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Analysis of "The True Cost" Documentary: The Consequences of Fast Fashion

• Categories: Documentary Fast Fashion Film Analysis

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Published: Jun 20, 2019

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Main issues in "the true cost" documentary, conclusion and reflection, works cited.

• Morgan, A. (Director). (2015). The True Cost [Documentary]. Life Is My Movie Entertainment.
• Brown, S. (2012). Ethical Fashion: Myths and Realities. Earthscan.
• Fletcher, K., & Tham, M. (Eds.). (2014). Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion. Routledge.
• Eicher, J. B., & Evenson, S. (2008). The Visible Self: Global Perspectives on Dress, Culture, and Society. Fairchild Books.
• Birtwistle, G., & Moore, C. M. (2007). Fashion Logistics: Insights into the Fashion Retail Supply Chain. Routledge.
• McNeill, L., & Moore, C. M. (Eds.). (2015). Sustainable Fashion: Past, Present, and Future. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Clarke, A. (2018). Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change. Laurence King Publishing.
• McDonough, W., & Braungart, M. (2002). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. North Point Press.
• Chouinard, Y. (2016). Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. Penguin Books.
• Fletcher, K. (2016). Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion. Routledge.

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Review: ‘The True Cost’ Investigates High Price of Fashion Bargains

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

• May 28, 2015

A distressing overview of the consequences of our addiction to fast fashion, “ The True Cost ” might suggest another exposé of corporate greed versus environmental well-being. That is certainly in evidence, but under the gentle, humane investigations of its director, Andrew Morgan, what emerges most strongly is a portrait of exploitation that ought to make us more nauseated than elated over those $20 jeans.

To learn who is paying for our bargains, Mr. Morgan dives to the bottom of the supply chain, to the garment factories of Cambodia and Bangladesh and the cotton fields of India, where he links ecological and health calamities to zealous pesticide use. Garment workers subsisting on less than $3 a day recount beatings by bosses who resent unionization and requests for higher wages. At the same time, a factory owner in Bangladesh — where the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza building caused more than 1,000 deaths — tells us candidly that when retailers squeeze him, he must squeeze his employees.

“There are a lot of worse things they could be doing,” a former sourcing manager for the fashion brand Joe Fresh says about these unfortunates, echoing an all-too-familiar justification. A visit to Haiti, however, where millions of tons of our castoff clothing have clogged landfills and destroyed the local clothing industry, makes us wonder how much worse these people’s lives could become.

Offering few solutions beyond a single fair-trade fashion company — whose serene interludes compete with sickening recordings of Black Friday shopping riots and so-called clothing haul videos — “The True Cost” stirs and saddens. Not least because it’s unlikely to reach the young consumers most in need of its revelations.

“The True Cost” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Toxic chemicals and obscene consumption.

Analysis of “The True Cost” Documentary

This essay will provide a critical analysis of “The True Cost” documentary, focusing on its examination of the fashion industry’s impact on the environment, labor rights, and consumer culture. It will discuss the documentary’s key messages, the effectiveness of its presentation, and its role in raising awareness about sustainable fashion. The piece aims to offer insights into the complexities of the global fashion industry and the importance of ethical consumerism. More free essay examples are accessible at PapersOwl about Analysis.

How it works

True Cost ‘True Cost’ is a documentary based on research of Clothing Industry – about the clothes we wear, people who make them and unseen part of our world that compels to ask who pays the price for our clothing. The documentary explores the Cost in Economics?is the combination of gains and losses of any Goods that have a value attached to them by any one individual, and goods to be taken into consideration are e.g. money, time and resources.

The clothing Industry through world relies on a Major resource Manpower and the losses incurred by the resources although are not visible to the western crowd are beyond imagination(Michelle Dawn). The Fast Fashion market wherein overnight change in prices from low to vast choice is an inverse effect on people working in various economically poor countries. 

Low price here has an inverse effect on makers to walk you through an instance an incident in Dhaka wherein a Garment Manufacturer had not paid heed to the employees complains about the cracks in the building they worked in which unfortunately collapsed due to the owners negligence killing 900 plus employees, this was a biggest dark mark in history of garment industry wherein the greed of competitiveness had neglected.   Impact of Fashion on People and Planet, surrounded by Greed of making profits and Fear of surviving competition in what is well wrapped up under the Term Globalised Production. Globalised production basically means most of making of goods is outsourced to economically weaker countries where wages are low. It was until 1960 America made about 95% of its clothes, and today we make only 3%, other 97% is outsourced to developing economies.                 

The big question is “Why is that such a profit generating Industry is not able to do any good to the people who work for it to be in place? “. It is thus difficult to understand that an economic profit for one geography was nowhere concerned to how the effects to its sourcing countries were effected. This shows the irrelevance and disconnect various countries had in improving their stance at the cost of not looking into the foundational fabric of the industry. According to Matt Faherty,’When everything is concentrated on making profits for the big corporations, what you see is that everything, human rights, workers’ rights, the environment, get lost, all together, you see that workers are increasingly exploited because the price of everything is pushed down and down and down just to satisfy this impulse to accumulate capital. And that’s profoundly problematic because it leads to the mass impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people around the world.’ 

To fully understand the impact fashion is having on our World, we have to back to Texas where it all begins – High plains of Texas which houses 3.6 Million acres of Cotton grown in this region literally the biggest cotton patch in the world. Now 80% of it is Genetically Modified, which is fast as compared to handpick sowing seeds to spraying pesticides and chemicals over acres together which brings in tremendous growth of cotton output which is used to generate cloth but what effects it leaves back on the soil at micro bacterial level and people who live around is something which was least considered to be a worry.  In this documentary called True Cost , New York University Professor Mark Miller calls advertising a “species of propaganda”. 

