Attention-grabbing headlines constantly alert us to the ills of fast fashion. The multi-billion dollar industry churns out mountains of inexpensive-but-stylish clothing, much of it sewn in sweatshop-like factories in Asia and Latin America and sold by popular brands such as Shein, H&M, and Zara. The industry exploits workers, uses harmful chemicals, and causes environmental damage to the planet. The garments it produces are of poor quality, which means consumers keep coming back for more—and the cycle of harm repeats.

Social and environmental justice advocates taking aim at fast fashion direct their criticism (justifiably) toward big retailers and powerful corporations. But some also point fingers at ordinary consumers, who—with the aid of social media and online trade—play into the wasteful ethos that perpetuates this industry. Meanwhile, defenders of fast fashion claim that its global nature is democratizing, and makes style accessible to the masses.

People understand this debate as the product of the current consumer economy and the impending environmental crisis, but it is not new. The problems of fast fashion, as well as calls for ethical consumption, have characterized the garment industry from its beginning.

The rise of the ready-made industry in the late 19th century, which offered the masses affordable clothes in standardized ready-to-wear sizes, is often celebrated as a great moment in the democratization of fashion.

No clothing item represented this revolution more than the shirtwaist. Modeled after a masculine dress shirt, the shirtwaist was often worn together with a skirt, creating a new style known as the “ensemble.” It replaced custom-made dresses fitted to specific bodies, typically sewn by seamstresses or by the wearers themselves. Marketed as appropriate for business, leisure, and everyday wear, the shirtwaist ensemble quickly established itself as a staple in women’s wardrobes.

The design’s simplicity and the fact that it did not require close fitting made it extremely adaptable to mass production and standardization. While shirtwaists could be sewed at home by following a pattern, most women bought theirs factory-made, whether from department stores or pushcart vendors in the street. Growing rapidly in popularity, the shirtwaist was responsible for the expansion of the women’s ready-made clothing industry, which grew in product value from $13 million to $159 million dollars between 1869 and 1899.

Shirtwaists came in a variety of styles and prices, ranging from mannish-tailored waists with basic lines to elaborately embroidered designs with lacy inserts and frilly ornaments. Each woman could choose her own style according to the event or time of day, but more often it was according to her financial means. Yet even working-class, immigrant women—many of whom worked in the garment industry themselves—could create a seemingly diverse, fashionable wardrobe without spending a week’s pay by pairing a few shirtwaists, each costing less than a dollar, with one skirt. The shirtwaist was instrumental in working women’s assimilation into American society and culture—enabling them to appear as fashionable as their middle-class and native-born peers.

Ironically, these same women could not afford the department store-quality shirtwaists they helped manufacture. As Clara Lemlich, a garment worker and a union activist attested, “The garments we work on are very beautiful, very costly—very delicate. Some of them sell for a hundred and fifty dollars. Such as you could never dream of buying for yourself.” Lemlich and her peers had to compromise on poorly made shirts that often did not last more than a few washes before falling apart.

It was not just the poor quality of inexpensive shirtwaists that exposed the ills of mass manufacturing. Working conditions in many of the garment factories were exploitative. Shifts were often 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, for only a few dollars wage. Workers were cramped into stuffy, dirty rooms with poor ventilation and lighting. And while many of them organized and went on strikes to improve these conditions, employers and the public often ignored their pleas—putting profits and fashion over people.

Days after the Triangle Factory Fire, protesters mourned the victims and demanded better working conditions. Courtesy of author.

That began to change in 1898, when a group of middle-class women sought to use their buying power to bring an end to the harms of fast fashion. Led by social reformer Florence Kelley, the National Consumer League (NCL) launched a campaign to target women consumers, encouraging ethical consumption by creating a “white label” for clothes produced under fair and safe conditions.

Modeled after the idea of the “union label,” the NCL’s white label indicated “clean and healthful conditions” of both the clothes themselves, which were free of hazardous materials, and for the workers who made them. NCL pamphlets such as “The High Cost of Cheap Goods” encouraged shoppers not only to look at bargain prices and popular styles when buying clothes but also to understand what lay behind seemingly great deals.

NCL members appealed to consumers’ sense of justice and called them to be responsible for their choices. “Don’t say… that by buying ready-made clothes at a bargain counter you are aiding in the support of many of your sex,” warned one member. “You are not; you are simply making it possible for the sweatshop to remain open.”

