Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade

by Rachel Louise Snyder

Overview

“A fascinating chronicle of the $55-billion-a-year global denim industry.” —David Futrelle, Los Angeles Times

Rachel Louise Snyder reports from the far reaches of the multi-billion-dollar denim industry in search of the people who make your clothes. From a cotton picker in Azerbaijan to a Cambodian seamstress, a denim maker in Italy to a fashion designer in New York, Snyder captures the human, environmental, and political forces at work in a complex and often absurd world. Neither polemic nor prescription, Fugitive Denim captures what it means to work in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393335422
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/20/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Rachel Louise Snyder’s work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Slate, and the New Republic, and on public radio’s “This American Life” and “Marketplace.” She lives in Cambodia and in Chicago, Illinois.

Table of Contents

Part 1
The Subversive Ecosystem     13
The Vegetable Lamb Conquers the World     30
White Gold and All-Tex Quickie     46
The Little Volcanoes We Carry     54
These Galoshes Were Made for Walking     70
The Particular Dream of Cheesecake Ends     81
Part 2
God's Nectar and Other Denim You Don't Know You Wear     93
Urinating on Your Jeans Just Makes Good Sense     125
How the West Was Won     138
A Society of the Mind and Other Atmospheric Contaminants     145
The Artisan of Unbearable Shopping     156
Part 3
In the Living We Lose Control     167
The Ghosts in the Trees     180
The Long Arm of the Non-Law     209
Three Men and a Foreign Policy     223
A Village with No Daughters     241
Part 4
Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Factory Doors     251
A View of One's Own Fatigued Auditor     270
The Third Party, Exhibit A: The Two-second Handshake     282
The Third Party, Exhibit B: The Last-Minute Orgy and Other Shoppers' Delights     289
The Guardians of Edun     294
Epilogue     312
Acknowledgments     321
Notes     325
Index     335

Editorial Reviews

"Contains a number of surprises about the most ubiquitous of clothes. . . . Ultimately Snyder gets readers to think about the real costs of clothing, and it’s likely they won’t look at $30 or $200 jeans the same way again."

Chicago Tribune - Kathryn Masterson

"A thoughtful, ultimately hopeful look at how our choices about something as mundane as jeans can alter the lives of people 10,000 miles away."

Fast Company

Blue jeans are as American as Jell-O and the Beach Boys. But freelance journalist Snyder exposes their backside and splits the seams to look into denim and its global significance. This book more or less parallels the themes of Pietra Rivoli's Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, so the story is not an entirely new one. However, Snyder does an admirable job of putting a human face on the global genesis of blue jeans as a major product. She picks cotton alongside women workers in Azerbaijan, visits denim fabric designers in Italy, attends a textile chemical association conference in North Carolina, witnesses a May Day garment worker demonstration in Cambodia, and hobnobs with socially aware jeans designers in New York. Through these personal glimpses, the political, legal, and economic realities of globalization become apparent. Synder also explores the success of the organic cotton movement and highlights how Ali Hewson (wife of U2 frontman and activist Bono) and fashion designer Gregory Rogan have teamed up on the Edun line of jeans, which are made with strict attention to responsible environmental and labor practices. The story of these "traveling pants" is a good fit for public and academic library business collections.
—Carol J. Elsen

Library Journal