Miller goes on to explain that commercial advertisements are designed to trick consumers into associating positive emotions such as personal satisfaction and social acceptance with particular products, despite there being no legitimate connection between the two. Advertisements are thus effectively tricks which covertly alter a consumer’s mindset so that he or she views the world as the advertiser sees fit.   The documentary argues that the modern fashion industry is a literally world-destroying force in which callous corporations and mindless consumers trash the environment and oppress Third-World workers for the sake of cheap garments and high fashion. In order to demonstrate its point, the film consists of endless contrasting shots of flashy model runways in Milan and impoverished sweatshop workers in Bangladesh. It presents wholesome organic cotton farmers talking about the dignity of rural agriculture intercut with a scientist lamenting the effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by saying the word “chemical” as many times as possible in a tensecond sound bite. 

True Cost calls the popular desire for cheap clothes an example of mindless consumerism and then shows crazed Black Friday shoppers storming a storefront. The irony of Morgan’s condemnation of advertising as propaganda—and the very existence of this film—is apparently lost on him.  Morgan admits at the outset of the documentary that prior to beginning his investigation of the fashion industry, he had only a layman’s knowledge of its existence.  According to a Wall Street Journal interview with Morgan, he became interested in the fashion world after over 1,100 individuals died in the 2013 Savar factory collapse in Bangladesh.2 In just over two years Morgan managed to write, direct, and produce The True Cost via a Kickstarter campaign and some high-profile activist support.  

Whatever else can be said about Morgan’s effort, it certainly can’t be called unambitious. Despite his lack of prior knowledge about the subjects, Morgan tackles the connections between the fashion industry and ThirdWorld impoverishment, worker mistreatment, manipulative advertising, mindless consumerism, corporate greed, political corruption, environmental degradation, harmful GMO proliferation, free trade, and the inherently predatory nature of capitalism. I imagine that even an individual who theoretically bought into all of Morgan’s arguments would find it all a bit overwhelming. Such an individual would probably start the documentary thinking that the fashion industry was too powerful and needed to become more socially conscious, and end the film thinking that the fashion industry was literally one of the worst things in the entire existence of mankind. If that sounds excessive, it may help to understand that Morgan assumes that prior to watching The True Cost, his viewers have already bought into the narrative that the entire world is going to hell. 

Various interviewees offhandedly refer to the planet as “dying,” “declining,” or having “overstepped [its] limits.” No one ever actually identifies what these calamitous global breakdowns consist of (global warming isn’t even mentioned, though “greenhouse gases” get one reference), but they are all quite certain they exist. The current state of civilization doesn’t fare any better than the environment, according to Morgan and his interviewees. There is no mention of the one billion individuals who rose out of absolute poverty across the world between 1990 and 2010,3 but there are repeated references to constantly falling wages, deadly working conditions, and widespread government oppression across the Third World. Unfortunately, all of this misery is not creating a blissful existence in the Western world either. Tim Kasser, a professor at Knox College, argues that consumerism actually makes people less happy, and thus the United States and Europe are psychologically worse off than ever before. Morgan asserts that the entire world is locked into a system of “consumer capitalism” in which elites  require increasingly high levels of consumption for their own continuity, even though it depresses Westerners, oppresses the global poor, and destroys the environment.   

Who is to blame for this mess? The answer is pretty much everyone except garment workers. Among the top culprits are the major fashion corporations, which created an “enormous, rapacious industry” for the sake of the “impulse to accumulate capital.” Also to blame are the Western and foreign governments that serve as lackeys to the corporations.                 

Further down the line, local business owners in Third-World countries ruthlessly exploit their own workers for the sake of an ever-shrinking profit margin at the behest of the big fashion brands locked in fierce capitalistic competition. But none of the above are the worst offenders of all. Worse than the factory owners who let their buildings collapse on workers, worse than the foreign governments that wield military force against their own, worse than the Western governments that hold the system together, and worse than the big fashion corporations that orchestrate it all, are Western consumers.   

The documentary makes it amply clear that it is the ordinary, individual consumers of fashion who fundamentally fuel the whole process. “Business through advertising has pulled society along into this belief that happiness is based on stuff, this belief that true happiness can only be achieved by annual, seasonal, weekly, daily, increasing the amount of stuff you bring into your life,” according to Patagonia’s Vice President of Environmental Affairs. Though the film optimistically hopes for a reorganization of the whole fashion industry and the entire international trade system, it explicitly states that the change should start with the individual consumer, since that is what drives the whole process.   The Documentary begins its story with one of its many oddly culturally conservative (if not reactionary) moments. 

The film harks back to the good old days prior to the 1970s, when the vast majority of clothes were made domestically in the United States and, as a result, clothes were far more expensive and purchased less often. Sadly, Morgan laments, the price of clothing has dropped precipitously ever since, and the fashion industry transferred into a new model called “fast fashion.” In response to an endless desire for more and cheaper clothes, the fashion industry dramatically increased its output at all levels, but especially of discount clothes.  From there, Morgan jumps between Bangladesh, India, New York, Milan, Texas, and Tokyo to explain the wide-reaching scope of the fashion industry, which allegedly encompasses one-sixth of the world’s population. In order to increase output, the major fashion corporations rely on cheap and unregulated Third-World labor in countries like Bangladesh and India.   In these countries, local independent manufacturers are incentivized by the major brands constantly to squeeze their costs so as to make low-priced garments that will be sold profitably in the West. 

