Episode 238: Five Years of Clotheshorse

I get depressed in the summer.  I have since I was a kid. Please tell me that I am not the only person who hated summer break.  I missed school.  I hated being stuck at home, doing housework, being sweaty and lonely. While it was only about three months long, it felt more like three years.  July felt like it would never end, and maybe for that reason, it remains my least favorite month.

As an adult, with no summer break, I still had this weird feeling about summer. Like on one hand, warm weather, swimming, picnics, riding my bike without a brutal arctic headwind.  But also: where was I really swimming and picnicking? And instead I was sweating my butt off on those bike rides.  I felt greasy, smelly, and just ewwwww.

Summer got extra hard in my 20s when my partner Ryan died.  Now there is this roughly six week long period each summer where I feel like I have to put an extra amount of effort into being an okay, functioning adult.  It starts on June 26, Ryan’s birthday. It carries through past the day he died (July 21) to my birthday on August 10.  My birthday has also been usually a pretty terrible time.  My mom kinda resented and hated our birthdays as kids (thank god for therapy, seriously).  She went as far as scheduling a tonsillectomy on my 8th birthday, commemorating my birthday a week later with a Dairy Queen ice cream cake.  And yes, I have to confess…I still love a Dairy Queen ice cream cake.  Maybe I’ll get one this year.

I am telling you all of this–not because I’m looking to depress you or get you hyped about Dairy Queen. But rather, to kinda give you an impression of where I was mentally FIVE YEARS AGO this week, when I was finishing and then releasing the very first episode of Clotheshorse.

It was July. I would have already been depressed and anxious, working overtime to be cheery for my kid and husband.  But July of 2020…I don’t need to tell you that all of my summer despair and anxiety was turned up exponentially.  We were living in Philadelphia. Tear gas occasionally trickled through our window as the police tried their hardest to harm good people taking a stand against racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd. The trash was being picked up sporadically because many of the city’s sanitation workers were sick with Covid.  Everything stank and huge rats and insects were hanging out on the sidewalk outside my house, daring me to chase them away. Once a day I took a walk with my friend Gilly, and we always got quiet when we passed the refrigerated trailer serving as a mobile morgue outside the hospital.  

And I had no job.  This was a scary place to be for my family, because I was (and have often been) the primary breadwinner.  Despite being out of work since the end of March, by July, I still had not received even a single unemployment payment because the system was kinda collapsing in Pennsylvania, and just about every other state in the US.   My cat Moe was dying.  Dylan was melting down every day.  Dustin was cheerfully trying to sustain us with tedious contract work designing pharmaceutical packaging.

Every morning I woke up wondering…would I get covid and die soon? How were we going to be able to afford groceries next month? Were we going to get evicted? Would Moe make it through another day? 

I tried to stay occupied by making tortillas. Playing the Sims. Cleaning the house over and over again. But it was getting harder each day to take a shower, get dressed, and do something other than worry.

And I felt so alone. Yes, I was jammed in a tiny, dark, and very stuffy rowhouse with my husband, my kid, and a handful of cats…but fuck, I just felt so alone and desperate and hopeless.

And then I started a podcast.  I’m not sure what I thought would happen with Clotheshorse. But I felt frustrated that people seemed to worship fashion, when what happened behind the scenes wasn’t cute at all.  

In mid March, when I still had a job, we were told to cancel everything we had on order, whether it was actively being sewn right then or already at the port here in the United States, ready to head for the warehouse.  Vendors and sales reps cried as I spoke with them. They lost their jobs and businesses. I knew the effects of these cancellations would ripple all the way to the bottom of this supply chain…factory workers would not be paid and might even lose their jobs. It was sickening.  It felt so WRONG to me because this company had the money to pay for these orders, but refused to do so.

When I was furloughed a few weeks later, I felt a complex set of emotions.  On one hand, we were about to experience a lot of financial trouble. On the other hand, I didn’t have to go to this horrible place again. I didn’t have to be complicit in general shittiness any more. I could live with myself. And I knew I would never go back to that office to work again.  By July, when I was “invited” back to the creepily silent office, full of dead desk plants, neglected over months of remote work…there to clean out my desk while a loss prevention employee watched me do it, I felt simultaneously relieved and angry. My career was over but now I was free. I had hated that job, the way the company and many of its leaders operated with just such casual cruelty every single day.

I wanted people to know what I–and so many other rad people I had worked with over my career—knew about the industry and just how fucked up, unethical, and very un-cute it was.

