The state of fashion

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0:44And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, the state of fashion. What we wear and why we wear it. Over the last few years, minimalism has been in. Pairing back a few simple chic pieces, keep the look clean. The idea of dressing efficiently has always resonated with me. So I was a little terrified at the prospect of embracing the exact opposite, which is my lord. Whoa! Maximalism. This is my studio. This is where the magic happens. This is where the magic happens.

1:38A little while back, I visited the artist and costume designer Machine Dazzle at his workshop in Jersey City for a maximalist makeover. And as you can see, it's a large space, but it still could be bigger. You know what I mean? It's like walking into the most glittering, dazzling closet I have ever seen in my entire life. There are mannequins dressed to the nines. There are reams of fabric. The 1 ,500 square foot space is packed with supplies. Wigs, a sewing machine, racks and racks of clothes. Well, right now it's extra crazy. Like, well, you're here, but now I have a photo shoot tomorrow. Most people know me as a costume designer, but I'm also a fine artist, photographer, sculptor.

2:31Machine grew up all over the U.S. Then, about 30 years ago, like many young people who feel out of step with mainstream America, he moved to New York. I moved to New York so that I could actually start my life. Over those past three decades, he has built a reputation for creating wild, whimsical, and over-the-top outfits for the stage. Maybe it's opera. Maybe it's dance. Maybe it's theater. Maybe it's me just walking on a street for the sake of something at a protest. I need a reason. There has to be a reason. But it wasn't until 2022, when he had an exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, that his style got a name, thanks to the curator.

3:15Yes, Elizabeth Arthur. When she curated my show, she decided to call it queer maximalism. I was aware of maximalism before, but I never called myself a maximalist. I mean, yes, am I maximal? Yes. But I'm so much more than that. Of course you are. Yeah, so I mean, I change. I'm constantly changing. I go with the time. The museum chronicled how, as they put it, A closeted suburban kid from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, turned into Machine Dazzle, the queer experimental theater genius. There was an apple pie headdress, a skirt made of candlesticks, a blouse that looked like giant typewriter keys. So while he may not exactly embrace the term, Machine believes his take on maximalism promotes something very specific.

4:07It's about sharing your vision. Queer space is about sharing. Yes, we're making space for ourselves, but we're also sharing ourselves and we're inviting people into our circle. We're being generous. Maximalism is generous. It's everything. It's the cake. It's the flour, the eggs, the sugar. It's the oven. It's the heat. It's the love that was put into all of it. It's the mouth. It's the smile. It's the party. All of it. Because you can't have one without not the other. Can I get an amen up in here? Amen! Where's that a gay man? Can I get a gay man up in here? Oh! Can I get a gay man up in here?

4:56Depending on your perspective, fashion can be frivolous or make a big statement. It can bring out our creative side or our consumer side. But whether you love clothes or could care less, we all have to get dressed in the morning. So how can we do it better? On this episode, ideas about taking style to the extreme, the environmental impact of our shopping culture, and how our obsession with beauty built an industry with an ugly underbelly. But first, back to Machine Dazzle. To get a better sense of what his maximalist outfits look like, it helps to hear about the 2016 performance he did with the artist Taylor Mack.

5:40We are about to venture into uncharted territory. It was called A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. A spectacular queer take on American history that lasted for 24 hours, featuring 24 costume changes. The HBO documentary about the performance won Machine an Emmy in costume design. It starts in 1776 and goes to the present day. Here's Machine Dazzle on the TED stage.

6:42Inspiration came when I was passing this laundromat. What were they doing? They were taking down these old plastic grand opening flags. And I noticed how weather-worn and brittle and fragile they were. And I got to thinking about the end of the American Revolution and how tattered and torn and broken everything must have been. And then it hit me. This costume wants to tell a story. The outfit feels like a sports uniform on acid. The headdress is made of cheerleaders' pom-poms fashioned into a massive wig. There's a big 13, for the 13 colonies, jersey number over metallic streamers. Sparklers are shooting off the back of the outfit like fireworks.

7:30The whole thing is one big party. This is maximalism. Not only is it layer upon layer aesthetically, it's idea on top of idea conceptually. It becomes its own story almost that you can almost read like a book. Another particularly memorable outfit commemorates the Civil War era. So when it came to the Civil War decade, I had read somewhere along the way that the American hot dog evolved out of this time. by, you know, German immigrants selling their sausages on the streets. And so I wanted to include it in the costume. To create the costume, machine paired hot dogs with another invention from the 1860s, barbed wire.

