Fashion As A Source Of Development

At 17 I was hired as a sales assistant at Seattle’s flagship Nordstrom department store. In the idle moments on the shop floor I would often daydream, wondering whose hands had touched this sweater last, who was it that carefully stitched this button or wove this ‘hand-made’ shawl? Was he or she young? Old? Happy going about their daily work, or forced to work in unsavoury conditions?  In the vastness of Seattle’s largest department store I began to realise that there were countless chains of untold stories behind every fashion piece on our shelves, and I became troubled that I understood so little of how they had arrived there.

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