American narrative cinema loves to tell stories about fashion. Movies and fashion have been intertwined almost since moving pictures were born. If you search for movies about fashion designers, models or magazine editors, you will be graced with an embarrassment of riches. Looking to compile a list of films about fashionable “It” girls, tragic fashion victims, makeovers, shopgirls, and Cinderellas? How many entries can you fit in an excel spreadsheet? But one phase in the life of fashionable dress has gotten a lot less screen time. When it comes to movies about garment workers, it’s a lot easier to find documentaries than fictional stories.
And there are some really great documentaries on the subject. The True Cost, for example is interesting in that it attempts to reveal the human and environmental cost of fast fashion’s entire lifecycle. And this amazing database provides links to several other important works.
But, if Hollywood really hearts fashion, why is it so much easier to find documentaries about garment workers than it is to find narrative films?
One answer is obvious – seeing the people who make our clothes isn’t entertaining. “Fashion” runs on the proposal that we (we being consumers) use clothing to fit into and/or stand out from society, to express ourselves, to discover or conceal who we “really” are, to generally act as an extension of our identity. That story is maybe best embodied by the capitalist re-vision of Cinderella, in which her true self is revealed through her beauty, good taste and pretty clothes – and has nothing at all to do with her noble birth (that’d be a little bit too much truth). In fact, in Disney’s Cinderella, the dress that’s marked by the manual labor of the heroine’s animal friends (yikes) is discarded in favor of one that appears “magically.” That’s how we like to imagine our clothes – magically appearing on racks, in showrooms, or delivered in boxes, as though its first appearance on Earth was the moment before it would adorn our bodies. Or perhaps we see designers as our fairy godmothers. They scribble out a sketch in a magical notepad, wave their hands, and Allacazoola! The clothes appear!
But why then is it more bearable to watch a documentary about garment workers than a fictional film? Perhaps because, despite being nearer to reality, the documentary’s very requirement of appearing “objective” makes it easier to maintain emotional distance from its subjects. Identification has long been understood as one of the fundamental processes of narrative cinema. The term refers both to the process of sympathizing with a character, and our to own processes of identity formation. In other words, we use narrative cinema in much the same way we use fashion – as a tool for creating who we are. And mainstream American cinema generally encourages sympathizing or identifying with a fairly narrow range of categories and values; consumerist values being the most prevalent. Because if we stop believing that we can become who we are through shopping, we might stop buying movies too. We also prefer to imagine that we can become who we are through our own individual will, not through the exploitation of poor people (or field mice).
Despite these hurdles, narrative movies about garment workers do sometimes get made. So, in honor of Labor Day, here are 10 movies about the people who make our clothes.
1 and 2. Turn of the Century Two-fer:
The Song of the Shirt (1908), Crime of Carelessness (1912)
It wasn’t always the case that clothing manufacturing and garment workers were invisible in fiction. Nineteenth-century literature was full of pretty little seamstresses who generally served to teach aristos how to behave better and live more fully. Then, like good girls, they politely and symbolically died of consumption. (Think Mimi in La Boheme or Fantine in Les Miserables). This spirit carried into Progressive Era cinema in some odd ways.
Seamstresses and piece-workers were popular symbols of the evils of industrial capitalism. In D.W. Griffith’s 1908 film, The Song of the Shirt, a poor young woman needs money to save her dying sister. She begs for work from the wealthy owner of a shirtwaist factory, then slaves over her sewing machine while the capitalists go to a restaurant and drink and dance with pretty girls. Then, finally…the seamstress doesn’t get paid and the sister dies. The end. What’s really chilling about this short film is that unlike Mimi and Fantine, the sister’s death doesn’t teach the rich men anything. They don’t even notice.
Crime of Carelessness was released a year after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, is clearly based on those events, and is much more nervous about its politics. The film begins with the factory owners sealing off the fire exits. Their new “safety” plan is to hang up “No Smoking” signs. Well, wouldn’t you know it, a young, well meaning, but “careless” jackanapes smokes a cigarette anyway and burns the whole darn place down. In this factory fire no girls leap to their deaths onto the city sidewalks, or are burned alive. Everyone escapes. The smoker is blamed, shunned and can’t find work. His fiancée finally goes to the owner and says something like, “Ummmm….It’s kind of your fault too? Because of the sealed exit doors?” The owner leaps to his feet. Reformed and ashamed, he writes the smoker a letter that says, “come on back to work. I guess we’re both equally responsible.” (Even this level of culpability isn’t portrayed very convincingly. The film, after all, is not subtitled …And Also Crime of Callousness) 
I wonder if the garment workers who survived the Triangle fire (or any of the 20,000 women who went on strike in 1909 to protest working conditions they already knew were unsafe) saw this film and tried to burn down the theater?
