cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/676153
Textile waste is an urgent global problem, with only 12 per cent recycled worldwide, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Even less - only 1 per cent - of castoff clothes are recycled into new garments; the majority is used for low value items like insulation or mattress stuffing.
Nowhere is the problem more pressing than in China, the world’s largest textile producer and consumer, where more than 26 million tons of clothes are thrown away every year year, according to government statistics. Most of it ends up in landfills.
And factories like this one are barely making a dent in a country whose clothing industry is dominated by fast fashion - cheap clothes made from unrecyclable synthetics, not cotton. Produced from petrochemicals that contribute to climate change, air and water pollution, synthetics account for 70 per cent of domestic clothing sales in China.
China’s footprint is worldwide: E-commerce juggernaut brands Shein and Temu make the country one of the world’s largest producers of cheap fashion, selling in more than 150 countries.
Best one can do, apart from not buying from these websites in the first place, is buying used. My SO buys her clothes online from second-hand dealers where many fast fashion items find their way to where they can get another chance at being worn proper. Doesn’t make the materials used more sustainable, but at least they’re not thrown away immediately
As a corollary: Don’t buy into specific vintage fads like “branded 80’s sportswear” – there’s a very limited quantity of these and there are fakes going around, that have none of the sustainability cred either.
Fake Vingate Wear
Translated article - very insightful:
Vintag Scam The coveted piece is produced in piecework: Pattern pieces made from signal red fabric lie ready on one of the work tables; behind them, a man rattles a sewing machine. The staccato of the needle creates a golden logo on the material. He is one of many. The men sit in long rows, bent over their sewing machines. You can watch them at work on Tiktok: The factory is located in Sialkot, in the east of Pakistan, where fabric is measured, cut and sewn into hoodies, sweaters and jackets like an assembly line - including the showpiece: a signal red jacket with sponsor logos, like those worn by US Nascar racing drivers in the early 2000s. In January 2022, a man from Germany is traveling to Pakistan: Daniel Bayen is just 21, a successful young entrepreneur from Krefeld who is making millions from the current vintage and second-hand hype. Worn fashion is a trend - and a rapidly growing market: young, fashion-conscious people in particular sometimes pay as much for trendy finds from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s as they would for new brand-name clothing. Bayern’s company Strike benefited from this. In just two years, he has opened stores in 16 locations, with online media describing him and his co-founders as the “shooting stars” of the vintage scene.
Fake vintage from Pakistan made to order?
In the city of Karachi, Bayen meets an employee of the company Mughal Brothers Vintage Wholesale, which distributes videos from the factory in Sialkot on Tiktok. This is evident from posts on Bayen’s Instagram profile. What they discuss is not known, but evidence points to a lively business relationship.
When CORRECTIV confronted Bayen with the accusation of counterfeit goods, Bayen first switched his high-reach Instagram profile to private, then back to public and published part of the request as a story.
He wrote in an email about the trip that he had met various textile traders in Pakistan; Mughal had shown him the industry. His findings, “especially the ‘vintage plagiarism’” were “great and sometimes frightening”. CORRECTIV asked Bayen specifically whether he had sold his customers vintage counterfeits on a larger scale than genuine second-hand clothing. Bayen’s answer sounds as if he is referring to the market’s shortcomings - not his own business. The fact that there are counterfeits is nothing new, he writes. The real problem lies elsewhere. “Namely the fact that people spend 600 euros on a pair of trousers while others starve.”
In a chat with a potential new customer, the retailer in Pakistan provides insights into his business practices. CORRECTIV analyzed videos, photos, chats, invoices and other documents. The evidence points to inconsistencies and raises serious questions. It appears that Bayen not only offered original vintage pieces in its stores, but also had fake vintage clothing manufactured in Pakistan and imported in containers. The brand led customers to believe that only genuine second-hand fashion was being sold in the stores. Bayen admits to plagiarism, but denies intent. He either ordered counterfeits unintentionally, or to “train his staff” or "to always have garments ready for photo shoots or social media content." CORRECTIV has bank transfer receipts from Bayen to Mughal Brothers Vintage Wholesale from the end of 2021 to summer 2023. He sometimes sends sums in the six-figure range to Pakistan. The “coveted unique piece” is freshly embroidered Mughal Brothers deals in new and worn clothing: As the company portrays it on Instagram, it orders bales of genuine second-hand goods from the US, which are transshipped to a warehouse in the city of Karachi. In Sialkot, on the other hand, new goods are produced - including apparently counterfeit vintage items. One example: the bright red Nascar jacket with a striking logo of the US beer brand Budweiser. Online stores offer the original for over 250 euros. The “coveted unique piece” is freshly embroidered in the factory in Pakistan. When asked by CORRECTIV, the company Mughal Brothers denied producing counterfeit goods: “We only deal with worn clothing and vintage fashion.” But the email reads contradictorily, and there are also differences with Bayern’s version. The Pakistani retailer confirms that he also supplied new goods to Bayen and other buyers, according to him on the initiative of the Strike founder: “After Daniel asked us for new clothes, many customers from Germany came and asked for new clothes,” he writes. However, his company does not produce these textiles itself, but procures them from other local suppliers. "I need this as soon as possible." On the other hand, there are Tiktok clips and chat logs in which the trader claims to prospective buyers that the factory in Sialkot belongs to his company. When asked, he replies: The company only pretends to be a manufacturer for marketing purposes: "The videos or messages you refer to - it’s all about making a good impression to our customers." Mughal Brothers Vintage Wholesale then changed its company name on its Instagram profile. The company in Pakistan now appears there as “The Bull Company”. On Tiktok, the account with the videos from Sialkot is suddenly no longer available. Daniel Bayen describes the events differently to the Pakistani dealer. According to him, he told him that “if I ever needed anything, he would get it or make it.” But many people in Pakistan had offered him that: “There it’s make money or starve. Laws don’t play such a big role there.”