The manufacturers respond by consistently lowering wages and neglecting working conditions, which often leads to strikes and occasionally to deadly accidents like the 2013 Savar factory collapse. Meanwhile, the agricultural inputs for garment production have been drastically expanded by the use of GMOs, which the documentary argues are like “ecological narcotics” that boost short-term production but rely on everincreasing use to maintain their output. Worse yet, the producers of GMOs (well, really just Monsanto) use their power to corner the global markets and exploit small farmers with unscrupulous business practices. After decades of use in the Western and Third Worlds, GMOs have led to devastating consequences, including cancers and birth defects in affected areas, and an epidemic of suicide among Indian farmers that is attributed to debt-related troubles caused by adopting expensive GMO crops.

 On top of this myriad of social costs, the garment industry only exacerbates the massive environmental problems on planet earth. The fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world behind the oil industry. In the Third World especially, the rise and spread of factory production has left many localities in environmental despair. Morgan shows us how the Ganges River, considered to be holy by Hindus, has been trashed by industrial run-off to the point of being considered unusable for drinking or bathing purposes. Yet the workers who operate the relevant factories are too poor to afford a safe water source, so they continue to use the Ganges at the expense of their health and well-being. Back in the Western world, the mindless consumption and disposal of clothes have caused textiles to pile up in and clog landfills. 

Since the vast majority of these garments are not biodegradable, they will sit in the landfills for decades, if not centuries. Just about every topic mentioned in the previous three paragraphs could warrant its own documentary, journal article, book, or possibly even a field of research (for instance, the safety of GMOs). In trying to roll all of these issues into his case against the fashion industry, Morgan stretches his documentary so thin that it doesn’t manage to addresses any single point in an adequate way. Yes, some viewers might be swayed by the affecting testimonies of the poor Bangladeshi factory workers, or even the rhetorical savvy of some of the interviewees, but there is precious little content or data to back up any of Morgan’s major claims. For each topic, Morgan usually presents a single or handful of problematic cases, and then throws in some activist or academic interviewees to explain briefly the problem. For instance, narrtor  states that numerous garment factories have collapsed in Bangladesh over the past few years. Then two or three interviewees say that increased competition amongst major fashion corporations caused Bangladeshi factory owners to cut costs, which resulted in dangerously negligent working conditions. 

Then Morgan shows a montage of collapsed factories and dead bodies with the victim tolls and dates superimposed on screen. When possible, he’ll try to throw in some commentary by the victims themselves for the genuinely most affecting part of the argument. Then it’s on to the next topic.  Does Morgan truly believe that the cause of the 2013 Savar factory collapse is reducible to competition between fashion corporations or, by extension, the demands of Western consumers? This is a massive claim with a staggering number of legitimate and confounding factors. The factory builder, factory owners, factory workers, factory suppliers, garment purchasers, local government regulators, and others, may all have played some part in the disaster. Was the factory owner aware of the risks and did he care? Were the workers aware and did they care (the documentary said that the workers were aware, but didn’t elaborate on this point)? Are Bangladeshi building codes sufficient to prevent collapse? 

Are they enforced well enough? If not, why not? Corruption, incompetence, neglect, cronyism, and bad luck could all be at play. Morgan barely scratches the surface of this complex network of relationships and incentives with every issue he touches upon. His presentation only gets worse when he tackles more technical subjects—the worst example being his treatment of GMOs. The efficacy and safety of GMO crops is a scientific and empirical question involving mountains of data (large swatches of it pro-GMO). Morgan bypasses the entire debate, however, by pointing to only two pieces of evidence: 

• one organic cotton farmer in Texas who alleges (though she admits she has no “smoking gun”) that her husband died due to pesticide exposure related to GMO crops, and 
• the testimony of two scientists who claim that GMOs have had tremendously negative financial, social, and medical impacts on India. One scientist states that GMO-related pesticide use has caused an epidemic of birth defects and cancers in rural India.

 I don’t know whether this specific claim is true, but I do know that an epidemiological claim based on low-level correlation is massively difficult to prove even in ideal contexts—and rural India isn’t one. Setting aside the big arguments, The True Cost contains a number of highly questionable statistics. Is the fashion industry really the second most polluting industry in the world? How does one quantify and compare different types of pollution? Did 250,000 Indian farmers really commit suicide in response to financial problems caused by Monsanto and GMO crops? No one even knows how many farmers there are in India,5 but apparently someone knows the precise reason why 250,000 of them killed themselves. A cynic might suggest that it does not matter whether these figures are true or even plausible, as long as they are useful as sound bites that can be recycled as memes amongst ideological allies. Granted, documentaries are necessarily condensed and largely nontechnical for the sake of time constraints and entertainment, so it would be fine if Morgan made a lot of big claims as long as he backed them up elsewhere, except that .    

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‘the true cost’: film review.

Andrew Morgan's documentary details the devastating environmental and social effects of the increasingly pervasive "fast fashion" industry.

By THR Staff

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The True Cost - H 2015

The only way to approach Andrew Morgan ‘s documentary about the pernicious effects of the clothing trend known as “fast fashion” without feeling hopelessly guilt-ridden is to be naked while watching it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you won’t have already contributed to the problem addressed in the film unless you’ve somehow managed to avoid purchasing inexpensive clothing from such pervasive retail outlets as H&M, the Gap, Zara, Walmart, Target and countless others. The film very convincingly makes the point that The True Cost of such bargains is very high indeed.

