Instructor: Su Ku
Course title: Fashion Research and Inspiration
Lesson title: Fashion Industry and Impact on U.S. Labor Laws
I taught FF121 Fashion Research and Inspiration in the fall of 2021. On December 15th, I introduced the concept of fashion industry labor history’s impact on United State’s labor laws and impact of historical precedents on modern business practice of the garment industry. The topic was on the Triangle Fire tragedy in which 146 factory workers mostly comprised of young immigrant women perished in gruesome fire in a sweatshop work setting with bolted fire escape doors. This was a pivotal incident which led to worker’s right labor laws including maximum work hours, increased wages and improved work conditions. This episode was also witnessed by and greatly impacted Frances Perkins who later championed major labor laws and social security systems as the first female Secretary of Labor during the Roosevelt Administration and the key author of the New Deal programs. The lesson was a combination of a keynote slide presentation followed with student discussion on how fashion labor both designing and making of garments, have evolved during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During the thirty minute discussion, students talked about how fashion labor moved from New York City to third world countries and how the fashion industry is still breaking labor laws and workers are mistreated. I emphasized the importance of understanding how designers as laborers who create garment designs and industry leaders who decide on where and how the garments are produced must be aware of all who are part of the product development process. I encouraged the students to be inclusive in embracing all who are part of the garment production process and think of garment makers/factory workers in other countries as extension of the fashion industry they belong to in the United States. I now reflect that this could have been better if I had introduced more specific information on the number and demographic of factory workers in the turn of the early 20th century compared to the number involved today to make comparisons and contrasts of the fashion labor evolution during the last century. I wish I had access to literature and reports regarding domestic and international garment industry labor laws. If I teach this again in the Spring 2022 semester, I will change the introduction of this information in the beginning of the semester so that the importance of the fashion history impacting United States and international labor laws could be established and make labor issues part of each period presentation.
Related Resources
Cornell University. “The Triangle Factory Fire.” Remembering the 1911 Triangle Factory Fire, http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/index.html. Accessed 10 Jan. 2022.
“Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition,” http://rememberthetrianglefire.org/