Episode 254: How (and why) I worked in fast fashion, part 2

I am a people pleaser. 

And yes, my seemingly uncontrollable desire to ensure everyone is happy, satisfied, and content is often damaging to my mental and physical health. It actually took becoming a “content creator” and dealing with the (un)happiness of many strangers around the world to force me to start unpacking that tendency within myself. 

I can look back now and see that this need to make everything “okay” for everyone started when I was a child.  My home life was chaotic.  Adults were a source of unpredictable rage and punishment.  I figured out pretty fast that it was my job to anticipate anger before it happened and do everything I could to prevent it. Should I fail in this mission, it was also my responsibility to absorb the rage and its consequences, hopefully learning to do better in the future.

And really, this kind of behavior is learned in situations with uneven power dynamics.  Parent-child is the first experience we have in power dynamics. If you have a bad parent, you feel like property, powerless in every way.  You make no decisions of your own, except for when you decide to do your best to survive by taking on the responsibilities of the people pleaser.

My home life made me feel sick. It was a stomachache and headache that was always there.  I never knew what each day would bring.  Would I be hit? Stand in a corner for hours on end? Maybe just screamed at for a while about what a bad kid I was. Or perhaps I would just get to watch my brother be punished instead.  I tiptoed around  the house, doing extra chores, trying my hardest to be the perfect daughter, student, and household help.  If I did my best, in theory, no one would be punished.  No one would scream that day.

The odds were stacked against me of course.  My birth was an accident.  My existence,  a source of constant frustration for my mother.  To make matters worse, I had the audacity to be diagnosed with cancer, and then…ruin my parents’ marriage by being sick.  I would be making that up to my mom for decades.

When you grow up like that, people pleasing is an easy habit to repeat over and over again as an adult.  In my 20s, I had two relationships that mimicked that endless anxiety of childhood, of never knowing what you were walking into when you came home.  I never felt calm, content, or even loved. Just kinda…nervous.  The power dynamics were a fucked up.  I was afraid of something, even if I couldn’t always name what it was.  Fortunately I haven’t been in a romantic relationship like that in a long time.

But where I did get to experience those fucked up power dynamics over and over again was…at work.  Not every job.  Like I said in the previous episode, Modcloth was delightful.  But other places, the fear was constant.  An executive at UO threw a rolling rack full of hangers and scarves at me in a meeting (WHILE I WAS LITERALLY PRESENTING THE NEXT SEASON’S BUY), scratching up my face and creating a new outcome to worry about at every future job. But generally, I just feared losing my job or being humiliated. Both were always possibilities.  Without a job I would…well, I don’t know what I would do.  But the repercussions would affect my entire family.  And humiliation…well, who actually doesn’t mind that?

In fact, in the offices of many of my employers, that culture of fear impacted everyone, ratcheting up an already toxic culture, forcing people to betray their peers regularly.  

At the “feminist” brand, my people pleasing and anxiety levels were off the charts.  The migraines and stomach problems never stopped. I was exhausted, but I could not sleep. I had eczema all over my hands and arms.  My doctor gently suggested that I consider looking for another job.  The CEO was unpredictable and punishing, I felt like a ten year old trying to make my mother happy (or at least less angry) every single day I was in the office. 

I worked for that company from 2016-2018, an already shitty, scary time.  But also, the way people organized, shared information, and raised awareness was changing in a good way.  Rather than merely using social media to share pics of vacations and acai bowls, more and more of us were finding education and community.  And it meant that conversations were growing about topics that had once been limited to smaller groups.  

One thing that people were discussing more and more? Who made our clothes and how those workers were treated.  Yes, Rana Plaza had collapsed in 2013, killing 1134 workers (mostly women)…but few people outside of the fashion industry (or the activists working to change it) knew about it.  Social media made it easier to share information like that, to reach more people and get them involved.

Because the “feminist” brand’s customer base was very plugged into human rights…and because fashion IS  a feminist issue…our customer service person was starting to receive emails asking about who was making the clothing we sold and what were the working conditions in our factories.  These emails were forwarded to me because I was the Director of Merchandising (meaning: I was in charge of all things product related for the company, basically the head of buying).  

