November SDA

For this month's SDA, I did a cartoon that complies some of the information I learned about ethics in the fast fashion industry.

Teenagers flock to stores like Forever 21 because of their ridiculously low prices. But of course, teenagers are not typically that well-versed in consumerism and how retail works. Low final prices mean that the workers slaving away to make your graphic tees are paid even less. For example, a Forever 21 employee claims that she was paid $0.12 per vest to make vests that sold for $13.80.

"First, underpaid workers craft clothes with ideas stolen from artists with less representation." Forever 21 has come under fire over 50 times with lawsuits regarding stolen designs, but that's the least of their worries. Their clothes are produced in sweatshops in L.A. where workers are subject to long hours, an average hourly wage of $6.00, and unpaid hours as well. Read about it here.

As previously mentioned, Forever 21 regularly rips off designed made by everyone from indie designers such as Valfre to designer brands like Gucci.

Everyone has learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, but few people know that this still goes on today in other countries. Dollars spent in support of Fast Fashion brands like H&M and Forever 21 are dollars spent in support of tragedies like this factory fire in Bangladesh.

Forever 21 is notorious for inserting middlemen to make sure that workers are not paid for all their hours. Workers were even brought in off the clock and were denied lunch breaks.

H&M, Walmart, Victoria's Secret, Gap, and Forever 21 are just a few of the brands guilty of child labor at both the factory and material sourcing levels.

For a generation more open to social justice and human rights than any generation before, we sure do vote hypocritically with our dollar.