for some reason, this really made me sad for the rest of the day. I’m still thinking about it days later. Floofy princess dresses might not be your thing, but what about Stanley cups, Starbucks merch, Funko Pops, or stuff from the clearance racks at TJ Maxx?

Everything that has ever been made or bought by humans in the last 75 years is still here, somewhere on the planet. And in the plastic clothes/plastic blankets/plastic shoes/plastic tchotchke era, all of that stuff will be here a lot longer.

I don’t want future generations to think that we were obsessed with plastic. I don’t want them to think we prioritized stuff over our humanity. But I know we can change the story. It starts now with all of us. What stories do you want to tell the future?

P.S. Here are a few photos from my month in Japan. More coming in future posts.

There are many days (especially this year) when I feel so hopeless and overwhelmed. I find myself asking the closest cat, “Are these the darkest days in human history?”

And then I’m reminded, that no, in fact, these are NOT the darkest days in human history…not just because I have read The People’s History of the United States and Sophie’s Choice, but also because I lived through the 00s.

If you remember the 00s as a halcyon time of Littlest Pet Shop and Hannah Montana…well, I’m older than you. And I was a young adult in the 00s. It was rampant with post 911 islamophobia and quasi-patriotism (primarily as an excuse to be racist). Another war in the middle east that was started under extremely false pretenses. In Portland, we were protesting that war almost every week, earning the nickname “Little Beirut” from either George W. Bush or a member of his staff (depending who you ask). For the next decade, the city would be dogged by lawsuits from protesters who were victims of police brutality. I myself was pushed to the ground by a cop while walking at the edge of a protest with a very young Dylan on my back.

Yes, I was a single parent in Portland, Oregon, pre-Portlandia (the show, not the sculpture above the entrance of the Portland Building). Decades of false propaganda involving “welfare queens” meant that not only was it damned near impossible to get any kind of food or financial assistance from the government, but everywhere I went, strangers were sure to ask me “just how old were you when you had your child? And where is her father?” Of course, this is when i learned an important life lesson for dealing with trolls IRL: MAKE IT AWKWARD. And I always responded “I was 23. And her father died quite suddenly before she was born.” Do you ever wish you could just jam something gross into the gaping mouth of a very surprised troll?

Also: I’m here to tell you that being anything other than a white cisgendered dude with a trust fund was also pretty shitty in the aughts. I felt like i was constantly protecting my vagina from unwelcome visitors. Dudes assured me I would be “hotter” if I could just get a little smaller than my size 27 jeans. And really, white guys could kinda say the most racist, sexist shit….and somehow it was okay because it was “ironic.”

So yeah, the 00s were not some era of good and easy times. To be honest–yes, I’m terrified of what’s happening in the world right now–but I also remind myself that the 00s were a nightmare and we came out of it…and things seemed better for a while. Not perfect, but better…with a feeling that things could get closer to perfect. We can get there again, and make it last longer.

Here’s another thing I was doing the 00s: working at the Urban Outfitters store on NW 23rd in Portland, OR. If you shopped there, I probably was working there. The Urban Outfitters hiring process was needlessly long and complex, including group interviews and the weird “personality test” that all potential hires had to pass in order to get hired. That was nothing unusual for retail. I remember my friend Alana took an even weirder, longer version of that “personality test” for a job at Nordstrom. She said it was full of strange double negatives and complex language that seemed designed to catch her in a lie. Like “Most people would not say that I’m never not dishonest.” What? And for the most part, these tests are just looking to see if there is any chance you might steal from the company.

But the entire employment process began with the same paper application that the company used for more than a decade. The front side was the basics: your name, address, previous jobs, education. Standard. About half of the backside was taken up by an agreement where you basically signed away your rights as an employee…before you were even hired. There was a space for personal references.

And then a few questions like “What do you do for fun? What kind of music do you like? What are your favorite brands?”

These questions seemed innocent enough…but they were really kind of the most important part of the application because they determined if you were “on brand” or as they like to say now “a cultural fit” for the job. The translation: were you cool and cute enough to work at Urban Outfitters?

Now over the years, I think that we as a society have recognized that terms like “on brand” and “cultural fit” are often just dripping with sexism, racism, classism, ageism, fatphobia…all the bad -isms and -phobias. But back then, remember, it was the 00s and somehow it was totally fine and chill for companies to be all of those things…and it was especially acceptable in the hipster culture of that era. And Urban Outfitters was generally portraying itself as a THE hipster store…nevermind that it was part of a large chain, that its CEO and founder was a rich old white guy who loved to donate money to Republicans, and it was essentially selling low quality stuff at high prices (thanks to that image of being THE hipster store).

But back to those applications…there was always a stack in one of those plastic desk trays in the managers office. And all of us managers were constantly thumbing through them because the turnover at Urban Outfitters (a mostly miserable place to work) was very high. And we made a lot of decisions based on the answers to those questions on the backside of the application.

Music was obviously very important.

We were looking for “cool” taste in music. If you answered Britney Spears or N Sync, your application was cast aside.

For the “what do you do for fun?” section, we were looking for similarly cool answers, like make art, go thrifting, write poetry, go to shows, play in a band. Basically anyone who mentioned sports in their answer was also cast aside.

