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Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

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“Overdressed does for T-shirts and leggings what Fast Food Nation did for burgers and fries.”
—Katha Pollitt

Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. Stores ranging from discounters like Target to traditional chains like JCPenny now offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. And we have little reason to keep wearing and repairing the clothes we already own when styles change so fast and it’s cheaper to just buy more.

Cline sets out to uncover the true nature of the cheap fashion juggernaut. What are we doing with all these cheap clothes? And more important, what are they doing to us, our society, our environment, and our economic well-being?

ISBN-13: 9781591846543

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Publication Date: 08-27-2013

Pages: 272

Product Dimensions: 5.53(w) x 8.34(h) x 0.70(d)

Age Range: 18 Years

Elizabeth L. Cline has written for AMCtv.com, The Daily Beast, New York, The Etsy Blog, Popular Science, The New Republic, The Village Voice and seedmagazine.com. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit www.overdressedthebook.com

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Cline is the Michael Pollan of fashion…Hysterical levels of sartorial consumption are terrible for the environment, for workers, and even, ironically, for the way we look.”
—Michelle Goldberg, Newsweek/The Daily Beast

“How did Americans end up with closets crammed with flimsy, ridiculously cheap garments? Elizabeth Cline travels the world to trace the rise of fast fashion and its cost in human misery, environmental damage, and common sense.”
—Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation

“Overdressed is eye-opening and definitely turns retailing on its head. Cline’s insightful book reveals the serious problems facing our industry today. The tremendous values and advantages of domestic production are often ignored in favor of a price point that makes clothing disposable.”
—Erica Wolf, executive director, Save the Garment Center

Table of Contents

Introduction Seven Pairs of $7 Shoes 1

1 "I Have Enough Clothing to Open a Store" 11

2 How America Lost Its Shirts 36

3 High and Low Fashion Make Friends 62

4 Fast Fashion 95

5 The Afterlife of Cheap Clothes 119

6 Sewing Is a Good Job, a Great Job 138

7 China and the End of Cheap Fashion 161

8 Make, Alter, and Mend 187

9 The Future of Fashion 207

Acknowledgments 223

Notes 225

Index 237