Dualité

Though I’m only 50 pages in, The China Price by former Financial Times writer Alexandra Harney, is a fascinating read. Among the myriads of articles about recalls due to toxic chemicals found within toothpaste to plastic toys, this book rather delves upon the inner workings of the Chinese manufacturing industry, more particularly in the booming southern region of Guangzhou.

The duality of keeping demands high and prices low have cost many Chinese manufacturing companies to break laws with little supervision, extend working hours, and create shadow (non-monitored) factories with the “five star” factory (for show for auditors). The irony of the name “The China Price” has a double connotation that we know China’s price for goods are very low and also the price that Chinese workers, mostly migrants from other provinces, pay in order to earn more money.

See today’s article in the NY Times about Chinese economy slowing down

When it comes to Chinese mentality, I perfectly understand their work ethic as to why they would be willing to work 80-90hr work weeks and get paid for very little. Chinese mentality is nothing like North American mentality where we fear of being taken advantage of if we work really long hours and are not compensated for our extra work. Instead, many migrant Chinese workers come from the country in poorer districts thus they have no choice but to work and care about money. According to the book, one factory manager says that if they do not give more hours to their workers, they complain. They would ask him what are they to do with their extra time? Sit on their bum? They’d rather work. Much of the money they earn is sent back to their families, which isn’t much different from many foreign students or workers who work in North America and send a good chunk of it to the families they’ve left behind.

The reality is that large companies place ridiculously large orders, expect factories to abide by labor laws, limit working hours between 8-10hrs, and expect the goods to be delivered in a timely fashion. Thus many manufacturers create “shadow factories” which aren’t monitored by their clients in order to meet their demands. The worst is that if these manufacturers only abide by the rules, they would lose business to other competitors and thus will be force to close and fire thousands of workers.

It’s come to the point as to what possible solution can there be to solve the large orders, keeping prices relatively low and still make a profit legally? If migrant workers are put out of a job, how will they be able to earn money? Let’s not even talk about work conditions as we all know the majority are held in poor conditions.

Low pricing affects our daily lives. Our Dollarama’s and IKEAs wouldn’t exist without the China Price. If the world would suddenly just buy locally (which probably will never happen), that means millions of jobs in the Chinese market will be lost. The economic turmoil will be beyond our wildest imagination. So how can foreign and local Chinese governments find a solution and common ground? And how can they prevent other third world countries from following the same disastrous footsteps? Keep in mind that even countries like Africa face the same dilemma, only their end is more on agriculture (see Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel).

It is indeed a race to the price of zero.

Can we really survive without our cheap goods? Made in China just took on a whole new dimension.

The Wall Street Journal was rather cocky about the release of their new lifestyle magazine, WSJ. (with the period) last week, taking slight swipes at their competitions like T Magazine from The New York Times.

After some reflections and analyzing e-magazines, I’m starting to wonder if e-magazines really offer you a different web experience or are they really just spruced up versions of their printed counterparts? We’re now expecting more and more from fashion websites, we want them to be updated daily, we want RSS feeds, we want comment capabilities, forums, and tons of pictures and videos to look at.

Unfortunately, I don’t understand why big reputable newspaper companies such as the WSJ and NY Times cannot afford to give its magazines the same web usability as their newspapers. Granted, these magazines only publish monthly or quarterly, but I believe the extra online features should be added.

Here are some of things lacking from WSJ.

• No comment feature – Are we not allowed to have dialogue in the luxury world?
• Only one RSS Feed of a blog-ish type of daily update called “WSJ. Magazine Today”, of which a couple of the articles don’t show up in the feed, or a few appear in the feed but not on the same page of the site? Where are you pulling your posts WSJ.?
• Videos – Ok. I’m going to rip this apart. What is up with their videos?? I really like Roland Mouret and his interview “The Shape of Things To Come” is a good read. But the videos on this site are little more than decorative and have little to say. I usually like WSJ’s reporting videos on the newspaper’s site, even if they do lack pizzazz. These videos’ intros sound off to the beat of something coming off of MTV’s Cribs. On top of that, you can’t even share the video, not that they’d be worth it… Is this really luxury? I’m not even rich but I know crap when I see it.

I’ve revisited T Magazine’s site and also found a few gripes.

• No comment feature – except for their blog “In The Moment” which I’m starting to believe is really a blog post overload of anything fashion related. Hardly anybody comments.
• RSS only for “In The Moment”, so you’d have to scroll through a maze of articles on the site itself.
• Videos are non-linkable, non-adjustable, and a tad too small for my taste (make it YouTube size at least). I like their “Screen Test” series, and can find a few gems in “Exclusive Films”, but I would do away with “T Takes” of short films, they don’t belong on this site.