The latest advocacy documentary that will either induce you into changing your ways or simply have you curling into a fetal position from despair, the film details the devastating effects on the people in third world countries who produce the cheap clothing and are essentially treated as disposable cogs in a cruel machine. While the issue has previously been addressed by such television personalities as Stephen Colbert and John Oliver , Morgan does the necessary work of a true muckraker, taking on one of the ubiquitous issues that we’d perhaps prefer to ignore — the kind that too often go untouched by major news organizations.

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As with most films of this type, the statistics Morgan presents are damning: Fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world, second only to oil; we now consume 500% more clothing than we did two decades ago; in 1960 America produced over 95% of its own clothing, while today the figure stands at 3%, with the rest outsourced to developing countries. 

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And those countries suffer to the extreme, with workers subjected to hazardous working conditions that have resulted in such tragedies as the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh in which more than 1,000 employees were killed in the collapse of a factory building that had already been deemed unsafe. Such workers earn just a few dollars a day, a fact that doesn’t seem to bother a Joe Fresh clothing executive who points out that “there are a lot worse things they could be doing.”

The film also depicts the horrendous environmental damage resulting from the industry’s massive growth, from pesticide-infused cotton fields in India to massive landfills in Haiti (where a good portion of our donated used clothing winds up) to the abundance of chemicals dumped into the waters of developing countries that have led to a massive rise in cancer and birth defects.

It’s all horrifically scary, with few solutions presented despite the efforts of “fair trade” clothing manufacturers and such designers as Stella McCartney, who seems determined to incorporate environmental concerns into her business. Adding further to the despair of the film are clips from YouTube “clothing haul” videos in which young girls triumphantly display the cheap items they’ve purchased and — more familiarly — footage of frenzied consumers duking it out on Black Friday.

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Unfortunately, the overall effect is more despair-inducing than instructive, and so the film is sadly unlikely to affect the buying habits of consumers who have become — understandably — addicted to low retail clothing prices in difficult financial times. But hopefully more films like The True Cost  will mark the beginning of a movement and not just a brief, painful journey into a world we’d rather forget. If films like Super Size Me and Fast Food Nation can begin to put a dent in the similarly harmful fast food industry, it’s certainly possible that this film will mark a step in the same direction for fast fashion.

Production: Life is My Movie Entertainment Director/screenwriter: Andrew Morgan Producer/editor: Michael Ross Executive producers: Lucy Siegle , Livia Firth, Vincent Vittorio , Christopher L. Harvey Composer: Duncan Blinkenstaff Not rated, 92 min.

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Home | Interview with Andrew Morgan: The Director of The True Cost

Interview with Andrew Morgan: The Director of The True Cost

The film The True Cost is a story about clothing. It is about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. The True Cost is a groundbreaking documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider: Who really pays the price for our clothing?

Dana Geffner, Executive Director of Fair World Project, sat down with the Director of The True Cost to learn why this story was so important to tell and what we as consumers can do to stop exploitation in the clothing industry.

Q:  Why did you decide to make this movie and tell this story?

Andrew:  I do not have a background in fashion and never thought about making this kind of film. I started to become interested about the role that business plays in the world in relation to human rights, extreme poverty, inequality and environmental impact. I began to believe that solutions to our problems will invariably be through business. As a filmmaker, it was too big to tackle, and I could not get my arms around that film. Then I picked up the newspaper and read about this clothing factory collapsing in Rana Plaza [in Bangladesh] and read that, at the time of the collapse, they were making clothes for major western brands that I knew. I read this horrifying account of how something I interact with every day in my world is having this unseen impact in other peoples’ lives all over the world. That instantly grabbed me, and within a week, we decided this was a film we wanted to make.

Q:  The film shows locations from all over the world. Where did you go, and whom did you interview?

Andrew:  We filmed in thirteen countries. This needed to be a global film because it is one of the true major global issues of our times. It does not matter what country you live in, this affects human beings, and I wanted to make a film that went to so many places that you almost forgot where you were. So the focus is not really on the place, but rather that it is our shared home. So that took us to really rich, beautiful parts of the world. We filmed during all the major fashion weeks in London, Paris, Milan, New York and Los Angeles. It also took us all over Southeast Asia: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, India and Uganda. The focus was really on the stories of the people we followed.

We followed a twenty-two year-old garment worker named Shima Akter who works in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We followed a woman named Safia Minney, who owns a fair trade clothing company called People Tree, in London and Tokyo. And then we followed a cotton farmer in Luc, Texas named Lorey Pepper. Around those three stories we met a whole bunch of experts, from economists to really big influencers in the fashion space, and both activists and traditional designers, people like Stella McCartney and brands like Patagonia.

Q:  How has the fashion industry changed?

Andrew:  One of the startling facts is that the world consumes 400% more clothing right now than it did two decades ago. The world now makes between 80-90 billion new articles of clothing each year. This has created a real shift; clothing historically has been something we made with great intentionality and integrity, something we held onto our whole lives and even passed on to our children. It was something we valued.

The impacts of a global economy have allowed us to offshore labor, cut costs and produce mass quantities of clothing much more cheaply. Clothing has now become a commodity that we see as disposable, and that is really brand new in the history of fashion. It is a very modern concept to be able to buy things that are so cheap that it means nothing if they fall apart after a few wears. That volume increase and shift in mindset have turned up the dial on some already very problematic issues, making it now nothing short of a state of crisis or emergency in a lot of areas.

Q:  The term “fast fashion” is talked about in the film. What is fast fashion?

