Fashion Report – The Dirt Beneath the Glamour (Part 2)

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The world looks to Italy for the prestige of its luxury fabrics and the renowned skill of its artisans. Sabrina Giannini’s investigation gave her severe concern that the luxury fashion market is losing sight of the value of this aspect of their Italian heritage. She began by visiting a workshop in Naples, contracted to produce bags for a certain major Italian label. She was shocked to find working conditions that she considered third world, workers being paid below minimum wages in cash with no taxes or benefits. Bags that retailed for 440 euros were being produced for a total of 38 euros. The workshop owner told her that it was impossible to produce bags economically if he stuck by all the regulations of employment law.

Posing as a potential customer, Giannini extended her investigation to Tuscany, home of the traditional leather working sector. She found there a number of Chinese-owned workshops employed as sub contractors, assembling goods for luxury fashion labels. A pattern she discovered was that they would typically have a few legal workers, furnished with papers, and then any number of illegal Chinese immigrants working 10 -12 hour days, living and eating in the factory space, never seeing any daylight, as all windows were covered to prevent lights showing at night when a lot of the work was carried out. They lived in cubby holes, sometimes hidden behind false walls to avoid detection, when raided by the authorities. Here she discovered that a canvas bag of a top label was being put together in about 1 ½ hours for the cost of 20 euros in labour and then retailing at 770 euros.

One factory was engaged in sewing Made in Italy labels into cheap cotton shirts that had been made in China, another in finishing off bags that were mostly made in China and then putting in a Made in Italy label. EU regulations only require a product to be 30% made in Italy for it to bear that label and these workshops are engaged in doing that 30% as cheaply as possible for top Italian fashion houses.

Most of the big fashion houses do have systems in place to check on the contractors and sub-contractors, who produce their goods, but either there is something wrong with their system, that Giannini’s report was able to discover so many workshops of this type producing luxury goods for those labels, or blind eyes are being turned because profit has become the bottom line, rather than the quality they are supposed to be embracing.

When Rai3 challenged the fashion houses involved with their discoveries, a few of them thanked them for the information and immediately took their contract away from the sweat shop style producers. But at least one refused to comment.

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