If you're into fashion, but you're also interested in the more complicated aspects of the fashion production, you probably also know quite a few things about the Chinese sweatshops producing clothes and accessories in Prato.
My lecture today at the "Trans/National Clothing Conference" (at 3 p.m.) at Bath Spa University will be focusing on this topic.
Once a florid textile industry, Prato radically changed when the first wave of Chinese labourers settled in the town in the late ‘80s, transforming its economy. While Italian entrepreneurs weren’t really worried about the competition, as the years passed it became clear that the Prato textile district, once offering high quality products made following the highest craftsmanship standards and with the most advanced technologies, was slowly but relentlessly turning into the capital of low cost fashion.
There are currently over 3,000 thriving Chinese businesses around Prato, all producing low cost clothes and accessories. It is estimated that one million garments a day are sewn by the 40,000 Chinese workers (some of them are exploited illegal immigrants) every day.
Garments and accessories are usually sewn and assembled in Prato from fabrics arriving from China but cut in nearby Iolo (where 1 metre of fabrics costs around €0,50-€1,00; in Prato "Made in Italy" fabric is roughly €8,00 a metre).
Once ready to be sold (usually 24/48 hours after the fabric arrives in the sweatshops), the garments – all bearing the label “Made in Italy” – are sent again to Iolo where they are sold (obviously without any invoices being issued) to low-end retailers based all over the world, from Europe to China, Mexico, Jordan and Lebanon (some manufacturers even claim they produced goods that were sold to wholesalers connected with Zara, Mango and TopShop).
The industrial area on the outskirts of Prato also boasts Euroingro, a 10,000 square metre complex open 7 days a week (and previous HQ of the wool mill Nello Gori) that includes 100 stands selling garments and accessories imported from China at cheap prices to European retailers.
The lecture will look at the consequences of the Chinese expansion in Prato on an ethical and human level (most workers are illegal immigrants; they are not insured but sleep and work in the same spaces or work during the night to avoid police raids; no workers are enrolled in trade unions) and on a financial level (Chinese companies aren’t usually recorded in the Italian Business Register and their profits do not show in the tax records since they are repatriated via money transfers) and will also wonder if it’s possible to turn a largely illegal yet extremely profitable business into a legal "transnational" business.
Special thanks go to the Prato Guardia di Finanza (the Italian Finance/Tax Police) for providing some of the background and research materials (massive thanks to Lance Corporal Giuseppe Randazzo in particular for his time) and allowing me to show some images (like the two photographs accompanying this post) and clips taken during raids in textile factories and sweatshops.
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