The full films can be found here and here
3. Mannequin
(the one from 1937, not 1987 but what the hell, watch that one too. I guarantee it’s weirder than you remember.)
I showed this in a film and labor class, and created several new Joan Crawford fans, who were amazed to learn that “old” movies sometimes had really strong female characters. Here, Joan is determined to rise above her Irish immigrant ghetto upbringing, and the old-world expectation of wives being tied to the home. She works at a button factory, gets married to local con-artist, works as a showgirl, gets pursued by Spencer Tracy – playing a man who pulled himself out of the same slums to become a shipping magnate. Joan ends up divorcing the hoodlum and rejecting Tracy, instead earning her ow
n money as the titular mannequin. There’s so much more, including an anti-union subplot that becomes more meaningful if we remember that 1937 is the year that the Wagner Act, guaranteeing the right to organize, was ratified. Studio heads were forced to negotiate, and Hollywood, very reluctantly for producers, became a union town. So the fact that naïve shipping workers lose Tracy’s fortune and their own jobs because they foolishly joined a larger union seems like sour grapes. But Joan’s hats and collars are so dazzling (by Adrian, of course) that you won’t even mind.
Watch the trailer! (“Through the doors of these factories flow girls, girls, girls”)
4. The Pajama Game (1957)
A film historian who sat on my dissertation committee described this film as “Doris Day before she got annoying.” It is buoyant, Technicolor good times. With some really weird bits thrown in (What is happening at Hernando’s Hideaway?! Bob Fosse is happening, that’s what!).
In this film, garment workers are lily-white, unions are a fact of life, and everyone is just a step away from the middle-class. What’s preventing them form getting there? A 7 ½ cent raise! In this dream world, everything about unions and striking is adorable. And with everyone so reasonable and amiable, do we really need a union? Isn’t “Babe” (Day as the head of the Grievance Committee) really just creating unnecessary obstacles?
Watch “Seven and a half cents” and learn what striking workers want! (Spoiler: it’s a washing machine and a TV and a trip to France and a foreign car and a ping pong table with gold paddles)
5. The Garment Jungle (1957)
Released the same year as The Pajama Game, The Garment Jungle paints a very different picture of garment workers and the role of unions in America. This is a low-budget, corny film that’s easy to dismiss as a “B” On the Waterfront. Don’t. Obviously, OTW is a cinematic masterwork. It’s also an anti-union apologia for “friendly witnesses” of HUAC.
The Garment Jungle on the other hand places its sympathies entirely with workers and organizers. Unlike in OTW, mobsters are paid to prevent organizing through intimidation and violence.
While not exactly multi-cultural except compared to The Pajama Game, it’s at least implied that the garment workers are mostly Jewish and Italian. And the initially anti-union factory owner is played by Lee J. Cobb, a Jewish actor, who you might recognize from his role as crooked union boss, Johnny Friendly in OTW.
Also, there must have been a letter from a producer somewhere saying that the movie needed some scantily clad ladies. The result is pretty funny.
You can watch the trailer here. (“Life is cheap in the GARMENT JUNGLE!”)
6. Mahogany (1975)
“This is fashion, not politics.” “Everything’s politics, honey”
If you only watch one film on this list, let it be Mahogany. Behind-the-scenes chaos shows up on the screen. It’s over-the-top and campy as hell. But it’s also a brilliant co-optation of 1930s/40s women’s melodramas to portray the impossible limitations society places on working-class, Black femininity (see Jane Gaines’ “White Privilege and Looking Relations”).
Diana Ross plays Tracey Chambers. As the film begins, she’s worked up from shopgirl to executive assistant. But at night, she studies fashion design. The film depicts Tracey making a series of personal compromises as she attempts to achieve her professional goal of being a designer. She leaves her boyfriend (Billy Dee Williams), an aspiring politician and community organizer who doesn’t take her career seriously. She goes to Rome, moves in with a sociopathic, Bourdin-ian fashion photographer (Anthony Perkins) who re-christens her “Mahogany” and makes her a famous model. And at a charity fashion show, her attempt to debut her own design (an Orientalist/disco fantasy that Diana Ross designed herself) ends with “Mahogany” essentially being won at auction by an old aristocrat. And no, you’re not reading too much into it. In fact, you’re probably not reading enough into it.
A notable difference between this movie and other fashion films is that the price Tracey pays for becoming Mahogany is told in part through her relationship to the people who make her designs. In Chicago, Tracey’s inspirations come from the world around her, she is a gazing subject who transforms subway graffiti into wearable art. The dress is lovingly made up for her by an older relative who works at a garment factory. Later, her designs are a mish-mash of “Eastern” meets “outer space” (I guess?) and Mahogany screams at the nameless bodies hunched over sewing machines, demanding they work faster.