And then the favorite brands? Okay, I’m just going to tell you that if you applied to work at Urban Outfitters in the early 2000s and you answered “Lux or BDG” to that question…you were out of the running. Sorry, but we assumed you were a super uncool kiss ass, too foolish to recognize that neither Lux nor BDG were real brands, they were just the names on the labels in some of the clothes we sold. Lux was often found in the infamous “amazing butt flattening jeans” we sold (along with most of the women’s clothing) and BDG was the brand of the even more infamous “ass blow out jeans,” which would often, well, blow out in the ass if someone dared to walk up a set of stairs. And btw, you were also instantly denied a job if you answered “Von Dutch.” Sorry, I don’t make the rules! But we would have accepted Paul Frank or Marc Jacobs as “cool” answers.

Anyway…the irony of Lux and BDG is that while those names were sewn into clothing for years and years, Urban Outfitters didn’t own the rights to them. They hadn’t trademarked the brands. So random stuff with Lux labels kept showing up at TJ Maxx and Ross. In the early 2010s (when I was a buyer for the company), Urban finally gave up on trademarking them (it was just too late), and rolled out a whole new stable of officially trademarked brand names:

• Kimchi Blue: for our more feminine customer, lots of florals and lace, soft colors

• Silence + Noise: our edgy fashion girl brand

• Ecote: the boho brand. We also used Staring at Stars for boho accessories and intimates

• Cooperative: a more preppy aesthetic, with lots of navy, white, and red stripes

The company fleshed out these “brands” (even though they were just exclusive to Urban Outfitters) via color palettes, customer profiles, logos, signage, and inspiration lookbooks. As I planned out my assortment as a buyer, I would choose which brand an item might be and solidify it by choosing colors from the palettes assigned for that brand for that season. In stores, these brands were merchandised separately, conveying entire fashion trends. The women’s sales floor of each store was always broken out into 3-4 zones. And one brand would occupy each one, with all of the colors complementing one another.

This went on for years (with similar brands being developed for the men’s department), until sometime in the late 2010s, when the company made the decision that everything should just have an Urban Outfitters brand label, in hopes of making Urban an internationally recognized brand with the same power and prestige as say, Chanel or Nike.

For all of us working behind the scenes, these brand names were nothing more than a label that we chose. None of us were like “I’m a real Kimchi Blue gal” or “I’m Ecote all the way.” But to our customers they were very real brands, with very real lifestyles and identities attached to them, entirely created by a bunch of people in an office in Philadelphia.

Yet, while these names were just a cell I populated on a spreadsheet to me, I knew they did something. They created something. They added value to something. They allowed us to charge more for low quality stuff. And so I was shocked at future jobs like Nasty Gal and Modcloth when we would buy stuff from the San Pedro Apparel Mart fast fashion showrooms with brand labels like “Hot + Delicious” and “Cotton Candy.” Like, where were the vibes? What exactly is the customer lifestyle for “Hot + Delicious?” Does she love stews and soups? Is she the person at coffee shops always asking for an extra hot latte?

Btw if you want to learn more about what I mean about the San Pedro Apparel Mart, you can listen to this episode.

I knew that if we could have replaced the “Hot + Delicious” label with something that said “Nasty Gal” or perhaps a new Nasty Gal brand a la what we did at Urban Outfitters, we could have increased the retail price by $10, $20, maybe even $30. It really broke my brain that we weren’t doing that…even though it would have slowed down the process of buying, receiving, and selling merchandise (never an option in fast fashion).

You see, I knew the power of brands. Of good branding. Of building a loyal following of customers who would buy just about anything you sold them, at just about any price…just because of the brand name on the label and hangtag.

In the social media era, brands encouraged parasocial relationships with their customers, pretending that they were friends with them. They sold ideas of a brand voice, a lifestyle and sometimes, some kind of “mission” that the brand was on. Cult brands were created…and eventually cult brands kinda died off, only to be replaced with another.

People described their personalities via brands, whether that was Anthropologie (you can envision that person, right), Glossier, or even Supreme.

And guess what? That was by design!

Over the past few years making Clotheshorse, I have often wondered: why are Anthropologie mega fans the meanest people on the internet? Why would someone call themselves a Maxxinista? Why do Free People customers think that they are shopping from a sustainable brand? Why do so many indie brands have Facebook groups and subreddits for fans? Why would someone start a fan account on instagram for Target? Why will people wait in line for hours to buy something from Supreme? Why will they buy a Glossier t-shirt? Or why will people go full scorched earth defending Nike or SHEIN?

I know the answer: brand and the loyalty/prestige that comes along with a well-defined brand image. It’s why people will spend more money for the same item. It’s why they’ll show up for every drop. It’s why they buy logo shirts and weird Glossier hot cocoa cups.

I have been wanting to do a series for years unpacking brands, the psychology of it all, and why really at the end of the day, we have to sort of break up with the idea that the name on the labels in our clothing mean anything about who we are as individuals. So this summer, in honor of five years of Clotheshorse, I began a series unpacking brands and how they make us feel. It is ongoing…and I think longterm, it *might* be the book I have been wanting to write. We’ll see!!!

In the mean time: this is post is an excerpt from part one of the series, Episode 239. You can listen to it anywhere you listen to podcasts, on YouTube, and at clotheshorsepodcast.com