Abstract
I write this review as a non-expert in the garment economy, someone who normally gives little thought to the subject let alone whether the shirt I am wearing matches the rest of my outfit. It is likely safe to say that we all find uses for garments and that our societies have done so for millennia. It seems that people, communities and societies have created and used garments to protect from heat or cold, signal identity, as a sign of status and rank, as a means of control and to enhance appearance for as long as anyone knows. We all wear garments of some sort. We may be familiar with the political and economic ideas about the garment economy as an example of a typical strategy for national economic development. It’s a strategy that follows the path of England’s industrial revolution where the mechanisation of production and an available low-cost workforce create cost advantage that leads to market penetration which fuels continued and broader economic development. Expanding national economies on the back of the never-ending demand for garments is the path many countries have used to stimulate economic growth as they move from low-cost providers to higher-cost producers only to be replaced by the next country to employ this strategy for economic growth.
This is the superficial level of awareness, depth of thinking, and attention I usually give to garments and the garment economy. When asked to review the book The Garment Economy: Understanding history developing business models and leveraging digital technologies I did not know what to expect to learn from the book. Like with any book that is a collection of the writings of multiple authors there were chapters whose topics piqued my interest more than others. At times I was not sure what sort of review I could write about the Garment Economy. However, my insecurities and uncertainties about the book left as I made the mental switch from reader to reviewer. As I began to look over the notes I had jotted down and the annotations I had made while reading the chapters the answer to why was reading and why others might benefit from reading the book became clearer.
I should take a moment to discuss what I think, after reading the book, is meant by the garment economy. The editors do not seem to clearly define what they mean by the garment economy. The introductory chapter speaks of a trillion-dollar garment economy that employs 300 million people worldwide and is fuelled by the consumption of clothing (p. 7). But, as the editor suggests and the contributors demonstrate, the book conceives the garment economy as much more than the clothes on our backs. The garment economy in the book includes tradition, craft, connection to place, retail, consumer behaviour, technological change and politics. I suppose that I could say the garment economy is the sum total of the meaning and multi-level value of the owning and exchange of the clothes we wear.
The book contains 28 wide-ranging stories of an industry that is woven into our lives on many, many levels. The editors have organised the chapters into five different sections or as they call them: parts. The sections are: introductory chapters, the garment business today, business models, towards the future, and pedagogical exercises. Within the sections are chapters from diverse settings and contexts. It is interesting that only one chapter pays attention to the glamorous haute couture sector of the garment economy. Instead of focusing on the glitz of the high-end part of the garment economy, the editors have provided readers with much broader and more representative windows into a variety of topics related to the garment economy. As it turns out, this variety leads to one of the strengths of the book. Readers have the opportunity to learn and reflect on many current and developing topics. An example of one of the topics addressed is sustainability. Khorsand et al. (pp. 81–108) provides one such chapter. In their chapter, the authors investigate greenwashing and its effect on consumer behaviour. The chapter includes a literature review on the meaning of greenwashing that points out the, new to me, distinction between intentional and unintentional greenwashing. Another example of a chapter that takes on an aspect of sustainability is the chapter by Yan et al. (pp. 159–174). Yan et al. provide insights into the multi-level consequences of the reuse of pre-loved garments, including the idea that the movement of pre-used garments from the richer economies to poorer economies has the effect of shifting problems and not alleviating them. Thus, what readers end up with is a book they can use to broaden their knowledge about much more than the garment economy.
The diversity and range of topics covered tie into what I think is another strength of the book. In my reading, I recognised that while delving into micro details of the garment economy the authors also provided connections between their micro context-specific research to macro-level aspects of the economy, society and the world. An example of what I mean by this is the chapter by Idrees et al. (pp. 259–286). The chapter looks at Pakistan’s luxury unstitched apparel market and the use of technology for enhanced virtual shopping, while also considering impacts on sustainability. This chapter takes something very specific to a Pakistani approach to clothing and connects it to at least two macro-level topics. One of the topics fits within the development of virtual retail where the authors look not only at the development and adoption of technology but also consider developing economies and consumer behaviour. Another topic is the challenge of global sustainability via the reduction of waste. It might be because of my unfamiliarity with the garment economy but the reduction of excess textile seems a limited consideration given the many other ways the garment economy reputedly negatively impacts environmental sustainability. A positive of this limitation might be that it can act as a catalyst for critical thinking about what is missing in the chapter about the garment economy and global sustainability. It worked for me and my thinking.
Another strength of the book also arises from the diversity of topics and contexts. There are several chapters in the book where the authors empirically test existing theories or models in contexts distinctly different from the context in which the theories and models were developed. The significance of this approach lies in the acknowledged reality that much of the theoretical foundations of our academy of management scholarship are derived from Western European or North American societies and thought traditions (Alcadipani and Rosa, 2011; Ul-Haq and Westwood, 2012; Zahra, 2007). This limitation has raised questions about the applicability of the theory in distinctly different contexts. Therefore, testing existing theories in context where the societies and thought traditions are distinctly different provides insights for experts in these theories so they can better understand the phenomena they study. An example of a chapter that takes this approach and that stuck out to me was Biancone et al. (pp. 109–136). The authors investigated fashion business models where fashion is expected to be looser compared to the norms of the more revealing fashion of haute couture (AbdelAziz et al., 2023; Rosenberg, 2019). In this modest fashion context, the authors report on a bibliometric content analysis project where they identify elements of modest fashion business models and compare this with extant literature on fashion business models.
I appreciated many other aspects of the book. There is a section on business models that is aimed at providing guidance and insights on adapting current business model elements to current challenges. The challenges include disruptions that arose from the COVID-19 pandemic, technological change, social issues driving changes in consumers, and even the Metaverse. The book is also a balanced mix of empirical research useful for validating ideas and theory with conceptual research that serves to nourish our critical thinking. I also found the pedagogical section invigorating. The case provided by Almesahii et al. (pp. 535–552) stood out for me. The author’s write of Saudi Arabian fashion and in so doing open avenues of discussion in areas as broad as and as invigorating as religion tradition, history and institutionalisation. Take for example a statement made by one of the informants. This person is reported to have said ‘there is no connection between religion and Saudi woman’s traditional clothes. This style has been around for a long time and the dress code was based on the weather in the past more than the level of individual religiosity’. Imagine the challenge and intellectual stimulation of unpacking this statement with students in a seminar.
There will be many who are better informed and more knowledgeable than I am about the topics covered in the book. For them, I would hope a book like this is one that would be helpful and of value to them, if only because it collects research into one volume that could serve as a starting point for many topics related to the garment economy. For readers who, like me, have limited background in or familiarity with the garment industry the book offers a window into something we may take for granted but which touches our lives and interests in many unexpected ways. As such the book can serve as a source for reconsidering our assumptions in what may be new, novel contexts.