I didn’t even know anything about making a podcast.  I had to do a lot of googling to figure out how podcast hosting worked. I sold a bunch of clothes on Poshmark to make enough money to cover a year of hosting fees for the show. Dustin showed me how to edit.  He loaned me his best microphone.  He made me re-record things that sounded bad, sometimes 2,3,4 times…but I’m glad he pushed me to do things right. And I was–and am–so lucky to have met so many incredible people throughout my career who were excited to spend some time talking with me for the show, sharing their experiences with all of you.

All of this happened at the desk I had pushed into our bedroom, about two feet from the foot of our bed.  I spent hours sweating with closed windows and no fan/air conditioner, recording these epic conversations.  Moe sat on my lap as I edited the first series of episodes, occasionally ramming his bony little head into my arm to remind me he was there.

That was five years ago.  And I’m still doing it, through so many changes in my life. 

About six episodes into Clotheshorse, Moe died. It was traumatic and so painful, and I still cry about it sometimes.  We moved out of the city to Bird in Hand, Lancaster County (aka Amish country). There Hutch and Janet joined the family.  Later we moved to Austin.  Two years later, we moved back to Lancaster County.  So yeah, multiple cross country moves, and a little bit of a career change. Now I make my actual living as a consultant for a variety of small brands and businesses making all kinds of things, from clothes to accessories to food…all trying to do things in a better way. I help them with product planning, financial stuff, data analysis, even marketing. I take all of the skills that I learned working in fast fashion (like strategy and finance) and help them make better decisions. 

And along the way, my life and my heart kinda grew and grew. I met so many people who never would have crossed my path without Clotheshorse.  And these people became real actual friends. I very publicly announced that I am non-binary and I have bipolar disorder–two things that gnawed away at me because I felt that everyone would judge me.  I learned that my voice mattered, that after a lifetime of being told that I should be quiet and act dumb…that it was okay to be smart and loud. For the first time, I felt as if I had purpose beyond work.

Yes, there were very difficult times.  The internet is a cruel place, and over the years I have received DMs, comments, and emails containing every variety of vocabulary one can use to make another person feel terrible.  That stuff sucks (and yes, it does hurt), but it is far overshadowed by the good things.  I met a bunch of you at the Clotheshorse Jamboree last year.  I traveled to Tempe, AZ to speak at Eco Fashion Week. I gave a presentation in front of an audience in Berlin.  I’ve hosted library talks around the United States and a few workshops on my own.  I’ve lobbied at the New York State Capitol.  I went to the UN in May.  Not too shabby for a childhood cancer survivor who grew up poor in rural Pennsylvania. 

But I also learned so much alongside all of you over the years. From the details of EPR to the reality of the global secondhand clothing trade to how polyester is made.  For a person who LOVES learning, this is a tremendous gift.

So yeah, my life changed a lot over five years.  But what about the world as a whole?

Hahaha well…it was a mixture of good and bad things, right? In the world of “things Clotheshorse covered in the beginning:”

• Episode 2 of the podcast discussed the #PayUp movement, essentially the campaign to get companies to pay for all of those orders that they cancelled at the beginning of the pandemic.  And a lot of brands DID in fact pay up after being pressured to do so.  Of course, my previous employer, URBN, did not. But that’s one more reason why I really would prefer if none of you ever gave that company any of your money.
• Episode 4 of Clotheshorse explored the reality of clothing production in the United States, including the unethical working conditions for many garment workers in LA.  On January 1, 2022 , The California Garment Worker Protection Act went into effect in California, making “piece rate” pay structures illegal (getting paid by the piece sewed, rather than the time worked). Garment workers now must be paid at least the minimum wage. Brands and factories are now both jointly liable for ensuring that workers are paid correctly.
• Also on the legislative front, The Responsible Textile Recovery Act was passed in California in 2024, mandating that textile and apparel producers establish a system for collecting, repairing, and recycling their products…aka Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
• And of course, I’ve been working with a coalition of activists and lobbyists for a couple of years now to pass the Fashion Act in California and New York…and I really think that’s going to happen next year.
• On the other hand, SHEIN kinda blew up in 2020, thanks to all of those retailers cancelling their orders.  And while the end of the de minimis loophole here in the United States (and Trump’s super stupid tariffs) have been a major blow to the brand, it is now shifting its focus to growing in Asia and Latin America.  So I’m sure we’ll be talking about SHEIN for years to come.  And oh yeah, Temu like barely existed in 2020…and now they have Super Bowl commercials.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of world changes over the past five years. And when I was thinking about what I wanted to do to commemorate five years of Clotheshorse–because this is a really big deal to me–I just couldn’t decide.  A clip show of “greatest moments” would be an epic amount of work…and no one really likes a clip show. A summary of the last five years would really turn into a ten hour miniseries.  And then I realized that I just wanted to go back to the beginning…because when people ask me where they should start Clotheshorse, I always say “episode 1, listen to at least the first four episodes because it will help you understand why and how everything else has happened.”

