Sociologist Madison Van Oort offers a firsthand account of retail worker surveillance and resistance in the fast fashion industry.
By: The Editors
At first glance, fast fashion — a booming sector of the retail industry known for selling colossal amounts of cheap, trendy clothing — might seem mundane, apolitical, or even a distraction from more pressing social issues. But beneath its success, and beyond its well-documented environmental impacts, there is a grimmer story to be told, says sociologist Madison Van Oort.
In researching her book “Worn Out,” Van Oort observed firsthand how data and modern surveillance shape the lives of retail workers — and how these workers are fighting back. In 2014, she took a break from teaching to work undercover in two of the world’s largest fast fashion stores in New York City. During that time, she attended industry trade shows, where she observed tech companies peddling their latest retail management and surveillance products — fortifying an already close partnership with law enforcement — and interviewed dozens of front line employees, retail labor organizers, and activists.
The result is one of the first ethnographies of this thriving industry, one that bridges exposés of garment manufacturing and the environmental impacts of mounting clothing waste and pulls open the curtain between production and consumption. We asked Van Oort about her findings and what fast-fashion retail can teach us about the future of work.
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