Andrew:  “Fast fashion” is a term that parallels “fast food” and implies that it probably is not very good for us. Fast fashion was initiated when brands began to copy design looks from runway shows. They put them through production and manufacturing at lightning speeds in order to have them in stores within weeks, and sometimes days, after they were seen on the runways.

But this supply chain is dangerously fast and precariously volatile. We are incentivizing a constant state of rush, a constant state of “How fast can we get it there?” and “What corners can we cut?” Those cut corners led to the egregious and extreme cases of human exploitation and tragedy that have recently grabbed the world’s attention.

Q:  Why is fast fashion happening? Who is demanding it?

Andrew:  From one standpoint, we live in a market-driven, consumer-based, consumption-fueled economy. The mandatory ingredient for our economy to grow is for consumption to be kept very high all the time. Our standard economic model only measures profit, while many of the costs that go into making things are unseen. We do not factor in the use of natural resources, like water and other resources that are increasingly scarce in parts of the world where things are being made. People want to buy the cheapest things. As consumers, we judge products on whether they look good and are cheap. So, in that regard, the market incentivizes the lowest-quality product.

We can also look at it in another way – a lot of essential items have become more expensive, like insurance, homes, a college education and healthcare, while other things have become less expensive, like clothing. So when my life feels less in my control, I can find therapy in buying something super-cheap. So, as the middle class gets squeezed and is unable to control the prices of these essential items, then there is a natural movement towards feeling in control by buying these cheap pieces of clothing.

Q:   What is fast fashion doing to workers around the world?

Andrew:  The fashion industry is where some of the most vulnerable people are systemically exploited. The fast fashion industry did not create the idea of offshore labor, very low union representation, or very low worker rights standards; that happened when we moved into a globalized economy. Fast fashion has taken a fragile situation and pushed the pedal down as far as it possibly can go. It has created the most egregious example of business trampling on the rights and needs of the most vulnerable people.

Q: What can consumers do to help workers in the apparel supply chain?

Andrew:   First, start to think about your personal choices. As someone who did not think about this a few years ago, it is quite daunting and intimidating … but I think about these things a lot now. I meet a lot of people who believe deeply in the value of human rights, of women’s rights in this industry particularly, and of environmental care and protection. So when they see the film or we have a conversation, they say “I never connected those values to my individual choices.” I think this can be an exciting gateway for people to say “Wow, I am a human being and make choices every day, and those choices add up, and they have an impact … and while I can advocate for things globally, it is powerful to start thinking individually.”

I have stepped off the treadmill of bringing cheap disposable clothes into my life. I did not really love the things I was wearing. I have now made clothing a more conscious decision – really thinking about the pieces that I want, the pieces that I need, that I am going to love, and that will last. It has given me space both mentally and financially.

We can make better-informed choices and support brands that honor the people who are making our clothes. I think more brands are doing this, and each of us should seek out those brands that care. I think it starts with reducing the sheer quantity, and then beginning to buy quality and appreciating the “story” that you are wearing.

Q:  What government policies should be in place to protect workers?

Andrew:   We are working on this with the United Nations. The problem is that we live in a globalized economy, but we are operating under a nationalistic set of rules and laws pitting developing countries against each other and creating a race to the bottom. So, how can we begin to raise the bar at the bottom?

We are creating national and international wage agreements. From a U.S. perspective, we can do this through import laws. For example, there are certain laws in place for the types of chemicals that can be used. We think it would be good to also include responsibility for the conditions under which the products are made. We can start with what is coming in and make profound improvements. It is not going to be simple, but it starts with political will, which I think starts with awareness, which is where we are now.

A lot of people buy clothes – not bad people, just people who have not heard this story. I hope the story starts to seep in, so that we will have the will to make those choices.

Q:  Where would you send people to get active in government policies?

Andrew:  Presently, you will find many of the best groups out there linked on our Web site under “Learn More.” Labor Behind the Label is a good one, as is the International Labour Organization’s program under the United Nations called Better Work. Another big one is Fashion Revolution. They have an annual event on Fashion Revolution Day, which takes place on the anniversary of [the disaster at] Rana Plaza, April 24. It is a growing international hub and the central force right now.

Q:  What did you learn that surprised you most while making the film?

Andrew:  The experience of telling this story completely re-oriented my view of the world and my role in it. One of the most surprising things is that we had a false sense of knowledge when we were going through pre-production. We were doing all of this research and calculating all the data and analyzing it on a macro-level. The first country we started in was Bangladesh, and it was there that we began to see it and feel the effects of it.

I once read a quote that said “When you look at poverty from a great distance, you become arrogant.” I think for me it was the startling, heartbreaking, urgent reality of what inexcusable extreme poverty feels like and looks like in real life. When we got to know the folks who were working their hearts out, unable to provide the basic necessities, while fueling companies and an industry that report profits in the billions and trillions of dollars, that hurt really deep inside. I knew we had several issues here going in, important issues to examine, but I was unprepared for how great of a toll I think this industry is taking on individuals and their communities.

On the flip side, there is a lot of hope because if we get this right, we can open a lot of doors. Fashion is such a trend and a creative, forward-facing, consumer-touching, platform-raising industry, that to me this is a really good place to start facing a lot of the important issues of our time.

To watch The True Cost now, please visit: www.truecostmovie.com .

Tips to Transform the Apparel Industry

Here are a few ways that concerned consumers can participate in transforming the apparel industry.