The white label campaign had some successes, but it was only in 1911 that the public became aware of its acute necessity. On March 25, flames engulfed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory building, and New Yorkers watched in horror as hundreds of workers burned or jumped to their deaths. The 146 victims, the majority of them young women, offered a stark testament to the deadly cost of the pursuit of fashion.

Shocked by the tragedy, the public demanded action through mass memorials, rallies, and other forms of outcry. In the aftermath of the fire, the New York State legislature created the Factory Investigating Commission, which enacted more than 30 bills addressing sanitary conditions and workplace safety, imposing fire codes and other standards. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which only months prior to the fire organized one of the most impressive strikes in New York City history, more than doubled its membership, and turned into one of the most influential and militant unions in the country.

The fashion industry still suffers from many of the same problems that plagued it over 100 years ago, at the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Yet if it was middle-class consumers’ proximity to the fire that allowed it to spur outrage, today we are detached, both physically and psychologically, from the process by which people make our clothes. If it’s easier today to ignore the harms of fast fashion it is not because the harms are unfamiliar or new. It is because they are happening far away.

“Consumers… can, if they will, enforce a claim to have all that they buy free from the taint of cruelty,” Florence Kelley professed in 1914, believing that organized action and human solidarity could eventually bring change.

The NCL ended its white label campaign a few years later, in 1918, but Kelley’s message is still relevant today. Making the effort and looking beyond the price tag and the instant rush of shopping is our responsibility: to the workers who make our clothes, to the planet, but most of all to ourselves.

The post We’ve Been Fighting Fast Fashion Since the Industrial Revolution appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

These once-ubiquitous, one-size-fits-all socks are a product of Americans’ simultaneous love of sports, technological innovation, and nostalgic fashion statements.

The tube sock’s trajectory is knitted into the growth of organized sports in America, particularly basketball and soccer, both of which were popularized around the turn of the century. Basketball was a new and uniquely American diversion, played in YMCAs and school gymnasiums, while soccer was a centuries-old tradition imported by European immigrants. They had a crucial commonality, however: unlike baseball and football, they both required players to wear shorts.

With so many bare, hairy legs suddenly on display, knee-high socks—called “high-risers”—became essential accessories. As Esquire put in in 1955, shorts “look like the devil unless you wear high-rise socks with them. High-risers are usually eighteen inches, but the rule to follow is, get them up to your kneecaps. You can turn over a cuff or not—it doesn’t matter so long as they don’t end halfway down your calf.”

Photos of early basketball stars—like Chuck Taylor, who lent his name to the canvas Converse All Star high-top—show them in knee-high stockings, often with stripes placed midway (or all the way) down the leg. The increased demand for tall socks suitable for these pastimes stretched the ingenuity of the nation’s hosiery industry.

The tube sock was invented by the Nelson Knitting Company of Rockford, Illinois, just over 50 years ago, in 1967—the same year that America’s first professional soccer leagues were established. Founded in 1880 by John Nelson, the inventor of a seamless sock knitting machine, the company widely advertised its “Celebrated Rockford Seamless Hosiery.” The tube sock, though seamed, was no less monumental a technological marvel.

A true tube sock is shaped like a tube rather than, say, a human foot—a configuration so novel that the sock took its name from it. It has no heel, and, instead of a reciprocated (reinforced) toe, the end is closed with a simple seam. Nelson Knitting developed a machine expressly for that purpose, which could do the job in five or six seconds.

Eliminating the shaped heel and toe made the manufacturing process faster—about 30 percent faster than traditional shaped socks—and easier to mechanize. In addition, the tubular shape, combined with the development of new stretch yarns, allowed the sock to be made in a single size, meaning it could be produced in larger, more economical batches. These shapeless socks could be dyed, dried, inspected, and packaged much more simply and efficiently than heeled socks, all of which was reflected in their low cost.

Unfortunately, Nelson Knitting failed to patent its revolutionary design, meaning that it was immediately knocked off. This oversight may explain the style’s omnipresence in American athletic and popular culture in the late 1960s and ‘70s. Knee-high tube socks were made famous by shorts-wearing sports heroes like Björn Borg, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Pelé, and Julius “Dr. J.” Erving. Farrah Fawcett donned tube socks to go undercover as a roller derby player in an episode of Charlie’s Angels; so did Raquel Welch in the 1972 roller derby movie Kansas City Bomber.