I nervously asked my boss (the CEO) what I should tell people.  Because I didn’t know much.  Our t-shirts were printed across town,  but the blanks came from a wholesaler…and who knows where they were made.  Our clothing was made through a vendor who worked with a lot of fast fashion brands. All of that stuff came from China.  But I was never in touch with the factories.  There were at least 2-3 layers of people separating me from the actual manufacturing.  The CEO was like “well figure out something good to tell people.” Her overall stance was that the customers asking these questions were just being annoying, but ignoring them could turn into a PR issue.

My name is Amanda Lee McCarty and I’m a scaredy cat.  I literally cannot think of one moment in my life when I wasn’t drowning in anxiety. I would not characterize myself as a brave person. I’m getting there…I do things that scare me every day (like write and record episodes like this)  but it’s a process. 

And a few weeks ago when an instagram user  rightfully called me out in part two of the social media version of this series for not talking about garment workers enough,, I was reminded of what a cowardly dumb baby I have been for most of my adult life.  And yeah, I laid in bed that night feeling like a bad person.  But also…the reality is that I didn’t really start thinking about what might be REALLY happening behind the curtain in the fashion industry until around 2016.  And furthermore, for all of the things I have told you about my life in this series and other episodes of the podcast over the years, there are hundreds of things that happened in my personal life that kept me so busy, worried, and exhausted that I really just not have the time or mental energy to even think too deeply about the greater impact of my job. I know I am not alone in feeling that way.

Now I’m here to tell you that garment workers were just not something we discussed in any of the buying departments in my career.  Yeah, that’s fucking sad.  And I guess the fact that I wasn’t thinking about it that often means that I’m a person who was so focused on my own survival that I couldn’t think about the big picture.  And that’s bad, too.  Obviously I want to be better than that. The thing about being a people pleaser is…you’re often focused on pleasing the wrong people.  The worst people.

There were some things I knew.  Like, I remembered that Kathy Lee Gifford had a clothing line with Walmart in the 90s.  And at some point, an investigation revealed that underage and underpaid workers in Honduras and NYC were making those clothes.  Nike had been busted numerous times for using child labor and exploiting workers around the world.  I had a coworker in the 00s who was a former Nike employee (and had traveled to Asia to see some of the factories where Nike was manufacturing in the late 90s).  And she literally said to me–I remember so clearly decades later–”Those kids WANT jobs. They LIKE having jobs. They were so excited to see us there.”  What? I mean, I suppose if a child has to choose between starving and working in a Nike factory…they are going to choose the Nike factory.  That particular coworker was hyper Christian, had kids of her own, and still somehow felt it was okay for children half a world away to be working in a factory. 

By the 2000s, most companies were adding clauses to their vendor agreements forbidding child labor.  But no one was actually checking.  And the thing is…no one REALLY knew what was going on in these factories that were 10,000 miles away.  One thing I learned pretty early on in my career was that very few brands actually own their factories.  They work through agents who work with the factories…and production might be subcontracted out multiple times along the way.  Very few brands ACTUALLY know even the factory that is making stuff for them, much less who is making it or what the working conditions are like.  In fact, what made American Apparel very unique in the 2000s was NOT that the company’s product was manufactured in the US. Even today, clothes ARE made in downtown LA and other parts of the US. What made it unique was that the company was vertical–meaning it owned the factory. And even more importantly, the factory was onsite.  So there was complete transparency into manufacturing (at least for those within the company).  This meant that buyers, designers, and production staff could literally (in theory at least) walk into the factory and talk face to face with the people cutting and sewing the garments.  I cannot overstate how unusual that is.  In every job I have had, when we placed our orders (called purchase orders, POs for short), we usually weren’t even writing those orders to a specific factory. Rather, some sort of intermediary. The factory might be 2-3 layers away from me.  This is how just about every consumer product category works.  

Let’s say I was writing a PO for a dress at Nasty Gal.

• That dress might be from a brand you know, like Sister Jane or Selkie.  Insert just about any other non-slow fashion brand name here. I would issue that order to the brand.  Then the brand would place their own order with their factory or overseas agent.  That agent or factory  would most likely contract that work out to another facility.  
• Let’s say it was a Nasty Gal brand dress. In that case, if it was made in LA (which some of our stuff was), I was probably issuing the PO to a business that either doled this work out to other factories or garment workers who were sewing at home. I certainly did not write it directly to the factory.  If it was an overseas order, the PO was written to the agent, who then contracted it out to a factory.
• And this is how the money trickles out and down from the brand.  Down, down, down, with each person taking a cut on the way down, leaving little for the people doing the work.