And I stand by that.  I’m so grateful that Janine spent hours talking with me for the first two episodes…followed by a few more episodes, because she believed so strongly in what I was doing. Sure I had no experience as a podcaster, and there was no telling if anyone would ever listen, but Janine and all of my early guests really wanted all of you to know how the industry really works. 

So if you’ve never listened to the first episode of Clotheshorse, I want you to listen to it today.  And maybe go check out the next few while you’re at it.

This episode explains the cost of the things we buy, including the obvious elements (like fabric and sewing) and the sneakier things (like freight and duties).  And most of this remains the same in 2025.  The major thing that has changed (at least for American companies and customers) is…tariffs.  Now tariffs and duties aren’t exactly synonyms…”tariff” refers to a specific import tax, while duties are more broadly all of the import taxes. 

Now, I have received a lot of emails and DMs this year requesting an episode about tariffs…and I haven’t created one because it will be antiquated and out-of-date as fast as it is released because the tariff policy here in the US has been a moving target all year.  And frankly, I have spent so much time and emotional energy this year helping my clients navigate these constant changes, that I kinda just don’t want to talk about it any more. But I have also seen a lot of conversation about these tariffs “fixing” fast fashion and I don’t think that’s true either.  So here’s a little bit about tariffs. Ready?

I do not think that Trump’s tariffs will “fix” fast fashion. In fact, I think that if the tariffs continue we will see three very bad things happen:

1. The human exploitation currently involved in manufacturing cheap, profitable products (like fast fashion) will only get worse.
2. The quality of everything we buy (which is already pretty terrible) will continue to get worse.
3. Small businesses who do their best to do things ethically (whether it is overseas or here in the United States), will struggle to stay afloat, paving the way for low quality fast fashion as our only option.

That’s depressing, right?

To understand why I don’t think fast fashion will be “fixed” by these tariffs, you have to know three important facts:

1. Humans make your clothes, not robots. All clothes are made by human hands, even if they are using sewing machines and other equipment to make it happen. So when we talk about clothing, we are talking about an industry that has major human impact.
2. Manufacturing overseas does not always equal unethical. And there are great brands in the slow fashion world that do use factories where the workers are paid a living wage and work in safe, good conditions. However, many, many large brands and companies ARE using factories where workers are paid very little and work in unsafe conditions.
3. Brands don’t really “own” their factories.  They contract with factories to do their manufacturing.  And so that means, that yes, the same factory might be making stuff for SHEIN one week, Kohl’s the next week, and Free People the following week.

Everything we buy brand new–no matter where we live–is the result of a product development process. Designs are created, samples are made, and the design is changed and revised until it can hit the predetermined cost for manufacturing that item. The predetermined cost is dictated by that company’s profitability plan and buyers are given targets they must hit in terms of costing and profit margin. So design, buying, and production work hard to hit those targets.  Materials are changed. Details are removed.  And the factory is pressed for lower and lower pricing.  If the factory says no, then the company will take that order elsewhere…and maybe never come back. So the factories usually accommodate these requests for lower and lower prices…at the expense of the factory workers, who will be paid less and worked faster to hit those targets.  Or maybe the factory will outsource to another factory that doesn’t mind paying its workers even less.  Regardless, factories (and the people making the stuff we buy) have little power to say no.

By now I hope you know that tariffs are not paid by the country where a product was made. Rather they are paid by the company importing the product into the country.  Let’s just say Target placed a huge order of t-shirts that will be made in China. In addition to paying for the production of those shirts, along with the fabric, printing, etc, Target is going to pay the cost to ship it across the ocean to the United States AND it’s going to pay the duties (aka tariffs) to import that shipment of t-shirts in the United States.  

And to be clear–companies were ALREADY paying duties to import stuff into the US.

As tariffs increase, Target has a few options for making the math math.

• take a hit in profitability due to the tariffs (very unlikely when shareholders are involved), 
• increase prices for customers (possible, but then again, we are addicted to cheap clothes)
• Decrease the cost of making those t-shirts in other ways:
  • Use lower quality fabric
  • Maybe make each tee just a little shorter and narrower to cut fabric costs
  • Squeeze the factory on pricing, asking them to accommodate the higher cost of tariffs. Which means workers are going to suffer more

I want to be clear that all of my friends who working in buying and production for big companies are actively right now at this moment doing all of these things all at once.  Not because they are bad people, but because they need to keep their jobs.

