John Oliver Takes Fast Fashion to Task on “Last Week Tonight”
On Sunday night’s episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the comedian devoted nearly his entire show to an issue he says we’ve “cared about sporadically since the ‘90s.” He’s talking about fast fashion, the proliferation of incredibly inexpensive clothes turning over at record speed and the public’s apparent lack of interest in where they come from, and how they’re made. But, Oliver says, “Sweatshops aren’t one of those ‘90s problems we got rid of, like Donnie Wahlberg. They’re more like one of those ‘90s problems we’re still very much dealing with, like Mark Wahlberg.”
Gap, H&M, Joe Fresh, Walmart, and The Children’s Place are the main targets of Oliver’s wrath. Clips from CBS, the BBC, and Al Jazeera show reporters visiting factories and suppliers in countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia, revealing unsafe conditions, child workers who’ve added four or five years to their age to land a job, lack of fire safety measures, and worse. Oliver acknowledges that these companies say “they’re trying as hard as they can,” but wonders aloud what that could possibly mean when conditions are still so inhumane and “deniability [is] stitched into the supply chain.”
Oliver joins an increasing number of powerful voices and targeted campaigns asking consumers to think about the origin of their purchases. Just last week, Fashion Revolution, a global coalition of designers, academics, and business leaders, spearheaded #fashionrevolution, where people like Stella McCartney turned their clothes inside out, forcing you to see—and consider—the information printed on your labels. Over 13,000 people used the hashtag on Instagram. Earlier this month, the Canadian Fair Trade Network launched a series of ads designed to draw awareness to the conditions affecting the people who actually make our clothes. Dubbed “The Label Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story,” the ads do actually print fabricated back stories on labels, imaging the fictional story of the worker who may have produced that particular garment.
But Oliver’s outrage peaks while addressing each company’s tendency to brush off responsibility every time a human rights violation is uncovered. At this point, he says, the jig is up. “They are losing the right to act surprised. They’re like the characters in the Hangover movies: it’s not an accident the third time boys, it’s a pattern of reckless behavior that has to be addressed.” His plan for dealing with the problem? Sending the heads of each company a disturbingly cheap lunch of questionable origins.
The issue, however, will persist as long as consumers continue to demand the lowest possible prices for their throwaway clothes. As we wrote on this issue just last week, “Money’s really the only thing that talks in 2015.”
Related: Stella McCartney Wears Her Clothes Inside Out for Fashion Revolution Day
