Where Am I Wearing? by Kelsey Timmerman, is about one man's quest to find out how and where his clothes were being made. He traveled to the Honduras, Bangladesh and China to find the factories, and meet the people who made his clothes. An intelligent, down-to-earth person with an inquisitive mind, a good sense of humor, and a taste for adventure, we found his honest, insightful take refreshing enough that it's sure to inspire many to follow in his footsteps.
Malayna, writing for Garments Without Guilt, talked with Kelsey to find out more:
GWG: You said in the book that when you talked to people about your quest, you were surprised to find that they assumed that their clothes were made in sweatshops. Where do you think they got that idea from?
Kelsey: I think that 10 years ago or more, you had the whole Kathie Lee scandal popping up. That's what the news was reporting at that moment in time, and it was a big deal back then. I think that just got ingrained in them-that that's where their clothes came from. And they came to accept the 'fact' that all their clothes were made somewhere else, and they're all made in the worst possible conditions by people who are exploited. And what amazed me was that if they thought this, why didn't they have a problem with it?
GWG: Exactly. So you talk about being an engaged consumer, what exactly would that entail? How would you tell these people to be engaged consumers?
Kelsey: Well you know it's not a super easy thing to do. You can't just say 'do this, do that'. What I've tried to do is I've tried to research the brands before I buy anything. You can go on their website and look to see if they reveal where their factories are. You can tell really quickly if the brand is engaged or not. If they have two paragraphs written about the people who make their stuff and where they're made, and under what conditions their products are made, then you know that. . . that's not quite enough, in my book. What is enough? I think everyone has to kind of decide for themselves.
Recently I was shopping online at Patagonia, which is a company I mention in the book. Companies don't really allow us to be really engaged consumers, they don't really encourage the consumer. . . even a company like Patagonia, who tends to be more of an engaged company than most, on their website it just says 'imported' for the clothes. It doesn't say where they were imported from.
So the other day before I bought the items I bought, I e-mailed them, or filled out their form on just their generic customer service form, saying "Hey, I'm looking at this product, this product and this product. Where were they made?"
GWG: Did you get a response?
Kelsey: Within an hour.
GWG: Oh, wow!
Kelsey: They responded immediately, and I placed my order, and woo-hoo! Go engaged consumer!
(GWG note: Kelsey's blog reported soon after this interview that Patagonia has changed their site to reflect this.)
GWG: I don't know if you've heard of the Lazy Environmentalist., he says that most people are Lazy Environmentalists, they need an easy place to start. Would you recommend people do what you did- which is to look at the clothes they already own and maybe check into those items as a starting place?
Kelsey: Yeah, I think if people started looking in their own wardrobe, where their products come from, and what company made their products, then that's a place to start to educate yourself.
You know, there's no sure way to say 'this is how to ensure that your products are made under conditions that you approve of'. Like I mention in the book about people's eating habits, some people are vegetarians, some people are vegans, some people are on the Atkins Diet some people are on the junk food diet. I just think you have to have some kind of your own standards. Maybe you don't want to buy clothes made in China because you don't approve of their human rights record, maybe you want to buy clothes made in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh to help support a growing industry in those countries.
I think it's a personal decision and there's not enough information out there for anyone to say 'this is how you should go about buying your clothes' because it's just so different, no matter where you buy them from.
GWG: I'm thinking of the carbon offset industry-where you can buy carbon offsets and feel a little less guilty about flying or the energy used for your home. Can you think of anything that would be the equivalent for people who feel guilty about the clothes they've bought?
Kelsey: I guess I've been looking for some things like that. I don't know if I've found anything that I would definitely recommend to everybody at this point in time. To me a lot of the poor working conditions, or not-so-great working conditions, associated with places isn't so much the garment industry as much as the country and conditions that the industry is taking place in. So you maybe could donate to a worker's rights group in a certain country.
More than anything I think that poverty is the large issue. Organizations like ONE, the campaign to end poverty to raise poverty awareness and try to eliminate poverty, and kind of raise everybody up as we go, maybe something like that.
One thing is, I don't think we should clear our conscience of the matter completely, you know? With the carbon thing, if you go out and pollute like crazy and then buy your way out of it, is that really going to clear your conscience? Is that the way to go about things?
I don't know. I think we should just understand where our clothes come from and who's making our clothes.
GWG: You have a lot of backup research throughout the book. Is that stuff you already knew, was that in your head as you went on the trip? Or was it stuff that you researched and put in afterward to tell the story?
Kelsey: Well I think it probably varies somewhat with what I knew and what I didn't know. I had gone to that SweatFree conference before, so I was trying to educate myself before the trip about the industry, and I had read several different books.
The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 in New York City- I knew about that stuff and basically how the industry got started and how it moved. The first book I turned to was "Travels of a T-shirt" by Pietra Ravoli. And so I read that book before I left.
GWG: You talk about the cultural meaning behind things like t-shirts and jeans, and a person's closet being a museum of them. Was that something that you had thought about before you decided to go on the quest? Were you really interested in what the clothes meant to you? Or did that come only after you noticed the countries that they were made in?
Kelsey: Oh I guess a little bit of both. I am wearing my USA shorts that I write about. So I do grow attached to certain pieces of clothes. I don't buy that many clothes, I'm not obsessed with clothes by any means. But then you think about things like blue jeans and there's a certain nostalgia you can associate with clothes. You know, you have memories of your childhood and you think "Well, what was I wearing?"
Then when I got back from the trip, definitely. You see what you always thought about blue jeans, and then you see where they were made and who's making them, and it definitely changes your perception. It gives you something more to compare-what you always thought about blue jeans to the real story of blue jeans.
GWG: One of the other things I thought was interesting, is that you mentioned that by looking at her, you couldn't tell if Arifa's child was a boy or a girl because "some people can't afford engendering clothing". I had never thought about that before, that it would be a luxury to be able to choose pink or blue for your kid. I just thought it was an interesting point about the sociology of clothing.
Kelsey: Yeah, they just put 'em in whatever they've got. I'm sure that they have some outfits for her that probably look more girlish, but none that I ever saw.
GWG: One of the things that comes through in the book is that what we in developed nations believe children should be entitled to, is not what the experience is for children in developing nations.
You were talking about how you felt better when you had a quest, when you had a purpose a direction to go, what quest do you have now?
Kelsey: Now I guess, in life, I have a baby coming in December, so that's my biggest quest.
GWG: And you'll get to put the baby in engendering clothes . . .
Kelsey: (Laughing) That'll be my wife's job.
And on that note, we'll close, but you can hear Kelsey telling some of the stories from his book for World Vision, a humanitarian organization "dedicated to working with children, families and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice."
You can access them from his blog, www.whereamIwearing.com
Kelsey Timmerman was interviewed for Garments Without Guilt by Malayna Dawn.
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