Or: Why is he UK so much cooler than us?

Ok, I’ll be honest, it’s been several years since I’ve taken the time to really look into the fair trade clothing options out there (i.e., spend hours online, hopped up on caffeine, traipsing from link to link). Since my college days –which were the last in which I had that much free time—I’ve been shopping at Crossroads, Buffalo, and, I’ll admit, a lot of H&M, Forever 21, Urban Outfitters, and Anthropologie. I obviously didn’t feel great about the last four, but I needed low-cost, professional clothing (I’m talking Anthropologie sale rack here), and honestly thought that my fair trade options were still limited to American Apparel and Global Exchange. So I ended up teaching high school in the same Forever 21 sweaters that my 9 ^th graders owned, swathed in chintzy gold necklaces and short-lived nylons that helped me maintain a veneer of being “put together.”

Well, summer is here, and while I usually teach part-time, this season I’m a free agent. Which leaves time for lots of side projects, like putting together outfit collages ( teenage closet style) using only ethical options. Every day I’m finding more and more aggregate sites, recommendations of fellow bloggers, and indie labels. The thing is, the majority of the brands that offer a large selection at affordable prices (the kind of thing you look for at larger companies like Target and F21), are all out of Europe and more specifically the UK. This is awesome! However, it makes me wonder why the same thing isn’t happening in the US. American Apparel and its brethren are doing some good things, but, as I’ve said before, most of it is not wearable for work or non- FlashDance-themed parties. Other independent, fair trade labels exist, but are crazy expensive (we’re talking $70 for a jersey tank top, minimum). So for those of us who are not independently wealthy and/or actually majored in something marketable, our options are still very limited (and don’t even get me started on how limited healthy food and clothing options are for people who are legitimately below the poverty line – that’s another rant).

But back to Europe. One of the companies I was very surprised to see on a list of fair trade companies (via the UK’s Fair Trade Foundation), was Tesco. Obviously I’m not a Brit, and my schema is very Cali-centric, but I always thought of Tesco as the Walmart of the UK. And indeed, their site features some cringe-inducingly tacky stuff (“Drama Queen” nighty, anyone?). But there are definitely some wearable items, and their prices are great, even after the weakened US dollar is factored in. Additionally, they include information about their sourcing practices, something you would never find on Target’s website.

Which begs the question: why don’t we see this kind of transparency from most US companies? Of course there’s the simplistic anti-establishment answer: “Duh. US Corporations are evil, profit-seeking power mongers who don’t care about humans because they aren’t humans.” This is probably true, to a degree. But these corporations still want our money. And I wonder how long it will be until demand for ethically made goods will be strong enough to catalyze changes at the corporate level. Small changes have already happened – you see far more organic foods at places like Walmart and Target (although these labels are highly unregulated -- but again, that’s another rant). As the documentary Food, Inc. points out, Walmart's switch to organic dairy products was purely a result of consumer demand. Now I know there is all kinds of potential for the term “ethical” to be exploited and misrepresented at the corporate level, but it would be nice to at least see more of a demand for it. And it can’t all come from New York, the Bay Area, Austin, Portland, and all those other liberal, blissful bubbles.