Modern fashion emerged only through colonial exploitation and stolen labor

Evidence

The production of textiles is intimately tied to histories of colonial exploitation and slavery. Cotton as a product represents the tangled history of forced labor and unequal trade, while silk represents a long history of Orientalist exploration and theft. Beyond the raw materials of fashion, the production of cloth itself has been a highly imperialized affair. All in all, the advent of the levels of production required to develop “fashion” was reached only through the stolen values of colonization. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2845 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The more an article becomes subject to rapid changes of fashion, the greater the demand for cheap products of its kind, not only because the larger and therefore poorer classes nevertheless have enough purchasing power to regulate industry and demand objects, which at least bear the outward semblance of style, but also because even the higher circles of society could not afford to adopt the rapid changes in fashion forced upon them by the imitation of the lower circles, if the objects were not relatively cheap. … It has been noticed, especially in the older branches of modern productive industry, that the speculative element gradually ceases to play an influential rôle. The movements of the market can be better overlooked, requirements can be better foreseen and production can be more accurately regulated than before, so that the rationalization of production makes greater and greater inroads on chance conjunctures, on the aimless vacillation of supply and demand. Only pure articles of fashion seem to prove an exception. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 741 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The desire to cover and adorn the European body is a central impetus behind the bloody rise to globality of this region. Cloth is among the earliest portable luxury goods to remake the earth in the image of trade and crime. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2844 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Modern fashion’s industrial production depended on colonial exploitation and slavery — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2845; Fashion as consumption culture emerged only with mass production — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2838; Fashion production exemplifies the flexibilities and harms of globalized labor — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2854 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern fashion’s industrial production depended on colonial exploitation and slavery #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2845
• Fashion goods resist the rationalization that transforms other production #complicates (0.76) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 741
• European colonial expansion was driven by desire for cloth and adornment #complicates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2844
• Brazilian slavery served display and vanity far beyond material production #complicates (0.72)