If factories say no to this reduced pricing, companies will move to other factories that will say yes. Or to other countries with a lower minimum wage or less regulation of working conditions. Some governments will be willing to look the other way on workers rights and wage theft just to have that manufacturing money flowing into their countries.

Okay, well couldn’t companies just move production to the United States and then everything will be great?

Not so fast.  Fast fashion is never bringing clothing production back to the US in a significant way.  For a while, companies like Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Fashion Nova were doing some production in LA…until they were busted for wage theft and other ethical/legal issues around pay and working conditions.  When you want to sell things with an 80% markup (and not charge $100 for a t-shirt), domestic manufacturing is not an option. For clothing manufacturing to return to the US, brands need to get comfortable with a lower profit margin 

AND customers have to get comfortable with paying higher prices.  And to be clear: I know the cost of making clothing in the US because all of my clients manufacture here.

Which brings me to my last point: take a look at the clothes you’re wearing.  Make a list of the “ingredients.” Fabric, zipper, buttons, grommets, thread, brand label, screen printing ink…None of those things are made here in the United States which means no matter what, even if clothing is made here as ethically and responsibly as possible, we still rely on other countries to produce the components.  So those tariffs still have a major impact on clothing cost.  And once again, I’m worried that those cost increases will destroy small businesses who are working hard to create ethical, high quality, size inclusive clothing.  

So yeah, I don’t believe that tariffs will fix fast fashion. I DO want to believe that Americans will stop buying so much from SHEIN and Temu if they have to pay duties for it (or these companies have to raise prices to absorb the duties)…but if everyone out there is raising their prices due to the tariffs, then maybe SHEIN and Temu remain the most affordable options with their unrealistically low prices…and then they continue to thrive.  

I’m writing and recording this intro on July 4th, 2025.  

And wow, it is hard to feel okay today.  

My social media feed is filled with panic, doom, resignation, and lots of claims that we are “cooked.”

Right now I’m working on a series of episodes about our relationships with brands…they will be the next episodes to come your way this month.  And I’m reading SO MANY books as part of my research: books about marketing, iconic brands, and CULTS.  And one term I have been reading a lot about (and thinking even more about) is “thought -terminating cliche.”

So what is a thought-terminating cliche? It is a phrase used to shut down critical thinking, debate, or further discussion by offering a simplistic, often trite, response to a complex issue.

Basically designed–sometimes intentionally, sometimes not intentionally–to end a conversation.

Things like: 

“Things happen for a reason”

“It is what it is”

“Trust the process.”

“Both parties are the same.”

“There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.”

“We’re cooked.”

Basically: here’s a complex upsetting thing…and I just don’t want to talk about it.

The problem with these thought terminating cliches is that…they are effective at ending the conversation.  Of getting us to move on to another subject. Of preventing any real positive change from happening…because real change begins with difficult conversations and questions, along with ugly truths.

I don’t think we are doomed or “cooked.”

ll be honest with you all: my mental health has been hanging on by a thread all year.  Nonstop anxiety and fear about what is going to happen next, along with my own personal difficult shit.  There are days where I am just like HOW AM I EXPECTED TO GET UP AND FUNCTION TODAY?

Progress will never be linear.  Four steps forward are often followed by one step back.  There will be good times. There will be bad times. And neither will last forever. And guess what? We have made positive steps forward on all kinds of terrible things in the past five years, even for all of the horrible stuff that is happening.

If you know me IRL or have been following me for a long time, you know I’ve been through some very difficult times.  And what I have learned along the way is that the only way out of darkness is through it. 

The good news about the darkness we are collectively experiencing right now? We don’t have to get through it alone.  We have one another.  We can share a flashlight and take turns guiding and reassuring one another.   We can get through it together.

I am not a spiritual person, but I found hope, faith, and meaning in the people around me. In our ability to build, create, and innovate. In the unmatchable power we have when we all work together toward a common purpose.

I believe that truly terrible people are a very small minority, far outnumbered by people who just want everyone to be safe, healthy, and happy.

I believe that the good people ultimately win.

I believe that we can build the world we want, but only if we do it together.

I believe in us.

I don’t think I could have said that five years ago, when I felt so alone and sick with worry. Doing this work has opened me up to hope, joy, and faith. Thanks for letting me be Clotheshorse for the last five years. You have changed my life and I am so grateful for that.