Overdressed

The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

By: Elizabeth L. Cline

Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley

Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. Stores ranging from discounters like Target to fast fashion chains like H&M now offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. Retailers are producing clothes at enormous volumes in order to drive prices down and profits up, and they've turned clothing into a disposable good. After all, we have little reason to keep wearing and repairing the clothes we already own when styles change so fast and it's cheaper to just buy more.

But what are we doing with all these cheap clothes? And more important, what are they doing to us, our society, our environment, and our economic well-being? In Overdressed, Elizabeth L. Cline sets out to uncover the true nature of the cheap fashion juggernaut, tracing the rise of budget clothing chains, the death of middle-market and independent retail­ers, and the roots of our obsession with deals and steals.

©2012 Elizabeth L. Cline (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"[An] engagingly pointed, earnestly researched study." ( Publishers Weekly)

Will keep listening to this book over and over!

This book opened my eyes to a lot of things! A must hear book! It sad that we don't take care of our pieces of clothes and don't want quality when we can have quantity. if you ever wondered where is it that these cheap poorly sown clothing are coming from you should definitely get this book and open your eyes to a new world!

compelling info

Good mix of fashion history, stats, and stories. Written in a compelling manner but not shaking you into shopping differently.

Very Informative

This book is wonderful for anyone aspiring to or struggling to change their relationship with fast fashion. The information is delivered compellingly without any sort of guilt shaming. The knowledge of fast fashion industry is what creates the drive to change.

Terrible Narration

I really can't tell if I would have like the book better if I had read it or if the narration had been better. I think I would have. I gritted my teeth and finished this one even though listening to the reader was causing my head to hurt. She mispronounced so many words and in some places just substituted a totally different word. I've read other reviews where people said it sounded as if it was being read by Siri, and that's a dead-on description. The subject matter of the book was very interesting but pointed up a depressing reality.

Good story poorly narrated

I feel that I would have enjoyed reading this book far more than the experience of listening to it. The story was well researched. The narrator was monotone, sounded like Siri, and frequently mispronounced or over-enunciated words. I could only listen for short periods at a time to avoid getting a headache.