I’m split between what e-magazines today should represent. As a print publication, it’s obvious we’re only doing the reading and there’s no interaction whatsoever between the content and yourself. But as a web experience, especially seeing how interaction is now possible between the content and the user, I’ve come to expect this extra feature to be available for online publications (whether they have printed counterparts or not). I suppose magazines don’t want to lose their authority on fashion, and open the gates to dialogue will expose them to direct, unfiltered critique of their content. But so far I think being able to comment and share content has only heightened the interest in fashion and we could get some very insightful opinions from individuals you wouldn’t never hear about. Cathy Horyn’s “On The Runway” blog is a prime example of being able to voice her opinions, and still be respected and receive both favorable or unfavorable opinions from different users. This interaction shouldn’t be ignored and for the fashion industry, reknown as a tough skin industry, to shrivel up so easily to opinionated consumers is sort of an oxymoron.

These articles are only about a month old so I thought it’d be interesting to spread more views on manufactured items made in Asia.

The New York Times‘ article is particularly interesting. As China is growing exponentially as an economic power, so are the wages, and higher wages means improving (at least we’re hoping) work environments. With higher wages, outsourcing to China is no longer a cheap endeavour as manufacturers are now looking to other asian countries like Vietnam and Cambodia for labor work. However, outsourcing to other asian countries proves to still be a difficult move.

The Reuters article points that cheap labour entices designers to use more expensive fabrics and that many countries don’t seem to mind the Made in China labels as much as previously thought. Also, the article points out a very important factor where Made In labels are being faked, thus it is difficult to really know where clothes come from.

My trip to DC included some great insight from a relative who writes for one of the big newspapers in DC and gave me some useful advice. She told me that the senior fashion editor of the newspaper had quit the paper a few years back in favor to work for the so-called Carrie Bradshaw’s “Mecca” of all magazines – Vogue. She lasted 6 months and quit.

Her reason? Writing for a magazine had too much pressure to be positive ALL the time. If a brand’s collection is perceived as bad for the season, they simply don’t write about it at all. Instead they would focus on the brands they deemed good. Being bred from a newsroom where there needs to be a heart to the story which includes fact checking, interviews, and unraveling the truth (whether good or bad) – there wasn’t any of that at Vogue.

You may find the occasional insightful article, the most notable I’ve read recently in Harper’s Bazaar’s September 2007 issue, “Everyone’s a fashion critic” by Pulitzer Prize acclaimed writer Robin Ghivan (The Washington Post‘s fashion editor). But as a whole, it’s hard to be negative in a magazine, I can vouch that as a writer for Gloss. It’s not that there’s anything to hide really, I enjoy doing interviews and all of them so far have been humble and super nice people. But after a while, it gets redundant. Newspapers have an edge that will allow you to express your opinions if given you can back up your statements.

Being a fashion editor at a newspapers does have its drawbacks. Opinions dished in newspapers can hurt brands, resulting in bans from certain fashion shows. Nobody has been spared, even the almighty Wall Street Journal, The NY Times, The International Herald Tribune, and Newsweek writers have been banned from attending shows, from Louis Vuitton to Armani, for their comments. Frankly though, kudos to these women who have the experience and most importantly – who have their eyes wide open. These women are not easily swayed by the glamour and lavish parties. Oh sure, they’ll attend the parties, but by no means would it bribe them in counting a collection as fabulous if it doesn’t live up to certain standards or capability. What makes them so qualified in critiquing you ask? Perhaps it’s because they don’t blindly follow the herd, that they don’t just gobble up what every designer has to offer. Not only that, they have experience under their belt and they haven’t abandoned their investigative journalistic skills.

Hilary Alexander, for The Daily Telegraph UK, is perhaps the exception to the investigative journalistic style for a newspaper. Although Hilary would rarely express her opinion on collections, she certainly makes up for it by concisely writing show reviews with the pen of a novelist. Her choice of words build and create fantastical atmosphere that one can only dream of how beautiful these runway shows are in real life. She’s incredibly talented on this end, and so I forgive her for lacking an opinion.

With my experience in fashion magazine writing, I feel that here you would have to stretch your creative writing skills by indulging the reader into the fantasy that fashion is portraying. That, in some respect, requires quite a good deal of skills in order to achieve this mystical world for the reader. How do you convince your readers that the latest designer you’re presenting is hot stuff and why? What makes them special? I’ve been struggling with this since I’ve started, but learned a great deal along the way. I do believe at the end of the day that my heart belongs in having an opinion on fashion and digging deeper to unravel the truth and mystery behind the fashion facade.

Image credit: Patrick McMullan for Harper’s Bazaar

As Stacy London would say…”Shut UP!”