In the 2010s, one of my employers actually invested money in developing a vendor compliance department that would include factory inspections. They did a test run of inspections on vendors that probably had the highest likelihood of abusive, dangerous working conditions…and found that yes, those vendors were bad. One of them had made hundreds of thousands of bedazzled mesh slippers, cotton mary janes, and slip-on sneakers  that we had sold through the 00s.  They phased them out, replacing them with other manufacturers.  I have no idea if they continued to do these inspections, weeding out other factories, because that just wasn’t something they discussed with the buying team. 

At Modcloth, my boss went to China to visit some factories that were making the Modcloth in-house brand clothing. When she returned, she told me that one of the factory owners  had seemed shady, saying weird stuff about how they had made the factory a lot safer and cleaner just because she was visiting.  The whole scene had given her a weird feeling, so she made the decision that we would stop working with them. That was great, but our Modcloth in-house brand was only a small percentage of what we bought and sold every day. What about everyone else?

Modcloth and Nasty Gal both bought a lot of fast fashion clothing that was made in LA, which implied better working conditions. But through the bathroom window at Modcloth,  I could see women in the building across the street sewing all day without air conditioning. I asked a friend who worked in production at another brand if garment workers in LA had good working conditions.  Her response was, “I don’t know.  They don’t let us see the factory floor.  But with the pricing we demand from them, it’s hard to imagine that anyone is being paid well.”

By the time I set out to figure out who was making the “feminist” brand’s clothes, I realized I just didn’t know what to believe.  It always felt like the actual production of clothing was a secret from everyone, even those of us who were responsible for managing it all.  And sure, I could trust my employers to care about garment workers, but with the way I had seen retail and corporate employees treated over the years…why would I?

I reached out to the vendor who was making most of our clothes to see if they were doing factory inspections, have any certifications, proof of working conditions, etc.  She said, “we have satisfied Nordstrom’s Code of Conduct for manufacturing, so we are fine.  No child labor or anything.”  She reassured me that Nordstrom’s code was “the gold standard” and that we didn’t have to worry.  She sent me a copy of it and it…well, on the surface, it seemed fine, until you realized that really it was basically getting vendors to say “sure, we don’t use child labor or forced labor and our factories are safe” without any actual documentation.  In the event of another Rana Plaza disaster, Nordstrom could push the blame on to the vendor for lying.

Next I reached out to the t-shirt wholesaler to ask about where the blanks we were using were made.  “Well, some of them are from Honduras, some downtown LA, and we do a little bit in Bangladesh and Vietnam.”  

Were there any factory inspections? “We don’t use child labor,” she said curtly before shooing me off the phone.

I reported back to my boss about what I had learned, fearing punishment for not finding a good, clear answer.  She was surprisingly chill about it, telling me that I should just put together a response that mentioned that our vendors had been audited by bigger companies with more resources and did not use child labor.  And that I should really lean into the fact that our tees were “made” in town.

I didn’t push her on that.  Because I was scared.  I didn’t want to get humiliated or lose my job.  I didn’t want to become her next target for bullying.  And I just wanted to make it through another day at work.

But it was just another thing that ate away at me, alongside not having health insurance, watching other people get humiliated regularly, tiptoeing around the CEO’s moods, sitting in meetings and hearing the most fucked up shit being said by people who were supposedly feminists. Yet it all added up: if this company didn’t care about us–the people they saw every day in the office and stores–they certainly didn’t care about the faceless people half a world away that made the stuff we were selling.  

A few years later I would finally have the time and space to really dig into who really made our clothes.  The exploitation and abuse.  The unhealthy and unsafe working conditions. The casual cruelty of it all. 

 But I still had to face one more fast fashion job before I got there…

I finally left the “feminist” company in early summer of 2018.  It’s funny how that sentence makes it sound like it was this easy break, but it was not.  

After months and months and MONTHS, of holding it all inside, the dam of emotions broke loose one morning while Dustin was driving me to work. We were sitting in our very cute cherry red 1980s Volvo wagon, parked just outside the “feminist” brand’s office, when I just started sobbing. “I can’t do this anymore. It makes me wish I was dead. I dream about being dead.”

I remember Dustin being surprised, but maybe he was just shocked that this was happening at 8:50 am.  There’s no way anyone who had spent any time with me in the last year couldn’t tell that something was “off” about me.  When I met with my boss (the CEO) to tell her I wanted to come up with a plan together to transition me out of the business, she smirked and said “Oh good, I wanted to fire you anyway.”

