My dad always wanted his clothing to be made in the USA. So birthday, Christmas, Father's Day clothing gifts meant a LOT of label reading. It was difficult 20, 30, years ago to find American made clothing and we usually resorted to Lands End. Today it is nearly impossible - between his taste, size, and our budget!

Today my jammies are made in China, and my upcoming yoga clothes are made in USA(Insport top!) and Sri Lanka (Land's End pants) with Made in Brazil Havianias.

Angie, I bought that dress today! I am so excited about it! It caught my eye last week and your recommendation pushed me over the edge.

To keep this on topic, it was made in Italy.

How exciting, Scarlet-Rosie! I am still waiting for mine. We might be Diesel frock twins :0)

I'm in the US and my top was made in Jordan and my shorts in Indonesia. My shoes are Teva. I know they claim to be sustainably minded, but I don't know where they are made. I couldn't find it easily which probably means nowhere good.

Mac-You are right! Many people forget NJ is known as the Garden State. Probably because the main roads through it showcase all the asphalt and traffic.

Ugh, I'm afraid to look. I find it utterly depressing, knowing that most of the clothing I wear was made in sweatshop or at least far-from-satisfactory conditions--often, basically slave and/or child labor. Ideally, I'd buy only secondhand clothing or items whose providence I consider to be fair, peaceful, and equitable. In actuality, that's not the case, and I don't have a particularly good excuse for it-- my easily-distracted "shiny pretty things" brain + lack of time and patience for thrifting/consignment (especially now that prices at even the nastiest thrift stores are often the same as those on sale racks at regular stores) seems to take over, most of the time. I can try to rationalize it but I can't honestly truly justify it.

I could go on about colonialism, consumerism, the "if you don't see it it's not real" mindset, etc. but it's probably not appropriate!

Suffice it to say that the "rainbow" of origins I see on my garment tags is not something that I find charming or appealing. At all.

Ditto Brianna. I'm with you 100%.

On the subject of NJ, I live in a town where there are more deer than people.

This has been a fascinating conversation. Like Maya and Brianna I don't like to think about the conditions in which my clothes (Morocco and China) are made. I hope that there were no children used in the process and that they wages paid were above subsistance level.

Food is a whole different matter...all of the fruit, veges and about 80% of the meat and seafood we eat at home comes from a market and not the supermarket and we are seasonal eaters (within our budget).

[Here starts slightly political paragraph...]

However, I come from a country (New Zealand) that relies on exports of agricultural products to support its economy and as you know we are also a long way from anywhere, so the food we export has to travel in order to be consumed. Food miles are only one part of the calculation you need to take into account regarding the environmental cost of producing food - agricultural methods, amount paid for labour and impact on non-renewable resources are also important.

I have a different perspective that I'd like to share.

I have been to many, many factories in China, Paris, Taiwan, Singapore and Africa (part and parcel of my fashion buying days). Seen them first hand while perhaps many of you have not. Not one of them sweat shops and no child labour in sight. All conditions pretty top notch. While sweat shops do exist, you have to be careful not to be seduced by what you read in sensational media. It is not my intention to make this into a political thread. I thought long and hard about posting this comment.

Mac, you asked earlier if we buy more locally grown food than before. To that I can answer unequivocally yes. This is our 10th season as members of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). The farm is certified organic, a 5-minute drive from our house, and we get the bulk of our produce from June through October there. During the summer if it doesn't come from our CSA it often comes from one of two other local farms. We also get our milk from another farm that is the next town over, and our meat mostly comes from two farms, one also is one town over and the other is about an hour's drive from us in our state. My clothes may be global but my food is mostly local.

I have to agree with Angie. Just because something is made in China doesn't mean that its sweatshop/child labour. And just because something is made in USA, doesn't mean that they were not sweathop conditions. I've seen some shops in Mexico that manufactures many high-quality items and the workers were paid more than the other shops in town and had decent conditions.

Perhaps a better indicator is the price point of the item...cheap, disposible clothing may have been produced under less than ideal conditions.

Yes, of course, not all clothing made overseas is made in poor conditions, or vice versa . However, based on what I've read over the years, the price point of the item has no bearing on the conditions under which it was made (that said, I don't know if this is the case once you hit real designer stuff like Chanel). I'm fairly sure that at least some of the time, expensive items simply provide more profit for the retailer, not better conditions for the workers.

Angie, it's heartening to hear that you've seen so many decent garment factories. I don't doubt there are plenty of those. I do think, though, that factories operating under less-than-decent conditions would not be very likely to let an outsider in to check things out.

