WHAT DO CLOTHING LABELS HIDE?

The big brands of the textile industry have recognition and reputation, but do the manufacturing companies, their conditions and the workers have it? why the addresses and the names of the factories do not appear on the clothes? Only the company that puts its name on the label, silencing the other clothing manufacturers, gets the benefit?

These are some of the questions that appears in the book “Black Brands” in the section on “Black Marks in fashion” in which it deals the issue such as the transparency and opacity of different fashion brands, working conditions in the factories that work for these brands or the lack of transparency in traceability. In this article we are going to talk about this last issue relating it and reflecting on the information that this book gives us.

“Traceability is the ability to trace all processes from procurement of raw materials to production, consumption and disposal to clarify, when and where the product was produced by whom”. In this industry the misinformation is a limitation, labels are often capable of silencing an entire production process.

To understand this we have to focus on the legislation of labelling in textile fashion. At the international level, one of the main purposes of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is to help trade move freely, but this purpose has been criticized for his lack of compliance and transparency. International, European and national trade regulation legislation does not contain the identification of manufacturers or the lack of transparency in traceability. In 2005 Italy made a proposal to force of origin labelling in almost all products sold in the UE but many countries refused it.

It is obvious that in the textile sector there is a lack of legislation and regulation on labelling and the problem is that the laws do not come. For example, European and Spanish regulations do not require labelling with the name of the country of origin, it is only mandatory when the product comes from a country that does not belong to the WTO. If the name of the country of origin is not always mandatory on the label, how much information is not being giving to us about the entire process of a clothe?

Have you ever wondered the name of the factories that have produced your clothes? Who is taking away the entire reputation of the business? Why are there not so many measures on the regulation of laws in this industry? These are some of the questions that have made us reflect on this information so well treated in the section of the book “Black Brands”