1) Look for apparel brands that are creating alternatives and improving supply chains:

• Global Mamas is a non-profit apparel company that provides training, benefits and good pay to more than 500 women in Ghana. ( www.globalmamas.org )
• Marigold works with women in the slums of Mumbai. They also work with organic farmer organizations in India where indebtedness and suicide rates are quite high. ( www.marigoldfairtradeclothing.com )
• Maggie’s Organics has developed their entire supply chain to use organic and fair practices. They have worked to transition farmers to growing organic cotton and have been vocal critics of free trade agreements such as the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
• Marketplace: Handwork of India is a non-profit apparel company committed to building leadership for social change, building capacity and empowering the artisans with whom they work in India. ( www.marketplaceindia.com )
• Mata Traders is an apparel company working with producer groups in India and Nepal. ( www.matatraders.com )
• People Tree invests in livelihoods and the environment at every stage of production, from the growing of cotton and wool, through the final production of apparel. ( www.peopletree.co.uk )
• Under the Nile is a baby clothing company that uses organic and fair trade Egyptian cotton. ( www.underthenile.com )

2) Get involved in policy activism and fight for fair policies:

• www.fairworldproject.org/campaigns/trade-policy

3) Support Fashion Revolution:

• www.fashionrevolution.org

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‘The True Cost’ documentary tallies global effect of cheap clothes

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Go to any shopping mall, and inexpensive clothes are abundant — $4.99 T-shirts, $7.90 skinny jeans, $8.90 sandals. But as we fill our closets, who pays the price?

That question is answered in the wide-ranging new film “The True Cost.”

In the wake of the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than 1,100 garment factory workers, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Andrew Morgan set out to make a documentary about the human and environmental cost of shopping at H&M, Forever 21, Topshop, Zara and other stores associated with the $3-trillion fast-fashion industry, in which stores receive trendy new merchandise on a daily basis.

The film, which opens May 29 in theaters, on video on demand and iTunes, was shot in 13 countries, from the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh, to the cotton fields near Lubbock, Texas. It includes interviews with fashion designers, factory workers and owners, cotton farmers, labor activists, academic experts on consumption, sustainability and more, to shine a light on the “perfectly engineered nightmare” that feeds shoppers’ insatiable appetites for cheap chic.

“The day I read about the [collapse], I looked down and realized I had never thought about where clothes come from,” says Morgan, 28, who lives in Sherman Oaks. “When you grow up looking only at a store window and only thinking about your side of the equation, it leads to a very dangerous set of effects.”

He began doing research into the causes of the fast-fashion problem. One of the first people he contacted was Livia Firth, creative director of London-based sustainability brand consultancy Eco-Age and founder of the Green Carpet Challenge (which encourages sustainable dressing on high-profile red carpets to focus attention on the issue), who agreed to be an executive producer, as did British journalist Lucy Siegle, who has written about the environmental effect of the fashion industry.

The film comes on fast and furious with staggering statistics about the rise in consumption: 80 billion pieces of clothing are purchased worldwide each year, which is 400% more than a decade ago. Three out of four of the worst garment factory disasters in history happened in 2012 and 2013. And as the death toll increased, so did the profits. The year after the Rana Plaza disaster was the fast-fashion industry’s most profitable yet, and the world’s top four fast-fashion brands — Zara, H&M, Fast Retailing (which owns Uniqlo) and Gap — had sales in 2014 of more than $72 billion, compared with $48 billion in 2013.

“Major fast-fashion companies have become investment vehicles,” Morgan says. “These businesses have been on a trajectory for more than five years of 15% growth annually, which is incredible. H&M is opening a new store every day this year.”

The film does not place blame on any one retailer (Morgan reached out to several but wasn’t able to get any to comment), but all the major labels are name checked in footage of runway shows, advertising and Black Friday sales, as well as YouTube shopping haul videos.

Fueling the frenzy are cheaper prices, made possible because clothing production has been outsourced to countries such as Bangladesh, China and Cambodia, where wages are low, working conditions less regulated and factory disasters accepted as the cost of doing business.

The film puts a human face on how the world’s 40 million garment workers are feeling the squeeze as developing countries, desperate for economic opportunity the business provides, fail to enforce wage and labor laws, while big fashion brands keep their hands clean.

Morgan zeros in on Shima Akhter, 23, who moved from her local village to the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh, at age 12 to work in the factories. Unable to afford child care, she is forced to leave her daughter behind to be raised by relatives. After the Rana Plaza disaster, Akhter was moved to start a union and submit a list of demands to her employer, which led to a violent altercation in which she and other workers were held behind locked doors in the factory and beaten.

“I believe these clothes are produced by our blood,” she says, wiping away tears, in one of the film’s most poignant moments.

“One of the things I hope gets communicated in the film is that these women, at great risk to their own health and families, are starting to stand up and really fight for and claim basic dignity as human beings,” Morgan says. “I hope we can get behind them in their fight.”

As a consumer, don’t think you are doing your part to offset increased consumption by donating excess clothing to charity. Morgan dispels that myth, showing that while the average American discards 82 pounds of textile waste a year, only about 10% of what’s donated gets sold in thrift stores. The rest is dumped into landfills (“the dirty shadow of the fast-fashion industry”) or into Third World countries like Haiti, where the castoffs could conceivably end up being worn by the very people who made them.

“I almost wanted to overwhelm the viewer with just how enormous the issue is,” Morgan says. Mission accomplished.

As a counterpoint to the fast-fashion offenders are several businesses that subscribe to another way of making clothing, including British fair-trade fashion brand People Tree and California-based Patagonia, which encourages its customers to buy less.

