A new book by anthropologist Giulia Mensitieri, PhD, exposes the ugly reality behind the ultra-glamorous facade of the global fashion industry. “Fashion workers produce highly-valued symbolic capital and build the dream of capitalism, even though they live in a condition of economic precarity,” Mensitieri explains. The image the fashion world creates to drive consumer demand for its goods is also used to drive demand for people to become part of that world. Fashion presents itself as something exceptional, a world outside the ordinary.”While Mensitieri’s research focused only on Europe, she says the findings apply to the worldwide fashion industry. ”“The fashion industry is at once a very wealth industry, yet unpaid work is normalized.

Source: Forbes September 30, 2018 12:11 UTC