Bayen admits to having ordered fake vintage Mughal Brothers seems to supply what sells, including fake vintage goods on demand - a chat with a potential new customer from Germany that the retailer wants to win over supports this impression. The prospective customer sends photos of vintage sweaters with the Nike logo and asks: "Could you make these?" The answer: “We’ve already done that”, the German adds: “I know, for Strike.” The Pakistani doesn’t disagree. He later sends evidence, including a screenshot of an exchange of messages, as he claims, with Daniel Bayen, whom he has saved as “Germany Customer”; the latter writes: “I’m looking for more designs. I need this ASAP” - “Yes please bro, send me all the designs and let me know which ones should be screen printed.” He sends photos of T-shirts stating, "All three screen printed." To convince the new customer, the wholesaler sends screenshots of chats with another customer, which he says is Bayen. Daniel Bayen admits to having ordered counterfeit goods. However, he claims that this was only to show his employees how to identify and sort out counterfeit goods. Or by mistake, as he hadn’t noticed: “In any case, I acted negligently in some cases,” he writes.
The Strike company stood for fashion with a credible history, sustainable consumption and cool street style. But now CORRECTIV’s research has revealed that this was partly due to at least unintentional customer deception. Instead of unique finds and vintage rarities, the range also included new mass-produced goods from Asia. Bayen estimates the proportion of fakes on the second-hand market at 20 to 30 percent. "Gold rush mood" on the vintage market The Strike company has since gone bankrupt. But the story goes far beyond the individual case: the second-hand clothing business is booming. According to forecasts by auditing firm PwC, the market is set to grow from 3.5 billion euros in 2022 to five to six billion euros by 2025. In 2022, the industry magazine Textilwirtschaft spoke of a “gold-rush atmosphere” with regard to vintage online retail. Vintage is practically the opposite of fast fashion and monotonous off-the-peg mainstream fashion: unique pieces from the day before yesterday, second-hand and therefore climate-friendly, in short: consumption without a guilty conscience.
Bayen basked in this image in front of his thousands of followers on social networks: He repeatedly attacked the fast-fashion industry and the masses’ desire for ever-new discount goods. “Every item of clothing we offer does not have to be produced from scratch,” he wrote on one of his company websites. "In this way, we save valuable resources in production and break the vicious cycle of the fast fashion industry." Sweaters and hoodies from Adidas and Nike are in demand The growth of the market is being driven primarily by Generation Z’s love of vintage. The only problem for the industry is that the growing demand is being met by a limited number of available pieces. Currently, most second-hand goods are from the 90s or early 2000s, says vintage expert Philip Rohde, and brands such as Adidas and Nike are particularly popular for sweaters and hoodies; sought-after items are sometimes hard to come by and come at a price: "You can expect prices ranging from 50 euros to 120 euros." Rohde has been observing the industry for a long time.
But since around mid-2021, he has noticed that something is changing: He kept noticing that many new stores were advertising vintage knock-offs, he says: “They actively advertised with pieces that were fake because they could attract more customers that way.”
Shortly before his company went out of business, Bayen even openly admitted in a clip on Instagram at the end of January that Strike was probably also selling counterfeit goods: He was therefore even, he said then himself, facing a court case for violating trademark law. The fact that counterfeits are found among his goods is unavoidable: When he buys second-hand in large quantities, he knows “that there will probably be counterfeits, and that is inevitable with second-hand clothing and has become even more so recently”. He was therefore liable to prosecution simply by importing the goods. The Krefeld district court confirms the proceedings and Bayen informs us that he has been convicted. It is clear from his email that he feels he has been treated unfairly: the problem is the market, not his company. “In the meantime, I have realized that I can be prosecuted for every container of used clothing,” he writes: “Every time I import a used item of clothing that is counterfeit, I am committing a criminal offence.”
For a number of years, business at Strike was excellent, and at times Bayen was considered one of the most successful retailers on the market - even during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, the 19-year-old entrepreneur opened his first store in Krefeld. While retailers up and down the country are struggling with closures and social distancing regulations, customers are queuing in long lines at Strike’s store openings, such as in Halle or Düsseldorf. According to his own figures, he currently has 92 employees and a turnover of 2.9 million euros.