Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion Launch!

Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion was published in January. The book features a chapter on the Caracol Assembly Plant and its appalling treatment of workers. We recently featured this story in our last Haiti Briefing.

Fashion designer Katharine Hamnett will be joining the panel to discuss exploitation, gender, and race in fashion capitalism! Along with special guests:

Susie Orbach – Psychotherapist, activist, author of Fat Is A Feminist Issue and Bodies. Founder of Anybody.
Dunja Knezevic – President of The Models’ Union
Leah Borromeo – Journalist and Director of Dirty White Gold
Nadia Idle – Love Fashion, Hate Sweatshops – War on Want

Chaired by Tansy Hoskins, author of Stitched Up: The Anti-capitalist Book of Fashion (Pluto, 2014)

Venue: The Rag Factory, 16-18 Heneage Street, E1 5LJ, London, UK. Thursday 13th February, 7pm-10.30pm

Combining industry insider interviews with a fascinating historical narrative, Stitched Up delves into the alluring world of fashion to reveal what is behind the clothes we wear. Moving between Karl Largerfeld and Karl Marx, the book explores consumerism, class and advertising to reveal the interests which benefit from exploitation.

Tansy E. Hoskins dissects fashion’s vampiric relationship with the planet and with our bodies to uncover what makes it so damaging. Why does ‘size zero’ exist and what is the reality of working life for models? In a critique of the portrayal of race in fashion, the book also examines the global balance of power in the industry.

In a compelling conclusion Stitched Up explores the use of clothing to resist. Can you shock an industry that loves to shock? Is ‘green fashion’ an alternative? Stitched Up provides a unique critical examination of contemporary culture and the distorting priorities of capitalism.