Despite the grave environmental and human effects of fast fashion, which are laid out in great detail, the film suggests we could be on the verge of a turning point.

“What we need now is a greater awareness of what’s a stake. It’s not just brainstorm time, because there has been pioneering already. To use a business term, now we’re ready to scale,” Morgan says. “You don’t have to love fashion any less. Celebrate the beauty and artistry of clothing and invest in things you really love and will wear and take care of a long time. That in itself is sustainable.”

Twitter: @Booth1

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As Los Angeles Times fashion critic from 2004-15, Booth Moore logged tens of thousands of miles covering the runways from L.A. to Paris and interviewing style leaders such as Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford and Donatella Versace.

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The True Cost: Unveiling the Impact of Fast Fashion

Now viewing " The True Cost "

Environmental

• Description

View on The Global Environmental Justice site

Investigation of fast fashion reveals that while the price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. It discusses several aspects of the garment industry from production—mainly exploring the life of low wage workers in developing countries—to its after-effects such as river and soil pollution, pesticide contamination, disease and death. Includes interviews with activists and workers. Includes a take action campaign.

Website summary: This is a story about clothing. It’s about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. The True Cost is a groundbreaking documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider, who really pays the price for our clothing? Filmed in countries all over the world, from the brightest runways to the darkest slums, and featuring interviews with the world’s leading influencers including Stella McCartney, Livia Firth and Vandana Shiva, The True Cost is an unprecedented project that invites us on an eye opening journey around the world and into the lives of the many people and places behind our clothes.

"This is the very best of all the documentaries I have seen about the fashion industry...The filmmakers show how clothing companies waste the lives of young women in the 'third world.' Their greed also threatens the 'first world' in a way that ultimately threatens the planet. This is a film you must see!" -- Ellen Rosen, Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, Author, Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel Industry

The True Cost Review for Video Librarian by J. Zimmerman  12 April 2013 Four and one-half stars  ****

Any documentary series about environmental racism and global economics would benefit from the addition of The True Cost. Consider placing this title in a film programming series about the fashion industry.

‘Fast Fashion’ has become a buzzword in the last decade. When most people hear the word, they think of an endless parade of models, some big-name brands, and cheap clothing. What -or rather who- gets forgotten is the workers responsible for making the clothing. Every year as housing, food, and utility prices continue to rise, Old Navy still sells jeans for around $20.

Every year, a handful of fashion companies make billions on those prices which refuse to go up. How do they manage this? The True Cost is an investigation into exactly that question. Economic experts, fashion designers, activists, workers, and shop managers are all interviewed in this deep dive into the true costs behind the fast fashion industry.

This unique investigative documentary seeks to show us the face behind our clothing. America used to produce over 95% of its own clothing before the introduction of globalized economics. When the factory work moved to developing countries, so did the production. Now, what once was a relatively sustainable practice that produced quality, long-lasting goods has become one of the most wasteful and under-appreciated industries on the planet. Director Andrew Morgan guides us through dozens of factories in several countries, searching for an answer to the question, “What is the true cost of fast fashion?”

We are shown hundreds of people (though only a handful lend their voices to the documentary) who have been directly affected by the many-headed hydra that is the modern fashion industry. Most have faced a lack of compensation for their ever-increasing labor while others reel from the environmental effects of mismanaged factory waste and toxic chemicals used in the dying of clothes. One thing which ties these people together is their lack of basic human rights, enforced in part by legislation at home and abroad funded by fashion and retail giants like H&M and Walmart.

Those who oppose change are given some space too, though their main question seems incredibly inhuman: “Are sweatshops really that bad?” The True Cost presents evidence overlooked or deemed unimportant by investors that both amateur and professional ecologists will want to see. Highly Recommended.

What academic subjects would this film be suitable for?

Fashion, business, and ecology classes would benefit most from viewing The True Cost .

How does this film contribute to a discussion of environmental or climate justice, and/or to environmental literacy?

The True Cost contributes greatly to a global discussion of environmental and climate justice. Its greatest strength is allowing textile workers in South and Southeast Asia to speak their truth and asking the viewer to think critically about the human cost of one of our most wasteful industries.

What type of library programming could use this title?

Any documentary series about environmental racism and global economics would benefit from the addition of The True Cost . Consider placing this title in a film programming series about the fashion industry.

Main credits

Morgan, Andrew (screenwriter) Morgan, Andrew (film director) Morgan, Andrew (narrator) Ross, Michael (film producer) Ross, Michael (film editor) Siegle, Lucy (interviewee)

Other credits

Original music, Duncan Blickenstaff; editor, Michael Ross.

MARC Record See Worldcat record

Docuseek subjects

Distributor subjects.

Distributor: Face to Face Media

Length: 92 minutes

Genre: Expository

Language: Bengali; English / English subtitles

Grade: Viewer Advisory: Includes footage of injured and dead due to collapse of garment factory.

