The Fast Fashion Fallacy

Ten years ago this month, much attention turned to the global garment industry when a group of garment factories collapsed at Rana Plaza near Dhaka, Bangladesh. The accident, called a “mass industrial homicide” by unions in Bangladesh, killed 1,124 people and injured at least 2,500 more. Most of the people who went to work that day were young women, almost all were supporting families with their wages and all were at the bottom of the global production chain.

We feature an episode from our colleagues of the series Don’t Call Me Resilient, to look back at the Rana Plaza disaster to explore how much — or how little — has changed for garment worker conditions since.

Featuring Dina Siddiqi, Clinical Associate Professor of Liberal Studies at New York University in the US, and Minh-Ha T. Pham, Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, also in the US. 

This episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient was produced by Vinita Srivastava, the associate producer is Boke Saisi, with contributions from Jennifer Moroz and Ateqah Khaki. Sound design is by Rehmatullah Sheikh and the show’s student journalist this year was Ollie Nicholas. Sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

Further reading: 

• 10 years after the Rana Plaza collapse, fashion has yet to slow down
• Fast fashion still comes with deadly risks, 10 years after the Rana Plaza disaster – the industry’s many moving pieces make it easy to cut corners
• Rana Plaza: ten years after the Bangladesh factory collapse, we are no closer to fixing modern slavery