A Globa

to the C

Factor

People t

Our Cl

Where Am I Wea

A Global Tour to the Countries,Factories, and People that Make

Our Clothes

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Copyright C© 2009 by Kelsey Timmerman. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted inany form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, orotherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States CopyrightAct, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization throughpayment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web atwww.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to thePermissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030,(201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used theirbest efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respectto the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim anyimplied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty maybe created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice andstrategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with aprofessional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any lossof profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental,consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, pleasecontact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outsidethe United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

All photographs in the book are by the author.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appearsin print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wileyproducts, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Timmerman, Kelsey, 1979–Where am I wearing? : a global tour to the countries, factories,and people that make our clothes / Kelsey Timmerman.

p. cm.ISBN 978-0-470-37654-6 (cloth)

1. Clothing trade. 2. Clothing workers. 3. Wages—Clothing workers.4. Consumers—Attitudes. 5. Globalization. I. Title.

HD9940.A2T56 2009338.4′7687—dc22

2008028072

Printed in the United States of America.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To all the people who make the clothes I wear.

And to Annie,

who makes sure all the clothes I wear match.

Contents

Acknowledgments ixPrologue: We Have It Made xiii

Part I The Mission

Chapter 1 A Consumer Goes Global 3

Chapter 2 Tattoo’s Tropical Paradise 13

Chapter 3 Fake Blood, Sweat, and Tears:

Anti-Sweatshop Protestors 17

Part II My Underwear: Made in Bangladesh

Chapter 4 Jingle These 23

Chapter 5 Undercover in the Underwear Biz 33

Chapter 6 Bangladesh Amusement Park 39

Chapter 7 Inside My First Sweatshop 45

Chapter 8 Child Labor in Action 53

Chapter 9 Arifa, the Garment Worker 59

Chapter 10 Hope 69

Chapter 11 No Black and White, Only Green 75

vii

viii CONTENTS

Part III My Pants: Made in Cambodia

Chapter 12 Labor Day 85

Chapter 13 Year Zero 91

Chapter 14 Those Who Wear Levi’s 99

Chapter 15 Those Who Make Levi’s 107

Chapter 16 Progress 133

Chapter 17 Treasure and Trash 143

Part IV My Flip-Flops: Made in China

Chapter 18 PO’ed VP 151

Chapter 19 Margaritaville 161

Chapter 20 Life at the Bottom 163

Chapter 21 Growing Pains 175

Chapter 22 The Real China 187

Chapter 23 On a Budget 197

Chapter 24 An All-American Chinese Wal-Mart 203

Chapter 25 The Chinese Fantasy 211

Part V My Shorts: Made in the USA

Chapter 26 For Richer, for Poorer 219

Chapter 27 Untold Stories 233

Appendix Where Are You Wearing? The Inexact

Science of Finding Out Where Your

Clothes Were Produced 245

Acknowledgments

Following my clothes around the world might seem like a solitaryquest, but from the first glimmer of the idea, through the writing

of this book, I was anything but alone.My Where Am I Wearing? journey pales in comparison to the

11-year one I’ve been on with Annie, to whom this book is dedi-cated. Before Honduras, she was my longtime girlfriend. BetweenHonduras and Bangladesh, she became my fiancee. And after China,she became my wife. Her patience is legendary. Her laugh is every-thing. I still owe her a honeymoon sans garment factories.

I suckered Kyle, my brother, into accompanying me toHonduras. He saved me from a deadly poisonous snake in the jun-gle, but couldn’t save himself from the parasite-carrying mosquitothat bit him. He eventually came down with malaria. After the spinaltap, a few short stints in hospitals in Indiana and France, and a yearof recovery, he’s okay. (Sorry, Kyle.) When he’s healthy, there’s noone I would rather share a dugout canoe with.

You’ll never meet a more practical guy than my dad. At theage of 28, he owned a construction business and had two kids. Sohaving a son that, at 28, goes to Bangladesh because his underwearwas made there isn’t the kind of thing one would think he’d support,

ix

x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

but he did. If I have an ounce of his hard work, determination, andintegrity, I have enough.

Before I set foot out of the United States, it was my momwho taught me there was a much larger world. Every mom andchild I come across on my travels, I look at through her eyes. Herfamily has also been very supportive. Aunt Cathy has always keptme supplied with journals, Uncle Randy has been a loyal member ofthe “Travelin’ Light” readers from day one, and my Grandma andGrandpa Wilt have always encouraged my getting out and seeingthe world.

My cousin Brice bought me the Tattoo T-shirt that started allof this. If anyone is to blame, it’s him.

Captain Ralph Chiaro will never get a chance to read this book,but, without his friendship, my life and this book would have likelysteered in a much different direction. I owe him so much and it tearsat my insides to think that I’ll never get the chance to sit, just thetwo of us, the rolling Atlantic beneath us, and thank him.

If everyone had an English teacher like mine, the world wouldbe a better and much more grammatical place. Kyle and I oncebumped into my English teacher, Dixie Marshall, at a play. Sheintroduced us to her sister as such: “This is Kyle Timmerman, oneof my best students ever,” and turning to me, “. . . this is his brotherKelsey.” Even so, she never gave up on me and continued to teachme about gerunds and split infinitives a decade after I last sat in herclass. She poured over the manuscript countless times with her redpen.

The good folks at Bootsnall.com jumped behind my idea earlyon and hosted my blog, www.whereamiwearing.com. Without theirsupport, many of the cool people who stumbled onto my blog likelywould have never found it. The readers of my blog have been great,and I owe them all a round of drinks. No matter where I was, I wasnever alone.

Without my cheerleader/agent, Caren Johnson Estesen, theguidance of Richard Narramore and his assistant Tiffany Groglio,and the countless others at John Wiley & Sons, this story wouldhave never made it beyond my family and friends. And instead of

Acknowledgments xi

being Uncle Kelsey who circled the globe to write a book, I wouldbe strange Uncle Kelsey who leaves for months at a time doing Godknows what.

I wouldn’t have been able to bridge the divide between pro-ducer and consumer if it weren’t for the hard work and patience of mytranslators: Eduardo in Honduras; Dalton and Ruma in Bangladesh;Chuuon and Phalline in Cambodia; Angel, Pink, Luther, and Huangin China.

Most of all I’m indebted to Amilcar, Arifa, Nari, Ai, Dewan,and Zhu Chun, who let me into their lives and put up with myquestions. This book is as much theirs as it is mine.

Prologue

We Have It Made

Iwas made in America. My Jingle These Christmas boxers were madein Bangladesh.

I had an all-American childhood in rural Ohio. My all-American blue jeans were made in Cambodia.

I wore flip-flops every day for a year when I worked as a SCUBAdiving instructor in Key West. They were made in China.

One day while staring at a pile of clothes on the floor, I noticedthe tag of my favorite T-shirt: “Made in Honduras.”

I read the tag. My mind wandered. A quest was born.Where am I wearing? It seems like a simple question with a

simple answer. It’s not.The question inspired the quest that took me around the globe.

It cost me a lot of things, not the least of which was my consumerinnocence. Before the quest, I could put on a piece of clothingwithout reading its tag and thinking about Arifa in Bangladesh orDewan in China, about their children, their hopes and dreams, andthe challenges they face.

xiii

xiv PROLOGUE

Where am I wearing? This isn’t so much a question related togeography and clothes, but about the people who make our clothesand the texture of their lives. This quest is about the way we live andthe way they live; because when it comes to clothing, others make it,and we have it made. And there’s a big, big difference.

PART

IThe Mission