Leaving aside its advanced physical properties, the tube sock had (and retains) a powerful emotional pull. This most democratic of accessories shapes itself to the wearer’s foot, making it both universal and intimately personal. Though tube socks have typically been produced in a single color—usually white—the ribbed elastic bands at the tops can be woven with colored stripes, indicating personal taste or group loyalty, such as team membership. Nelson Knitting supplied tube socks to a number of professional sports teams, including the knee-high socks ringed with team colors worn by the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins in the 1973 Super Bowl.

Tube socks became associated not just with American sports, but with American youth, and the country’s much-mythologized landscape of suburban lawns and urban blacktop. They were ideal for growing kids because they continued to fit as children grew. And, as Good Housekeeping magazine pointed out in 1976, “any 2-year-old can put them on without hunting for a heel.” Because there were no fixed stress points, they did not develop holes as quickly as traditional socks.

The tube sock hiked up the fortunes of the American hosiery industry. A 1984 U.S. Department of Labor report attributed strong growth in the sector over the previous two decades to “advances in technology, particularly in regard to pantyhose and tube-type socks” which “reduced unit labor requirements.”

That same year, however, a new government trade deal lifted the sock tariff, opening the market to cheap imports from Honduras, Pakistan, and China. Although sock manufacturing was largely mechanized, some steps required human workers—including the seaming of tube sock toes. Lower labor costs overseas made it impossible for American mills to compete, and several shut down. Nelson Knitting filed for bankruptcy in 1985. Fort Payne, Alabama, was once the sock-making capital of the world; today, that honor belongs to Datang, China.

The Department of Labor report defined tube socks as “hosiery for casual and athletic wear.” Even today, the Fairchild Encyclopedia of Menswear states that they “are worn for athletic activity.” But the tube sock gradually transitioned from sports equipment to fashion item. It became available in a variety of lengths and colors as it was adapted for a wider range of leisure activities.

The tube sock’s transition from sportswear to streetwear was not entirely seamless. In 1996, Vogue called the combination of black shoes and white tube socks “the unofficial male footwear of Catholic grade schools, high schools, and more senior proms than you’d care to imagine.” The tube sock was the trademark hosiery of the TV nerd Steve Urkel, and Anthony Michael Hall in any given John Hughes movie—the telltale sign of a man who was not as cool as he thought or hoped he was. It was used as a visual joke—often a dirty one—in Risky Business, That ‘70s Show, and American Pie.

Over the years, tube socks in some contexts became visual shorthand for in-your-face masculinity, often deployed ironically. In 1983, the rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed a show at an L.A. strip club. For their encore, they took the stage wearing tube socks dangling from their genitals—and nothing else. Though the club’s manager was apoplectic, the “Sock Stunt” has since become one of the band’s signature concert routines—one that would be impossible, incidentally, with a shaped sock.

But sock-time does not stand still. The tube sock was not actually very comfortable to wear—the instep tended to bunch at the ankle, and the slack fit could cause blisters. Just as the humble Chuck Taylor has today been replaced by precisely engineered sneakers, tube socks have been eclipsed by similar-looking athletic socks with shaped heels. But the generic term “tube sock” continues to be used today to describe athletic socks, with or without a heel.

Modern “athletic socks” are more likely to be moisture-wicking and odor-absorbing, with graduated compression and built-in arch support. There are different socks for different sports; the idea of a runner, a shortstop, or a hiker wearing the same socks as a basketball player is anathema. Instead of one size fits all, it’s every man for himself—or every woman for herself, as most of these socks come in versions custom-designed for the female physique.

But the unassuming tube sock endures as a fashion statement for both sexes. Resurrected as street style by Harajuku girls in turn-of-the-millennium Japan, knee-high tube socks emblazoned with colorful athletic stripes turned up (in footless form) in Prada’s Fall 2004 collection. By 2016, the collision of athleisure, the “normcore” trend, and the ‘70s revival prompted Vogue to announce: “Tube Socks Are Back!”

Since then, they’ve been spotted on influencers like Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Kristen Stewart, and Tyler, the Creator; name-checked in raps by Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar; and reinterpreted for the runway by Stella McCartney, Dries van Noten, and Valentino. It’s no stretch to imagine that the tube sock—invented, made, and worn in America—will be around for another 50 years.

The post The One-Size-Fits-All Sock That’s a Democratic Fashion Statement appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.