Now the Consumer Story is collapsing in on itself, and is at risk of taking us down with it. It was supposed to set us free and give us power, but many of us feel trapped in a rat race, while the background to our lives is a spiral of decline we are powerless to do anything about.

This relation and the daily indignities and exploitations it brings at work are a central way through which capitalism as a social formation is lived. But it is lost or ignored in much mainstream discussion of the contemporary garment industry, which tends to focus on the ethics of consumption, whether through buying less or buying better. This – t