8:17I love what barbed wire kind of stands for. It's a barrier. And, you know, what we were doing in the Civil War was trying to break down those barriers. So the costume features a huge barbed wire skirt adorned with hot dogs that almost looks like a cage, plus a headdress of hot dogs and a Civil War style soldier's jacket with red and yellow streamers flowing off of it like ketchup and mustard. And it's also almost grotesque. It's like, well, is it ketchup or is it blood? And we're talking about the Civil War here. On stage, we often deal with dark things, heavy subject matter. I will say that humor is good.

9:02Humor is healing. So audience gets to decide what it is. There was no audience back at Machine's workshop in Jersey City. Nonetheless, he was hard at work on my maximalist makeover, putting together quite an outfit for me. Looks really good on you. Thank you. Yeah, these are good colors for you. So right now I have a wig made of hair, red hair, but also plastic bags, yarn, flowers, all sorts of things. a bolero jacket that's vintage with very poofy sleeves. And then the crinoline short skirt just pops out and we're not even fully dressed yet. And it's like this, you know, we're not even fully dressed yet.

9:49We haven't even really done accessories. And also you're not in your heels. I'm not in my seven-inch Prada heels yet. No, you're not. And I might want to add a little bit. By the time I got in my heels and rhinestone gloves, put on some copper lipstick with many dashes of glitter. Layered on top. It's just like a little something. Oh, plus some cat eye sunglasses. Something kind of transformed inside of me. I think we were headed at one point into a direction where it was like too much, like Halloween-y. But then you like took us in a different direction. And now I actually feel super chic. All of a sudden, because you're so outrageous, it's like you have a license to say almost anything and do almost anything.

10:34But I never would have thought I could wear this many colors, this many accessories. It's the way you put things together. There's sophistication involved. There's effort. I think there's a lot of minimalism that, you know, it's effortless. There's nothing to think about. And I understand why people do that. You know, we live in a crazy world. Life is stressful. I can't handle, I mean, I can handle it. I'm having fun. A miniature me running through the mountain that is your hand dress. And then like your shoes are just like propping you up. It's like putting a painting on a wall. I figured at this point, as we get ready to go out to get a coffee, that I would be embarrassed and terrified.

11:18But I don't. I feel like I need to be seen because I look amazing. And now you're going to want to do this all the time. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of each other. Can I buy you a coffee? You sure can, babe. Let's go. All right, let's do it. We took our outfits for a spin by going to the local cafe. And surprise, surprise, we turned some heads. Oh, they just said, you look amazing, and you just cheered me up. See? I told you. We look like a celebration of life, you and I. We do. I was finally embracing the maximalist mindset, and it felt good. And maybe Machine is right. Maybe we're attracted to minimalism because it's a way of taming the madness of modern life.

12:06Whereas Machine's approach is to run joyfully towards the chaos. I'm trying to give light to it. And sometimes a thing of beauty can be a hand that you hold through a dark time. I feel like a walking piece of art. It's really special. It is a flash. It is a moment. You are taking joy. I really am. Most people would not leave their homes wearing what I wear. It's an offering of changing the way people see the world, changing what is possible. Machine Dazzle is a costume designer and performer. You can see his full talk at TED.com. The HBO documentary featuring his incredible outfits is called Taylor Mac's 24-Decade History of Popular Music.

13:05You can also go to TED.NPR.org and my Instagram to see photos of me and Machine all dressed up. On the show today, the state of fashion. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

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14:56Because with all you've done to find your rich, they'll do all they can to help you keep enjoying it. Edward Jones, member SIPC. This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash podcast. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, the state of fashion, which of course includes shopping. And for many of us today, that means shopping online. I have shopped for every single thing online. Anything and everything that I can purchase, I look at it online first.

15:46This is Aparna Mehta. A few years ago, when she was a busy working mom, online shopping was a huge time saver, especially for buying clothes. I work 12 to 16 hours a day. I don't have time during the week to go out and look for things. So in the evenings, she'd scroll and shop. My daughter's in bed. I'm relaxed. I'm watching TV. I start browsing. I'm like, hmm, you know, let's look at Nordstrom's today. look at anthropology. What do they have there? I start seeing these things and I'm like, oh, that looks really good. And wherever I would go on any website, they would say returns are free. I would intentionally buy the same item in a couple of different colors, a couple of different sizes with the intent of keeping only one.

