As the fashion industry faces increasing pressure to align with environmental, social, and ethical imperatives, it has begun to unravel the hyperreal and soft-power systems that have long sustained it. However, this pursuit often underestimates the deep intersectionality of the issues at hand. With growing demands for transparency and authenticity, one must question what will remain of these ideological shopfronts once the curtain is drawn.

Today’s fashion system, through strategic use of soft power—subtle influence shaping public perception without direct coercion—has mastered the creation of a hyperreal world, particularly through social media. Hyperreality, as described by Jean Baudrillard, a French sociologist and philosopher known for his work in cultural studies, refers to a constructed reality that feels “more real than reality itself”—a simulation that replaces the authentic. In fashion, this manifests in idealised campaign images and aspirational lifestyles that blur the lines between what is real and what is fabricated. Think Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where shadows are mistaken for reality. Similarly, we consume not just fashion items but the elusive surplus they represent—the myth, the statutory trophy, desire itself before we even get a chance to interact with the physical product IRL. As the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek observes, the commodity’s appeal lies not just in its material quality but in the promise of invisible transcendence.

If at a given moment, the commodity was its own publicity, today publicity has become its own commodity.

(Baudrillard, Simulacra & Simulation, 1981)

This hyperreality often intensifies when the original visionary behind a brand is no longer at the helm, as brands rely on nostalgic reiterations of their archives to feign continuity. These reissues, often minimally tweaked and marketed as novel, underscore a fashion system increasingly oriented toward the past, where design and designers alike play second fiddle to brand mythology. This nostalgic gaze may well reflect a lack of long-term vision, elevating brands to mythic status to compensate for a diluted appeal. Today, many labels primarily offer branded merchandise and hyperreal infomercials that cater to aspirational consumers but lack substantial real-world relevance. The fashion industry, long thriving on non-transparency and arbitrary value creation, may find itself forced to mutate if it is to outlive the mounting concerns over its conspicuous waste* attitude (Veblen, American economist and sociologist, Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899). Can the industry’s hyperreal narratives coexist with rising demands for transparency? Or is this a self-defeating oxymoron, signalling an inevitable collapse?

Much like Shelley’s Frankenstein, the mythological dialectic that gave birth to brands as we know them might, in contemporary light, contribute to their demise.

The seamless thread of exploitation

Recent revelations starkly highlight the dissonance between the hyperreal narratives of fashion brands and the operational realities that underpin them. In Italy, authorities recently uncovered workshops where underpaid, often undocumented migrant workers assembled leather goods for luxury giants such as Armani and Dior. This is not an isolated incident; since 2016, similar labour abuses have been reported in connection with other luxury brands, including Gucci, Prada, Balenciaga, Chanel, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton. These cases expose a troubling pattern within an industry often celebrated for its high standards and ethical practices. The findings echo the criminal charges against VK Garment Factory in Thailand in 2020, where Burmese workers endured appalling conditions to produce jeans for UK supermarket chain Tesco's F&F brand. Such incidents suggest that exploitative labour practices and the relentless production pace, traditionally associated with fast fashion, are quietly seeping into—or perhaps have long existed within—the luxury sector.

As production costs rose and prices were driven down over the last five years, factories are pushed to the brink—sometimes losing money on expedited shipping. To cope with the mounting pressure to maintain profit margins, meet ever-tightening deadlines and fulfil demanding brand orders, official partner factories are often compelled to rely on a network of subcontractors. This unvetted reliance has made it increasingly difficult for both consumers and brands to monitor where and how products are made.

Adding to these challenges is the brutal competition faced by factories, which are often forced to operate under extreme conditions in a desperate bid to retain clients. Brands frequently switch factories at the drop of a hat, making it nearly impossible for factories to plan long-term or invest in necessary improvements. The situation is further exacerbated by a compromised system of social auditing. Initially designed to ensure compliance with labour standards, the auditing system has deteriorated since the early 2000s, when financial responsibility shifted from brands to factories. This shift has created a clear conflict of interest, allowing exploitative practices to persist unchecked, despite brands' evident capacity for more rigorous oversight.

Precarity is not merely a byproduct of globalisation; it is a deliberate strategy. As Isabell Lorey argues in Government of the Precarious, precarity has become the norm—a mechanism wielded to govern and control populations. The outsourcing of clothing production, initiated in the late 1960s, gained significant momentum in the late 1990s, coinciding with rising unionisation among textile workers in developed countries. This exportation of exploitation, steeped in colonial legacies, raises profound ethical concerns about the globalised fashion industry. Tragically, worker insecurity has become an intrinsic feature of this system. The erosion of collective security structures, driven by neoliberal policies, has normalised precarious employment, as evidenced by the rise of the gig economy and alarmingly lower salaries across job boards.

Recent debacles, such as the 2020 manufacturing crises in Leicester and Los Angeles, illustrate that exploitation transcends geographical boundaries. In Leicester, garment factories were exposed for paying workers as little as £3.50 an hour, far below the UK’s minimum wage, while subjecting them to unsafe conditions. Likewise, in Los Angeles, factories producing for well-known brands were found to be paying workers just $5 an hour, flagrantly violating labour laws. These cases underscore the unsettling reality that such exploitative practices are not confined to distant supply chains but are embedded within the very fabric of Western production.

What was once an export of exploitation to the Global South is now being reimported as production increasingly returns to the West, signalling a disturbing reversal where the West is no longer shielded from the precarity it once outsourced.

Final thoughts

While brands have made commitments to address these issues, the effectiveness and speed of their actions remain under close scrutiny. For real change to occur, brands must commit to genuine, long-term actual partnerships that enable factories to operate ethically and sustainably, rather than perpetuating a cycle of desperation and uncertainty.

Addressing the cyclical nature of exploitation in a globalised economy demands more than superficial regulation. We must transition from a solely profit-driven model to one that prioritises human dignity and rights, recognising workers as the true backbone of the industry—especially when brands capitalise zealously on the image of craftsmanship. Marx's observation that “ the brand image exists to repress the human trace ” is particularly poignant in the context of hyperreal fashion. By focusing on the maker's mark rather than the makers themselves, we perpetuate a system that distances us from the human connections woven in every garment. If we only dared to see these goods as the product of human labour, wouldn't we begin to understand the profound relationships we share with one another?

The worker’s own social relation to his labor is hidden, because, under capitalism, the worker is not seen in terms of their relationship to the product of their labor but rather in terms of the commodity itself. The fetishism of commodities is thus a characteristic feature of the commodity form, which misrepresents the reality of labor as if it were a property of the commodity itself. This objectification of the commodity, where the human trace is repressed, shows how the commodity is separated from its maker through its representation as a product of value rather than a product of labor.

(Karl Marx, Capital Volume I: Critique of Political Economy, 1867)

This shift would not only challenge established brand narratives but also redefine the consumer's role in shaping these systems. As the late French designer Paul Poiret aptly remarked, "As they have no understanding of the value of objects, they go by the labels only." This underscores the need for consumers to become more educated about the true value and origins of the clothes they purchase, which brands could facilitate. In the age of digital consciousness, where brands utilise social listening to craft their hyperreal stories, transformation requires more than transparency alone. We must actively engage with these narratives, critically evaluating their authenticity and resisting mere virtue signalling to drive meaningful change.

Notes

Conspicuous Waste is a concept introduced by the American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen in his seminal work The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). It refers to the deliberate and ostentatious consumption of goods and resources, not for their utility, but to display wealth, status, and social prestige. This behaviour is characterised by the excess and extravagance that serve to signal one's social position and to differentiate oneself from others.