You would think that things would have gotten less stressful when I gave my notice, but it didn’t.  Partially because I spent months trying to fix a disastrous fundraiser product campaign based on Melania Trump’s “I really don’t care, do U” jacket (you’ll have to listen to the installment of “I’m with the brand” about cause marketing to know the full story). But also, because my replacement was strangely from Victoria’s Secret and she didn’t know anything about spreadsheets, ecommerce, or kinda anything? She also wanted to style everything with a wedge, which was not just the brand.  I spent months trying to get her up to speed while also setting my team up to be okay without me.  I felt like I was betraying them by leaving.  Who would be there to protect them from the CEO’s wrath? And at the same time, I felt giddy about the prospect of never again having to sit at the shitty plywood table that I shared with my team as a desk. 

I threw a “retirement” party to celebrate my departure, complete with snacks, artisanal jello shots, punch, and kiddy pools.  It was really just such a great day.

But the fear was there. After all, the only fashion jobs in Portland were with Nike and Adidas.  I knew I didn’t want to do either.  I did meet with a Nike recruiter, but I felt the mood sour when I asked “Is it a good work culture for women and nonbinary people?” I already knew the answer anyway. 

I decided I was finally going to work for myself. I started working with small businesses around town, using what I had learned in my career in fast fashion to help them. Pretty fast, I was working full time.  And in some ways, it felt like I was finally living the life I wanted: I named my hours, I worked on interesting things, I had the time to exercise, see friends, garden, read books, work on other projects. For example, I was writing a business plan to open my own store/brand that would carry cute, unique gifts inspired by all the kawaii gift shops in Japan. It was called Dream Day. There were a lot of reasons to be excited and optimistic!

But…it still felt financially unstable.  Dustin had just started to build a career as a UX designer (after years of being a professional sound guy and touring musician).  He was in the early stages, which meant he didn’t make much money.  We were dealing with intense medical bills and my kid would be starting college in a few years. I was making it work for now, but then and now I live in constant fear of losing it all.

When Urban Outfitters came a-knocking with a new rental brand they were launching, I was intrigued. The idea of working on something that could actually be sustainable was really appealing. The recruiter told me that they were ready to move fast…which was kinda inconvenient because I was going to Japan in less than a week with Dustin. Part vacation, part research for Dream Day. I was leaving Tuesday morning, from Portland.  The recruiter asked if I could fly out to Philadelphia Sunday night, interview all day Monday, then fly home Monday night. I agreed to it only because I was so curious about it.  The sustainability thing was really top of mind for me, after spending months working with some really great sustainable, ethical businesses in Portland. 

The trip to Philadelphia was less than 24 hours.  I interviewed with half a dozen people. And it was okay, for the most part.  I ate lunch alone in the big URBN cafeteria, feeling that loneliness from a decade ago all over again.  I couldn’t decide how I felt.  On one hand, the idea was interesting.  They would pay me some decent money.  I could send my kid to college.  On the other hand, this campus had always made me feel yucky and shitty.  

I was kinda like “okay maybe I’m super into this job offer” until my final interview of the day, with the company’s Chief Creative Officer.  It was so horrible. Her disdain and disgust for me was so apparent that I thought about just walking out and catching the bus to the airport. She couldn’t even look directly at me.  And her contempt for me, for this new rental brand was almost physically painful. I could feel my face burning, feeling shame for something I could not name.  How could I work in an environment where people felt that kind of behavior was acceptable? 

I flew home with a churning stomach.  When Dustin asked me about the interview I could only respond with “I don’t know.”

The next day, as planned, we flew to Tokyo. And that trip started by taking a tiny plane out of Portland to Seattle.  It was the kind of plane that doesn’t have a jetbridge, so you walk across the tarmac and up the stairs to board.  And as we reached the top of those stairs,  I turned and said to Dustin, “I’m not going to take that job if they offer it to me. I just have a bad feeling.” 

He responded, “Good, don’t do it.” And he was proud of me for making that decision, because he knew how deep and intense my financial anxiety always was.

We were in Japan for two weeks and every day, I expected to wake up to an email from the URBN recruiter, wanting to follow up on the interviews.  After all, they had wanted to “move fast.” I was excited to say “no.” 