Closed Captioning: Available

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The True Cost

(2015) 92 min. DVD: $350. Bullfrog Films (<a href="http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/">www.bullfrogfilms.com</a>). PPR. SDH captioned. ISBN: 1-94154-545-9. March 21, 2016

by Charles Cassady

March 8, 2016

Rating: 3 of 5

In the 1960s, 95 percent of clothing sold in the USA was actually manufactured in America. Today, that number is approximately 3 percent. Filmmaker Andrew Morgan's critical documentary isn't the only one about the scourge of Third World sweatshops churning out fashion-label items at low prices, but it has an impressive international scope. The overall portrait is damning, as Morgan visits factories outside Dhaka (capital of Bangladesh), where garment laborers toil for pennies in unsafe buildings that have killed hundreds due to collapses and fires (more than 1,200 died when a ramshackle high-rise called Rana Plaza gave way in 2013). Rarely is any of this noted with urgency by the mainstream media, and industry shills and right-wingers continue to defend this virtual slavery as providing employment for the downtrodden. Meanwhile, Morgan finds workers in Cambodia who were assassinated for requesting a living wage, and children in India who were born deformed due to pesticides used on the cotton-fiber monoculture. A few clothiers—Japan-founded People Tree, and designer Stella McCartney, among others—pursue manufacturing practices that are based on fairness and sustainability, but they seem to be heartbreakingly few in a trillion-dollar industry. Also featuring interviews with authors Lucy Siegle and Benjamin Powell, The True Cost includes a “making-of” featurette. Recommended. [Note: this is also available on home video from Amazon.com for $12.99.] Aud: C, P. ( C. Cassady )

Star Ratings

As of March 2022, Video Librarian has changed from a four-star rating system to a five-star one. This change allows our reviewers to have a wider range of critical viewpoints, as well as to synchronize with Google’s rating structure. This change affects all reviews from March 2022 onwards. All reviews from before this period will still retain their original rating. Future film submissions will be considered our new 1-5 star criteria.

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Filmed in countries all over the world, from the brightest runways to the darkest slums, and featuring interviews with the world’s leading influencers including Stella McCartney, Livia Firth and Vandana Shiva, The True Cost is an unprecedented project that invites us on an eye opening journey around the world and into the lives of the many people and places behind our clothes.

The Filmmakers

Andrew Morgan

A ndrew is an internationally recognized director focused on telling stories for a better tomorrow. His experience includes a broad range of work that spans narrative and documentary storytelling for both commercial and film projects. After studying cinematography at the Los Angeles Film School he went on to co-found Untold Creative, a hybrid filmmaking studio where he currently serves as the creative director. He is a contributing writer for the Huffington Post and speaks regularly on the power of storytelling as a tool in the ongoing fight for human rights around the world. Andrew lives in LA with his wife Emily and their four children.

Michael Ross

M ichael has worked as a creative producer and project coordinator in film and advertising. Beginning his career in journalism at local stations in Florida, before going on to Mirada Studios where he worked on award winning advertising for clients including Disney, Expedia, IBM, and AT&T. He has a passion for leading others in producing films that will make a difference in the world. Michael is a graduate of Florida State University where he majored in media production and business.

Lucy Siegle

Executive producer.

L ucy Siegle has written a weekly ethical living column for  The Observer  since 2004, and two books, including  Green Living in the Urban Jungle  and  To Die For .  She has contributed to various television and radio programs, including magazines  Marie Claire,   Grazia  and  Elle.   She reports and speaks about environmental issues on TV and radio, including  The 5 O’Clock Show , Five’s  The Wright Stuff,   Sky News  and BBC Radio 4′s  You and Yours.  Lucy is a current reporter for BBC One’s  The One Show .

Livia Firth

L ivia Firth is the Creative Director of Eco-Age, the sustainability brand consultancy and founder of the Green Carpet Challenge. As an Oxfam Global Ambassador, Livia has travelled to Ethiopia, Kenya, Bangladesh and Zambia, connecting with the people at the beginning of the supply chain. She is also a founding member of Annie Lennox’s ‘The Circle’, a powerful women’s advocacy group. Livia is a UN Leader of Change and has also been recognised with the UN Fashion 4 Development Award. In 2014, Livia was awarded the Rainforest Alliance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sustainability and the Honorary Award of the National German Sustainability Foundation. Livia currently resides in London with her husband Colin, two children, one cat and four fish.

Vincent Vittorio

V incent Vittorio is the founder of Life Is My Movie Entertainment, a company built on his ambition to elevate the documentary genre through visionary means of development, production and distribution.  His relentless drive and work ethic work in concert with his ability to find unique ways to reach large audiences.  He has spoken about the documentary filmmaking process at notable conferences, colleges and universities nationwide. Vincent and his work has been featured on MSNBC, Bloomberg, ABC, Variety, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, C-SPAN, Huffington Post, New York Times, among others.   A graduate of the University of Florida, Vincent earned a Bachelor of Science in Journalism with an emphasis in Telecommunication Production as well as a Bachelor of Arts in English with a concentration in Film and Media studies.  He currently resides in Suwanee, Georgia with his wife, Jessica and their four children.

Christopher L. Harvey

C hristopher L. Harvey is the Chief Operating Officer for Life Is My Movie Entertainment.  As a former public school teacher, Christopher’s drive is focused on the ability to positively impact people’s lives in every project in which he and the company participate. His work spans all departments and he believes that focus, creativity, relationships, and dedication to efficiency are paramount to impacting the world in the greatest possible manner. Christopher graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration and presently resides in Jacksonville, Florida with his wife Lindsay.

Laura Piety

Associate producer.

L aura is a creative producer and marketing strategist who has worked with brands including YouTube, The Sundance Institute, The Guardian, British Vogue and The Mayor of London. She is passionate about telling stories that enhance hope in powerful and beautiful ways. As such, she founded Rverie, an online and print publication dedicated to interviewing individuals within the fashion, advocacy and culture spaces. In 2011 she also co-founded Fashioned for Freedom, an anti-trafficking project under the direction of the IOM. Laura is a graduate of Central Saint Martins in London and now lives in LA.