16:38I mean, that's what I've been told as well is like, you know, you're a busy person, you're a mom, save time, just order it in various sizes. then ship back the ones you don't want. And that's perfectly fine. Is that what you understood as well? Yes. I mean, I would try on six, seven, five, six, whatever, and then keep one if I liked it and return the rest. At your peak, how many deliveries would you say you were getting of clothes per week? Oh, per week? 12, 15. Whoa. Sorry. You were serious. But I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. look, a store is making it possible for me to order as many as I want and return back what I don't want.

17:22Sometimes I would return all of them because you can't check the material when you're buying online. My daughter, she was a teenager at that time, and she said, Mom, you have a real problem. And this is the daughter telling me. I'm supposed to be telling her, but it was instead her. Aparna's shopping habit was definitely out of control. And she started to realize that it was a problem for the environment, too. There were packages showing up at my doorstep almost every day. I have all these empty boxes. I mean, yeah, I recycle it, but oh my God, so much cardboard. And there's some irony here because at the time, Aparna was a global solutions director for UPS.

18:02Part of her job was to help retailers make their operations run more smoothly. So she knew a lot about how shipping works. So think about supply chain design, supply chain optimization. a carbon impact analysis. That's the kind of work I did. But one day, in a meeting with a client, she heard a statistic that put her shopping habit in perspective. I was at a meeting with one of our largest retailers. You know, one of the key members from the customer side said, the largest opportunity we have right now is with returns. Last year, they had 7.5 million pieces of clothing returned to them. Wow. I just circled that number on my paper.

18:49I'm like, oh my God. In one year, one retailer. This is not a small problem. This is a big one. The return situation online, it is a problem entirely of the Internet's making and of Internet retailers' making. Amanda Mull is a senior reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek, where she covers consumerism. The idea that you go into a store and plan already to just return half of it, that is a behavior that before the internet was considered like pretty maladaptive. Like if you were doing that regularly, that would be sort of like characterized as like a compulsive shopping issue. But now that is just how the internet has trained us to shop.

19:30Amanda says that when people buy things online, they tend to return them at a very high rate. On average, brick and mortar stores have like a single digit return rate. online, it can range from usually 15 to 30 percent. And for certain types of products, especially during the holidays, it can get up to 50 percent. And that's because online shopping is not designed to produce good decisions in the people who are making purchases. It's designed to make it as easy for you to buy things as possible. This all began back in the early 2000s when online shopping debuted and shoppers were skeptical. People understood really well at the time that a lot of the goods that they wanted to buy just weren't ideal for online shopping.

20:16Things that you have to try on, things that have to fit your body, things that have to be comfortable in some way. Like, there's all kinds of stuff that you just can't really know with full certainty online. And you still can't. You certainly couldn't in, you know, 2004. So early online retailers had to figure out some way to overcome these objections in order to encourage people to change their habits. Enter Zappos, the online shoe store, and the first online retailer to offer free returns. Ending up with a pair of shoes that doesn't fit is like a big risk. So they made returns free. That is what got people to shop online.

20:53That is what created this set of habits in people. It also was really, really unprofitable for the companies doing it. But Amazon, Zappos, a lot of early online retailers did not turn a profit for a very long time. Like they were investing money in creating habits in the American population that would in the long term be advantageous to them. Has it worked, would you say? Yeah, it's worked really, really well because it's created these behaviors that, you know, a lot of people have now, like buying a size up and a size down from what you'd normally buy. or adding something random to your order to get past a free shipping threshold.

21:29They created a set of incentives for shoppers for people to buy stuff with the intent of returning it. Because if people didn't really start trusting this process and start seeing it as convenient, they were never going to peel off a considerable amount of market share from in-person retailers. Shoppers came to rely on that online convenience exactly as retailers had hoped. But now, as we buy and return, buy and return, the cost of processing all those packages is hurting retailers' bottom line. Last fall, I went to visit a returns facility run by Inmar Intelligence, which is the largest returns processor in the United States.

22:09They process hundreds of millions of packages per year in their different facilities across the U.S. The one that I went to was one of their big ones. It's a few hours outside of New York City. It's a sort of a regional facility that collects a lot of returns from the sort of like New York City, Philadelphia metropolitan area. So I've probably sent something back to this warehouse without even knowing it. Oh, almost certainly. Almost certainly. This one facility processes about 100 ,000 packages a day. It is just like a perpetual motion machine of taking stuff out of your taped up polymailer and figuring out what's going on.

22:50A real live person opens each package. They try to ensure that what you've returned matches what it says on your order. They check the product for defects. For signs that it has been used. They even have to do things that are kind of gross. Especially if it's apparel, they're supposed to sniff it. Sniff it? Yes. Like smell? Yes, to see if it smells like it's been worn. If you return a pair of pants, they check the pockets. The guy who was showing me around told me that the most common item to find with returned pants is somebody's underwear. Oh, no. Not great. No. Like, that seems like pretty time-consuming.

