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Comment by georgeburdell | Hacker News Reader

Still largely made in China. That means more recently than it used to.

There may be quality reasons for this (source: I work in a company that produces clothes).

There are typically two factors that are used to critique clothing production, ethics and quality. Ethically production in China is fairly easy to do well assuming you're not objecting wholesale to giving money to the Chinese economy. Working conditions are normally fine and can be great.

In terms of quality, China is pretty good for a number of types of clothing. I don't know about activewear as we don't produce any, but for many categories at many price points they're basically as good as anywhere else. There are categories where they're not, regardless of how much you pay. I have a feeling that suits might have been one of these but not certain.

For very high end clothing, production in Europe, particularly Italy, is a good sign. For anything else there's no reason why China can't compete on quality for most categories.

The question is do they hold the same standard for Chinese politics and Chinese corporations? If not, then why the double standard?

>If not, then why the double standard?

China, whether we like it or not, is strong. The West, and particularly its corporations, have shown themselves to be incredibly weak when it comes to kowtowing to what amounts to populism.

So then why bother splitting efforts with fights you know you can't win when you can 100% invest in trouncing those who've shown weakness?

Also bringing up China in particular opens a massive can of worms that nobody is really comfortable with. There's been a bunch of companies we all "know and love" who've shown their support for their protests and the BLM political entity over the course of the last few weeks whose output comes from what is essentially slavery in Asia. Again though, that is a conversation nobody seems to be eager to have.

The general industrial/infrastructure landscape in Europe has changed a lot after 2008, the effects of that crisis gave China a chance to reach and establish itself in many places/industries that pre-crisis were out of reach to them for “national security” or whatever reasons.

See [1] for a bad article with a few interesting leads as a way to find out more but basically Chinese capital realized that made in China has a reputation problem and have bought italian brands and manufacturing businesses. I’m not suggesting that is nefarious but I am saying that is worth to learn more.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-sweatshop-insight-i...

I have more "Made in Vietnam" tags on my Patagonia clothes than "Made in China".

Patagonia has been leading the way on ethical manufacturing for a long time. Easily since the late 1990s. They don't appear to be bargaining for rock-bottom price with their Chinese contractors -- they are asking for higher standards, both labor and environmental. According to their website, they have narrowed the list of contractors they work with so that they can monitor them better.

Also, as their website points out, it's important to not fetishize American clothes manufacturing as such. The American textile industry is much smaller than it once was, due to NAFTA and related agreements.

For a lot more, see: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/patagonia-clothing-made-wh...

It should be noted that in addition to this being true, they are also diversely testing other production lines in Vietnam and Sri Lanka. There may be others I am unaware of. This leads to the natural question-- are those countries' factories being managed better than those of China? Are we saying China bad, generally, or are we saying the state of factory workers is bad, wherever they clock in? If you are to believe the Patagucci mission statement, they are in a quest to better the world. One could deduce that this also includes working to better their supply chain.

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