Two weeks later, no response.  A month later, still nothing.  And the money fears were creeping up again. For no real reason other than: Dylan was going to go to college in a few years. I was scared about how I was going to pay for that.  I started interviewing for other jobs, all of them kinda boring and fast fashion-y.  But I couldn’t turn down a conversation with a recruiter.  Maybe I just wanted the opportunity to say “no” to someone since URBN hadn’t given me that chance.  

And then…the URBN recruiter called to ask me if I was still interested. But the job would be different (a little). Rather than being the head of buying, I would be the Senior Buyer. That was a demotion in terms of title, but they were willing to pay me what I had been making as the Director of Merchandising at the “feminist” brand.  If I stuck it out, I could pay for my kid’s college. We would have decent health insurance. There would be some sense of security.

I said “yes” to a job I did not want. 

Well, from day one I knew I had made a mistake. The vibes on that campus were worse than ever. I felt my eating disorder coming back at rapid velocity.  The headaches and stomachaches returned.  I felt like such an outsider and I was super lonely. I witnessed egregious (and definitely illegal) instances of bullying and harassment.  People said the most fatphobic and classist shit, and no one pushed back.  There’s nothing like seeing billionaire nepo babies make fun of poor people on Slack. Or hearing a stylist say that it’s impossible to make anything look cute on a size 10 model. 

My own boss told me that I would be “more successful in my career” if I stopped caring about the people who worked for and with me. I think if someone had said this to me five, ten years before that…I would have felt guilty or ashamed for having empathy for others. Because let’s be honest: in companies like this, in an industry like this…empathy is considered a flaw, a weakness.  But somehow, hearing this from my boss made me feel like I had to be louder and more outspoken about how others were being treated. It meant that I had to show up for others twice as hard.  I knew I wasn’t going to fit in here–one of my direct reports wore a Cartier watch to work and my boss couldn’t understand why I didn’t fly first class every time I travelled. So why not at least know that I was being the best person I could be?

That Chief Creative Officer–from the horrible interview– not only refused to acknowledge me in meetings, she stared through me as I weren’t there speaking.  As far as why she hated me so much? I can only assume it was because of how I looked. It certainly wasn’t related to my talent or experience. And once again, if I had to deal with her five, ten years earlier…I would have felt that I was the problem.  But suddenly it was dawning on me that I was not in fact the problem . And that company was super fucking lucky to have someone as smart and talented as me there to make decisions and teach others.

Something was breaking through in my brain.  It was a little seed sprouting and poking through the earth.  It was something telling me that I could–and would–do better than this. That I didn’t belong there because I was too smart, too caring…and that was just fine.

And clothing rental? Well, it wasn’t as sustainable as I had hoped.  If you want to know all of the reasons why, you have to listen to the Rental-sode episode of the podcast.  But needless to say, it’s just not sustainable (or ethical) to rent out fast fashion clothes that can’t survive being worn over and over again. And of course there was no discussion of the working conditions in the factories where these clothes were made, much less the impact of propping up a fast fashion system via rental.

But also: fast fashion had gotten really fast.

Being back on that campus after years working for other companies made me see with clarity just how fast and fucked up the industry had become.  Everyone was making super cheap clothing, super fast.  I was so shocked by how little we were paying for everything.  How could the company be paying LESS to make clothing than it had been ten years ago? It just made no sense to me.  And while we had once planned our buys 3-6 months in advance, we were encouraged to place orders one month or less before delivery. Everything was shipping via airplane.  And every friend I had out there from my previous jobs was saying the same things: too many new products to design and buy, not enough time and people to do that well. 

And another thing I had been observing passively for close to two decades really came into focus: none of the executives at any of these companies (except, once again, Modcloth)  actually had any respect for the customers. The executives thought that the customers were stupid, desperate, and just didn’t know well enough to have standards.  So we could shovel anything their way and they would scoop it up. It didn’t have to fit.  It didn’t have to last long. And most importantly, it didn’t have to be something that these executives would ever actually wear themselves. 

I saw this early in my career at Urban Outfitters, when nobody in management or above would dare to actually (ew) wear clothes from Urban Outfitters. They were shimmying around the office in $1000 Danish sweaters and Celine shoes that cost more than my rent, visibly cringing at the acrylic/poly blend sweaters and literal plastic shoes that we were making and selling.  

At Nasty Gal, the CEO wore like $10,000 worth of clothes to the office every day, while telling us that the customer would surely love “vegan suede” if we told her to.  She just wanted to take direction from us. She didn’t know better.  And if we photographed the clothes just right, the customer would think they were a lot nicer than they really were.