23:28Oh, yeah. It's really, really time-consuming and labor-intensive. And, you know, they, Inmar and its competitors all have technologically advanced systems that use whatever, you know, machine learning or AI capabilities they can. But like there is no replacement for human eyes and human noses and human hands. After that, sometimes clothes do go back to the retailer and are resold. But Amanda says there's a very high bar for getting clothes back on the shelf. Some retailers only take back things that are in perfect, like new, unworn condition, sometimes in their original packaging. Otherwise, the item might go to an outlet like TJ Maxx.

24:09But again, if there's any indication that something has been worn, it is very hard to resell anything like that in any channel. So instead, it might be donated or recycled. But textile recycling is like pretty difficult. The more like embellishments, the more types of material there are on a garment, the less likely it is to be easily recyclable. So not everything can be recycled. Not everything that's donated can be used. And pretty much everything that can't be slotted into one of those categories is destroyed in some way. It is incinerated, landfilled. At every step, this process just sort of sheds waste.

24:49It's funny. It's reminding me of a time that I tried to return something to Amazon and they were like, you know what, just keep it. We'll give you your money back. Yes. At that point, what's happening? They're making a calculation that it's not worth it for them? Yes, absolutely. Returns on a per-return basis can cost retailers anywhere from like$5 to$25. Especially fast fashion has a really short shelf life. That becomes a real problem when taking returns because maybe it takes you a week or two weeks to actually drop it off at the post office. Maybe it takes a full month for you to drop it off at the post office.

25:24When a company takes that return, like, your dress might not have been available for sale in any capacity on their website for two weeks by the time it gets back to them and gets processed. So there's, like, no way for them to resell it. And they've had to pay a returns processor to look at it. They've had to pay the logistic service to bring it back to them. They have already just been leaking money. So the last thing they want to do is take a return. So what would happen, though, if each of us just returned a few fewer items per year? Well, I mean, we're about to find out. A lot of retailers are trying to change the system ever so slightly to prevent us from returning so much stuff because it has started to eat into their bottom lines.

26:05And if they want to, you know, extract the profit that they've spent so much time encouraging us to create, then they need us to return less stuff. Like they have set up a system that is not inherently profitable anymore. So this reintroduction of returns fees, of restocking fees, of shipping fees, of the concept of the final sale and you can't return something, I think does make a meaningful difference in the amount of stuff that people return. The system is in like a state of flux right now. They are trying to figure out the correct combination of incentives and fees to institute in order to keep more products sold.

26:45You know, I have been writing about retail logistics and returns for a long time now. And every time I get in a conversation with somebody about it, I see people have this feeling of horror that you've just discovered that you've been participating in something that you don't feel good about. You really start to think about like all the times that you procrastinated taking a package to UPS. And I think sometimes people feel a little bit dumb for not thinking about it. But like the system is designed to ensure that they don't think about it as much as possible. We've talked about, you know, the problems for these businesses.

27:21But what about the environmental impact? Is there any way to calculate just how bad the problem is? So there is this EPA stat that gets thrown around a lot, which is that the average U.S. consumer throws out approximately 81.5 pounds of clothes annually. That doesn't mean that, like, every single person is taking 81 pounds of clothing to the trash. But it means that for every American, the amount of textile waste that gets created within this country is about 81 pounds. That works out to a little bit over 11 million tons as a country. And it's like, yes, returns create a real issue and a real waste in the process.

28:01But the much bigger waste is just the volume at which these companies manufacture clothing that nobody wants or needs and nobody buys. I think that's even more the case for the slightly older model fast fashion retailers, where you're creating a lot more stuff up front to see if it sells. And that is the cost of doing business at that volume, at that scale. There are dumping grounds all over the world in poor countries where a lot of this cast-off clothing tends to go. in Ghana, in Chile in particular, just sort of like these trash mountains of clothing, which just, I think, illustrates like the real overproduction problem that we have in these types of goods.

28:43You know, that much is thrown away every year as a country and we're not missing any of it. I mean, as someone who's tracking this, you must have imagined what could be done systemically to make a difference. What would that look like? I think it's regulatory. There is a real capacity for responsible regulation and responsible oversight to change the behaviors of these companies. But, you know, the companies that populate this industry are very, very powerful. They have very powerful lobbying arms. The Biden administration has made some important steps in the past few years, but it's hard to say exactly how much anybody is going to be willing to do.