Consumerism In Over-Dressed By Elizabeth L. Cline

The “Over-Dressed” book written by author Elizabeth L. Cline is very thoughtful book where she have tried to shows us what we are actually doing in the real world. The book is very revealing which focusses on the consumerisms in regard to clothing. When looking at our clothing industry, we will see there’s has been lot of changes since past decade. The clothings now are being mass produce due to the various type of machinery helps, productions of fibers and many more. Today people uses less hand work because we have many options available than in the past. Looking at all of these changes, the author have tried to sum up how we as consumer look at the fashions and how we are shopping for it.
The book somewhat sounds as discovery at some point.
(We can see this kind clothing in Museum today). Connecting the clothing from the history, author inform us how the retailers begins. The GAP for example used to carry expensive clothings, and they were more costly than what is it now, and later they end up ending their own brands lines which are low in quality but stylish and trendy. She talks about how other retailers such as Zara, H&M have follows same strategy. In chapter two, she have focused on American Garment industry. Here she have inform about the cost mostly, and how can it be expensive to produce than in other country. She have focuses on city such as New York City how much expensive it can be there since its biggest city for the fashion industry. In chapter three, Cline discusses about the histories of fabrics and how changes in our income which have lead us to have cheap and poor quality of clothing today. According to the chapter, the the mass productions of cheaper fabric and poor quality clothing are being available because the manufacturers now focuses on making more profit by spending less in the productions and on other hand, we has consumer no longer care about seamstresses and fabrics. In chapter four, author talks about how retail stores such as H&M and
Cline is New York based who is also the journalist. Since she is journalist, she loves finding about things and writing about it. She is highly influenced by documentary and histories. I believe her book “Over-Dressed” is highly related with her life. Since she is New York based, she have more idea of how fashions works in city than the urban area residents. She was highly inspired to research and figure out why we buy clothing more than we need from her own behaviours of shopping and looking at her peers and people around her