In a world where we could only resort to customizing Vans slip ons and some Nike runnings, Steven Madden has pushed the envelope to make it a real girl’s dream: customize your own fashionable shoe. The New York Times gives a more in depth look of the new service, so I went to Steve’s website to get a better look of what it’s all about.

The concept is simple.

Choose one of 45 different styles of shoe (from Uggs to high heels) and play around digitally by picking colors of the trimmings, heel, straps and buttons, from leather to faux animal prints. Prices vary from $89.95 to $169.95. You can even customize a couple of handbags too. Once your choices are made, it’ll take about 3 weeks for your shoes to arrive and to enjoy.

Here’s a shoe I designed on Steve Madden’s interface, cute no?

Though I’m sure every girl would like their shoes to be designed and created by the likes of say Christian Louboutin, but average income people can’t afford shoes at $500-$600 a pop. According to the NY Times, Steve Madden has “almost no online competition” right now, but the company may as well revolutionize online retail shoe shopping for the mainstream public. It’s like the American Apparel of shoes, buy the base, customize everything else yourself. How can you go wrong?

The concept can be pushed even further to handbags as already shown. This trend could spread to sunglasses, gloves, clothes, hats, socks, tights, and the list goes on. Of course, such customization will demand the proper resources and work force to handle the process and most likely new regulations.

Designing or modifying your own clothes is not a new concept though. In some Montreal boutiques like Mad-Ame in the Gay Village, offers their clients the option to design their own clothes with a tailor. They also sell ready to wear pieces and each can be modified to the client’s wishes. Word to the ones who don’t know, this is a lesbian clothing store. Don’t know what that is? You should check it out yourself, I personally found it pretty cool to be greeted with a slushie and have the opportunity to play Mrs. Pac-Man in the store.

Another idea for those of you shopping for the holiday season!

While shares fell shortly after the scathing article from The New York Times questioning the authenticity of Lululemon‘s VitaSea line, CNW Group issued an official press release from the company stating that the line has gone through independent tests and confirmed its contents are consistent.

Lululemon has a comprehensive product testing process and partners with
SGS Group, a leading independent inspection, verification, testing and
certification company. The Switzerland-based firm conducts a battery of tests
before each season on all of Lululemon’s fabrics across all product lines,
testing for a variety of attributes including content, pilling, shrinkage, and
colorfastness.

Well…this is a tough call. It’s normal that the company fends off such accusations, so it’s a question of who is telling the truth. Is the newspaper at fault for reporting these tests? And what made them doubt Lululemon’s claim in the first place? If people can make handbags out of candy wrapper, what’s wrong with using seaweed fiber?

Whatever the case may be, in the end it’s the customer’s choice if they want to spend their money on clothes (authentically organic or not).

**Update**

Ok, my question has been answered as to what made the New York Times investigate Lululemon in the first place. The Business of Fashion pretty much gives you the 411 that it’s really all about the benjamins.

A final twist to all of this is that it was a private investor that paid for the first test which questioned the claims of the VitaSea product and it was he who spurred the New York Times to do their own test and publish the results. This investor was hoping that the test results would send Lululemon’s stock into a free-fall, enabling him to short-sell the stock and make a nice bundle of cash. Mission accomplished.

So, bringing a company down for a quick buck. Hélas, c’est la vie!

According to The New York Times, it looks like Lululemon Athletica (famed for yoga sportswear using organic fabrics) isn’t living up to some of its claims. The newspaper issued some tests on VitaSea, a line that Lulu claims to contain 24% of seaweed fiber, which resulted in “no significant difference in mineral levels between the VitaSea fabric and cotton T-shirts.”

“Seaweeds have known vitamins and minerals, and we searched specifically for those vitamins, and we didn’t see them,” said Carolyn J. Otten, director for specialized services at Chemir Analytical Services, a lab in Maryland Heights, Mo. that tested a sample of VitaSea.

[...]

Lululemon executives said that they had not independently tested the VitaSea material to see whether it lived up to the claims on Lululemon’s tags. Instead, it trusted the claims of its suppliers, executives said.

[...]

Analysts said it is the responsibility of the companies to test all of their products.

“It’s frankly up to the companies to do sporadic product quality tests to make sure everything is being manufactured to the parameters they set,” said Sharon Zackfia, an analyst who covers Lululemon at William Blair & Co., an investment firm based in Chicago. “At the end of the day, it’s Lululemon’s name on the line.”

This is a gaffe that could harm the company’s image in which consumers rely on their brands to live up to their promises. The company flourished not because of savvy marketing campaigns, but by word of mouth. If Lululemon did in fact “lie” to their consumers about the seaweed use in the VitaSea line, it puts into question as to what else they could have lied about.