Garment: Where am I Wearing?

Where am I Wearing?

Financial Times: FT.com

Review by Emma Jacobs

Published: January 26 2009 04:33 | Last updated: January 26 2009 04:33

Where am I Wearing? A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories and People That Make Our Clothes
By Kelsey Timmerman
John Wiley £14.99, 272 pages
FT Bookshop price: £11.99

Kelsey Timmerman’s investigation into the underbelly of globalisation is moronic. I am not being unkind. The author describes himself in his book, Where am I Wearing?, as a “touron” – part moron and part tourist. It is Timmerman’s lack of knowledge that is his selling point.

The self-confessed “beach bum” admits he does not “have an intricate understanding of the world’s economy”. He has no ambitions to offer the analysis of globalisation, say of, Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The World is Flat, or suggest a solution to poverty such as economist Jeffrey Sachs. Instead he is just “a consumer on a quest” to find out what life is like for the people who made his clothes. And he is an endearing and unassuming tour guide, as he takes the reader on a journey to Honduras, Bangladesh, Cambodia and China to meet the people who make most of the world’s clothes.

The idea for the book came as Timmerman was staring at a pile of clothing on his bedroom floor. This triggered the thought, “What if I travelled to all of the places where my clothes were made and met the people who made them?” In part a journey to discover his position in the global marketplace, he tells us, it was also “to put off committing to his relationship with Annie, [his] growing impatient girlfriend of 10 years.” He didn’t want to grow up so he travelled.

His ignorance is occasionally amusing. He asks a twentysomething Bangladeshi if she had met Gandhi. “He died in the 1940s,” she politely informs Timmerman. “I’m an idiot, and nothing I can do or say can change that. Although in my defence”, he says, “Ben Kingsley who played Gandhi in the movie is still alive.”

Timmerman is never preachy. Nor does he rant. He discovers that his preconceptions of factories as sweatshops, gleaned from student protesters, are too simplistic. He is shocked by the poor wages and living conditions in Cambodia, where he finds eight factory workers to a room – four on the floor, four on the bed. But he also tours regulated and unionised factories, also in Cambodia, which give out comic books that explain workers’ rights. They are staffed by employees who, he believes, are pleased to have their jobs – many tell him that these are better posts than they might expect with very limited education. In Bangladesh, he takes a shine to a factory middle man who also runs a non-governmental organisation for mothers and children.

Ultimately his ignorance is maddening, however. Why didn’t he read more before setting out on his journey? Some of his writing is pointless. A particular nadir is his section on flip-flops. Apparently they are the “most fun thing you can wear. And of all the things you can wear, flip-flops is the most fun thing to say.” What? This is not the end of it: “They go flip-flop on your feet, so they’re called flip-flops ... But have you ever really thought about this? They don’t go flip-flip or flop-flop or even flop-flip. They always go flip-flop.” This pointless exposition is of course a preamble to the mind-blowing revelation that the people who make fun flip-flops don’t have much fun. But frankly if flip-flop workers are too exhausted or illiterate to read such nonsense, that’s hardly the greatest of their problems.

To be fair this volume is aimed at a younger audience than many other books about globalisation – so his conclusion that “we should try to be engaged consumers not mindless pocketbooks” may be a valuable revelation.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009