High-end knitwear wholesale can be unprofitable and exploitative for its maker despite prestige accounts

Evidence

During my daughter’s wonder years she had to wonder why our apartment turned into a mini sweatshop. Every day after school, Viva came home to make her way through a maze of stacked cardboard boxes, and two Mexican guys knitting on machines in our dining room while I sat on the couch doing all the hand and finishing work before I packed sweaters into boxes for shipping. With yarn strung from one end of our apartment to the next, more often than not Viva found angora fuzz balls mixed in with her peanut butter and jelly after school snack. Although I was working 24/7, I still never had any money. Whatever little acting money I was earning went directly into materials for production and making my sample lines for my bi-coastal sales reps. To keep Viva entertained on weekends, I would take her to movies and knit in the dark. I even made her my fit model and whenever she was coming or going I’d stop her to try on new sweaters for sizing and eventually she became my fashion model too. — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs, 77

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘prestigious but broke’ small producer echoes the earlier ‘always broke despite bestseller’ pattern; also resonates with stories of artisan labor subsidizing retail fame. — connects to: Fashion goods resist the rationalization that transforms other production — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 741

Broader Connections

• Fashion goods resist the rationalization that transforms other production #complicates (0.82) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 741