The CEO of the “feminist” brand didn’t think the actual product or how it fit mattered.  The marketing was the most important thing.  If we could have the right marketing and hype, we could sell our customers anything. Once again, there was this idea that customers don’t actually know anything and they are just waiting for us to tell (or trick them) into buying something.

At the rental brand, my boss would see and touch the lower price point fast fashion we were renting out to customers and scoff “ew, cheapo creepo.” But then admit that the customers were kinda too stupid to know just how shitty these clothes were.  And once again, it was all about the styling. Let’s create the illusion that these clothes are nice and the customer will never figure it out.

You know the weird stomachache you get after eating too much candy? I was having that nonstop.  Just this unpleasant constant discomfort…with no obvious source. 

I reached a point where I needed Dustin to drive me to work every day just so he could hold my hand and reassure me until the very last moment when I had to get out of the car and scan my keycard into the building.  I had to keep working at this job so my kid could go to college. So we could afford food and rent.  Survival meant…doing this for as long as possible.

The survival of my family meant being okay with how fucked up everything was around me.  

2020 rolled around.  On a family vacation to the desert over New Year’s, Dustin and I had a serious talk while Dylan was in the shower.  I wanted to leave the rental job.  I would apply and interview for other jobs, but I really felt that the best way forward was to save as much money as we could over the next year.  And then I could leave at the end of the year.  We could use that money to move out of the city–maybe to Lancaster county–and then I could figure out what I wanted to do next.  We were both pretty excited about the future.

And then it was March.  I don’t need to tell you what happened in the world that year: the COVID pandemic.  One day we were told to pack up our stuff because the company was going to “try” to work from home for one day.  It would be a test, in case the pandemic situation worsened.  I never worked in that office again. I’m so glad I took my plants home with me! 

A week later, 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 brought this up with my boss, she was sort of like “you can’t let yourself care about these things.”

When I was furloughed at the end of that month, I felt a complex set of emotions.  On one hand, we were about to experience a lot of financial trouble (I wouldn’t receive my first unemployment benefits for months). 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.

Eventually I was let go permanently  at the end of July, a few days before the internet filled with headlines about my employer’s “surprise profits” in the midst of a global pandemic. 

Those profits came at the expense of people across the world: corporate workers like me, store associates, warehouse workers, and garment workers. 

That profit was derived from the fear and pain of so many.  

I was given a specific time to go back to the office to empty out my desk. There was actually very little there because on our last day before the world shut down, I had this inexplicable feeling I was never coming back. 

As a loss prevention officer watched me pack up my pens, folders, and papers, I looked around at all of the empty desks.  Dead plants everywhere.  Random items of clothing tossed on a big table.  The smell of dust.  I was sad, because it felt like a rejection.  Like when the person you’ve been wanting to break up with…breaks up with you first.  I felt angry, for being let go with two weeks of severance after working for that company more than 12 years cumulatively. But I also felt…excited because maybe now I could be free.

This is when Clotheshorse began.

I was finally free to talk about what I had experienced.  And I had the time to learn more about the impact of fast fashion.  I finally had space to think about it all and see the big picture. 

Almost six years later, I’m still doing this work that is Clotheshorse. I have been learning all of this alongside you. Some days are hard, some days are exciting and rewarding.  Some days I get death threats from vegans, and other days one of you reaches out to say that something I said or did made you think differently and change what you are doing.

That said–the work of Clotheshorse is primarily unpaid.  And yes, that does make me feel like a gigantic loser sometimes. Especially six years into it, seeing other podcasts put out one episode a month and bring in tens of thousands of dollars in Patreon support and ads.  Yes, I cry about this sometimes.  I think about quitting all the time, but I just keep coming back to it.

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. I spend a lot of time doing spreadsheets, teaching strategic methods, and playing therapist when things are hard.  I actually feel like I’m part of something bigger, building a better future. 

Nothing is easy. This is challenging work and there is no paid time off or sick days. I keep my hourly rate far below market value so people can afford me, which means I have to work very long hours in order to pay Dylan’s tuition, cover my healthcare, etc. 

And yet…I never even consider talking to another recruiter about a corporate job.  I don’t want it.  Yes, I worry all the time about what will happen next…but this is still a pretty happy ending (although, I really think that I’m just at the beginning of what happens next and the ending is hopefully really far away).

It was a long journey to get here, but I hope I get to keep doing this for a long time. Thanks for being here with me.