Good book that’s all about the relationship between fashion world and the environment.

Cotton is particularly harmful because of the amount of chemicals and water it takes to produce it. Then, as you track the production of the cotton clothing, you find that not only are American workers underpaid at the stores, but that the people working in sweatshops outside of the U.S. are even more severely underpaid and face a different level of dangerous working conditions. For Thomas, the value of American-made products is not about creating “more American jobs,” but instead for the sake of better quality/less quantity/more responsible oversight/etc.

With fast fashion (knock-off designer stuff that is mass-produced and cheap as hell, like Fashion Nova, H&M, etc.) in particular, consumers think they’re saving money and getting deals, but they’re really buying more clothes than they actually need. The companies are also making more clothes than they can sell. Both sides end up throwing stuff out, and the whole process comes full circle again because the dye on the clothes is bad for the environment as it decomposes.

The solutions Thomas highlights (that some consumers/producers are already doing) revolve around basically not over-buying and never throwing clothes out. So she goes into how people can repair the items they already own, buy pre-owned/sell pre-owned stuff, and recycle materials from items that are beyond fixing.