Again, there is so much more though…Phallic symbols are everywhere. The impotent photographer surrounds himself with cameras, guns and swords. At one point Anthony Perkins and Billy Dee Williams wrestle over one such gun (Williams wins, only to discover the gun can’t fire anyway….See what I mean?!). There’s a deadly photo shoot in an out-of-control-car. And Diana Ross’s costume designs…Just watch this movie, please?
Here is the extended trailer. See if you can resist.
7. Norma Rae (1979)
It’s a textile mill, not a garment factory. But garments are made of textiles, so I’m counting it. What can I say? This is “the” labor film of the late 20th century, which is fitting because textile mills are where industrial capitalism, and many of labor’s greatest moments began. It stars a young, magnetic Sally Field. And it’s about the unlikely collaboration between a “New York Jew” (Ron Leibman) and a North Carolina mom, and what people can do when they work together. You’ll like it. You’ll really like it.
Here’s the trailer. Go ahead and try not to feel inspired.
8. A Single Spark (1995)
This is a gorgeous, heartbreaking, and inspiring film from Korean New Wave director Park Kwang-Su. A Single Spark tells the story of Jeon Taeil, a garment worker and activist whose act of self-immolation “sparked” the labor movement in Korea.
Jeon Taeil’s story is told through the pieced-together perspective of a contemporary activist and intellectual who is trying to write the iconic figure’s biography while in hiding because of his own political actions. The two chronologies are sometimes intercut with documentary style footage of actual protests. This technique, reminiscent of older New Wave films (e.g. Oshima’s Cruel Story of Youth, Jireš’ The Joke) is used to particularly profound effect here. The boundaries between past and present, reality and fiction are kept fluid. As a result, unlike some other bio-pics of past labor leaders (let’s say Reds, for example) it’s impossible to keep history at a safe distance. As viewers, we’re forced to continually reflect on our own connections to the events portrayed onscreen.
Looks like the whole film is here with English subtitles.
9. Real Women Have Curves (2002)
A rare 21st century narrative that puts a Latina owned LA dress factory at its center. Told from the perspective of Ana, who works in her sister’s shop over the summer following high school graduation, RWHC is a coming-of-age story that deals with body image, generation gaps, sexual, gender, class and ethnic identity. Yet, largely because of Ferrera’s performance, manages to avoid didacticism. I wish there were a few more like this film, which gives each woman behind a sewing machine a distinct personality and set of personal challenges, and weaves the inequity of subcontracting systems into the plot. On the other hand, while of course Ana should go to college, the ending feels a little pat to me. Like the poor women in the factory end up being reduced to Lessons that Ana carries with her as she heads to a prestigious university in Manhattan, and strides toward some individualistic, middle-class notion of “success.” But maybe that’s being nitpicky. Because, it also has this (“right on, sister.”)
10. Kinky Boots (2005)
One of those British sleeper hits full of loveable, small town eccentrics and spontaneous dance numbers. Based on actual events and now a musical franchise, an old-fashioned shoe company, focused on quality over fashion, can’t keep pace with the demands of a globalized market. Hope comes when Charlie, the floundering new owner teams up with a drag queen, Lola/Simon and they work together to make higher quality boots for drag performers. Along the way, the white, football and cis-woman loving factory owner learns a little something about accepting people who are different from him. And all Black, gender-nonconforming Lola has to do to gain this tenuous acceptance is save Charlie’s life, then save his factory and all his employees’ jobs, then save his big Milan runway show. See how easy it is for everybody to get along? Kinda makes you want to sing!
The trailer. Cue Donna Summer…or something.
*******
The older films on this list can help to remind us of a few things. First, that there are certain conditions that we, as American citizens and workers (not just as shoppers and consumers) have declared unacceptable: child labor, physical abuse and harassment, excessive hours, unsafe surroundings, poverty wages, and so on. Second, that the major gains we’ve made have come from the bottom up. Capitalists focus on profit. That’s what makes them capitalists. Looking to the later films on the list, we need to realize that just because our textiles aren’t made in North Carolina anymore, and our pajamas aren’t made by Doris Day doesn’t mean we should accept 19th-century working conditions. If we really believed the kinds of labor conditions listed above were wrong, we’d make it illegal not only to practice them in the U.S., but to sell anything in the U.S. that profits from this kind of exploitation no matter where it’s made. It’s not impossible. But in order to change something, it helps to be able to imagine the world looking differently from how it does now.
The takeaway here is that, while never especially popular, it was a lot easier to imagine garment workers when we could realistically picture them as Joan Crawford or Doris Day. In the 21st century, we’re still trying to figure out how to tell this story. The results are mixed, but I think it’s important to keep trying, and keep spaces open to tell and listen to stories about where our clothes come from.
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