I really wish there was a reliable way to tell the more responsible brands from the less responsible ones. Clearly it's not just a matter of geographic provenance. I haven't had much luck trying to research this stuff online. If I knew that, say, both ABC Store and XYZ Shop manufactured their clothing in Nicaragua, China and Cambodia, but ABC Store profited from exploitative business practices in its factories and XYZ Shop didn't, I'd happily shop at XYZ Shop and bypass ABC Store. I've often wondered, considering the attention garment sweatshops get from time to time in the media and how skeptical many of us are about what conditions are really like in overseas factories, why companies that make an effort to treat their workers well don't make a big effort to get that point across to consumers? Seems like it would be a good marketing move in this age where green, fair-trade, etc. are very trendy buzzwords.

I understand if this is more political of a dicsussion than you want to host on YLF Angie, so I understand if you want to edit or delete this post. I think it's hard to avoid getting into these issues, though, when talking about where our garments were made.

Well... I'm going to steer this slightly away from the political end of the issue : ) I've noticed that in many places, like Toronto (where I live) but also lots of other cities that I've visited, more and more women are looking for clothing by local designers. I don't believe that this trend is bred from the desire to avoid sweatshops/ environmental impact/ other potential negative aspects of foreign clothes. I think a lot of this trend is driven by a desire to encourage talent to flourish locally, as well as not wanting to wear the same dress as so many other people... not just in their own city but around the globe!

One woman was telling me that in St. Petersberg, 15 years ago, every wealthy woman wanted to wear head-to-toe Chanel or Versace but now it's considered WAY more cool to be the only one sporting a fabulous frock by some semi-unknown young designer in the city (but, probably paired with a wildly expensive pair of shoes from a well-known Italian or French fashion house...)

I love watching how these sorts of trends ebb and flow.

Regarding the sub-topic of eating more locally grown and/ or produced foods, I'm currently reading this book, which has garnered some attention here in Canada:

http://www.amazon.ca/Locavore-.....038;sr=8-1

Interesting point about local designers Mac, another part of that argument is keeping the wealth in your area, if you head to a chain, although spending your money locally, the real money heads off to head office and the shareholders. There is a town in the UK, of which the name escapes me, where they have issued there own currency which can be spent in the majority of the towns shops. The focus of this currency is purely to encourage the residents to shop locally.

Fascinating, R&J.

I am trying to focus a bit more on eating foods produced locally (I really don't make much of an effort with my clothes... although I am always delighted when I discover that the rare triumvirate of "fits me; is in my price range; looks somewhat appealing" ALSO meshes with Made in Canada).

But also, when I go to big grocery chains, I try to go to only one these two: Loblaws and Sobeys because they're both owned by Canadian families, have their head offices within Canada, have most of their shareholders in Canada and give generously to Canadian charities. I reckon that if I'm going to financially support major food corporations, they at least can be ones that support my own country's economy. And good heavens, I spend enough in taxes to help my fellow Canadians, I might as well at least try to help Canadian businesses, too. : )

interesting that our sermon at church today was about buying clothing from emerging nations, where the people that are making them are earning $2 a day; the sweatshops and the children working....Needless to say, most of the stuff I own is made in these emerging markets, China, Indonesia, Vietnam. The offshoot of it all is that we, as the upper quarter of the richest people in the world, use up 70-80% of the earth's resources, according to the sources of our speaker. It makes you think. My girlfriend and I just decided that our future purchases would have to be made in France and italy! LOL

Well, I lived in France for years and - trust me - most of clothes sold over there come from emerging nations, too.

Now I'm going to wax slightly political and contrary to what several of you have written, so anyone who doesn't want to read it or thinks it might start a massive YLF battle, please stop here!
.......

.........

One of my dearest friends - "N"- is an econ professor. Smart cookie. PhD from Yale at age 26, speaks 3 languages fluently, etc. (She also happens to look like a "Bond girl..." no, I'm not making her up!) N is very left-wing (well, compared to me) but she argues that while sweat shops are sad and people earning terribly low wages is unfair, in fact sweat shops present work opportunities that can be a huge step up for most people working there. She talks, for example, about countries where rural women moving to urban centres tend to be pulled into prostitution because there just aren't many opportunities for uneducated, semi-illiterate people; that sweat shops are actually better than most other income-generating choices that they might have. I'm not arguing that sweat shops are good, but perhaps N is right in stating that they are the lesser of many evils that happen to poor people around the world.

I am sure about the fact that it's great to be aware where our clothes come from, and to remember that abuses do exist in sweat shops. But this is just part of much bigger issues. I truly don't believe that if we all stopped buying clothes that might be made in sweat shops, that these terribly poor people would somehow all find safe, respectful, well-paying jobs. Instead, if some of you feel bad and want to do something to make a difference, maybe for every $17 dollar dress you buy at Target, you could put a few bucks aside for a charity that gives scholarships to girls, or works to end child sex trafficking or build hospitals in these countries.