Under the label

Throughout New York Fashion Week, elite models showcase new designs from the most renowned clothing brands in the world. But for all the glamour on display, the reality of the industry behind it often involves the forced labor—or at its extreme, outright enslavement—of millions of people around the world.

Each year, the 20 wealthiest countries import a total of around US$150 billion worth of clothing that’s, according to the Global Slavery Index, “at risk” of having been produced by forced labor. The language indicates a visibility problem: With forced labor in fashion ranging from wage theft and more ambiguous forms of exploitation in the West to sweatshops in Asia—to the notorious slave-labor camps of China’s Uyghur region—some of it is easier to see than others. The fashion industry meanwhile employs more than 60 million globally. So just how widespread is the problem?

Tessa Maffucci is the assistant chair of the Fashion Design Department at the Pratt Institute in New York City. Forced labor, Maffucci says, runs through fashion supply chains on every continent. And it’s spread globally in recent decades, as these supply chains have expanded to multiple layers of subcontractors—making it unclear even to some brands where their clothes are being manufactured. It’s a complex question, then: Not only is fashion’s forced labor distributed in different forms all over the world, it can also be hidden from producers as well as their consumers …

Michael Bluhm: How extensive is the use of forced labor in the fashion industry?