For the first four minutes of John Oliver's main story on Last Week Tonight, it's all good news: "Trendy clothes are cheaper than ever, and cheap clothes are trendier than ever," and clothing executives get rich while consumers get great deals. Then Oliver asks the obvious question, about how clothing brands make so much money on cheap fashion? "Let's be honest: You know the answer to that," he added, taking a trip down memory lane to the 1990s and the intermittent outrage over sweatshops and child labor and garment factory deaths since.
"Look, this is going to keep happening as long as we let it," Oliver said. "So we need to show clothing brands not just that we care, but why they should." Toward that end, he announced that he's bought lunch for the heads of Gap Inc., H&M, Walmart, and a few other brands with cheap clothes, to be delivered on Monday. And if that sounds like a nice gesture, well, watch until the end. —Peter Weber
The Week
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