

Wu Chunming: "Even if I make a lot of money, it won't satisfy me.

If you tell themmore, they won't understand anyway." They asked me, what did you do that you have changed so much? I told them that I studied and worked hard. In the ongoing debate about globalization, what's been missing is the voices of the workers themselves.īao Yongxiu: "My mother tells me to come home and get married, but if I marry now, before I have fullydeveloped myself, I can only marry an ordinary worker, so I'm not in a rush."Ĭhen Ying: "When I went home for the new year, everyone said I had changed. They choose to leave their homes in order to earn money, to learn new skills, and to see the world.

By focusing so much on ourselves and our gadgets, we have rendered the individuals on the other end into invisibility, as tiny and interchangeable as the parts of a mobile phone.Ĭhinese workers are not forced into factories because of our insatiable desire for iPods. In fact, China makes goods for markets all over the world, including its own, thanks to a combination of factors: its low costs, its large and educated workforce, and a flexible manufacturing system that responds quickly to market demands. We must be peculiarly self-obsessed to imagine that we have the power to drive tens of millions of people on the other side of the world to migrate and suffer in such terrible ways. So, this simple narrative equating Western demand and Chinese suffering is appealing, especially at a time when many of us already feel guilty about our impact on the world, but it's also inaccurate and disrespectful. After all, what's wrong with a world in which a worker on an iPhone assembly line can't even afford to buy one? It's taken for granted that Chinese factories are oppressive, and that it's our desire for cheap goods that makes them so. We, the beneficiaries of globalization, seem to exploit these victims with every purchase we make, and the injustice feels embedded in the products themselves. Now, this is a conversation that often calls up a lot of guilt.Imagine the teenage farm girl who makes less than a dollar an hour stitching your running shoes, or the young Chinese man who jumps off a rooftop after working overtime assembling your iPad. So I'd like to talk a little bit about the people who make the things we use every day: our shoes, our handbags, our computers and cell phones. These are some quick steps you can take to weed out some of the fakes, and is not a complete guide to all tips necessary, but it will provide some insulation from many of the phonies in the viral marketplace.Hi. Authentic brass will have an aged look, and the phony brass will have a shiny, superficially cheap appearance. This is a cheap metal used by counterfeiters that is colored to look like brass and replicate the authentic brass that Dooney would implement. This would represent nickel in many cases. A good way to inspect the hardware for authentic or phony brass is to look closely for evidence of silver areas. Dooney & Bourke utilizes a high quality brass for all their metal accents. Any evidence of sloppy and rushed stitch lines resulting in wobbly or asymmetric seams is a major red flag.Īlways check the hardware. There should be no crooked or uneven stitch lines along the rim of the piping leather. The stitch lines associated with the piping will also be high quality. The piping refers to the rounded edges of the handbag, and this feature will be a high quality leather. Coach has also made this change from the USA to China.Īfter checking where the handbag was made, check the piping. However, vintage D&B handbags should all say made in the USA. Many of the newer bags are manufactured in China. So for the record, a D&B that says made in China does not mean it is a fake handbag. But in fact, it is an authentic Dooney, and it was made in China. What? Dooney is supposed to be made in the USA, right? The buyer then starts to panic, assuming she had been duped by a phony handbag.

The buyer purchases a Dooney handbag, takes it home, throws it over her shoulder and it looks great! Then she peaks inside and starts playing around with the interior zippers etc, and stumbles across a tiny tag that says those three little words: Made in China. And this can create a lot of confusion for the buyer. Dooney and (&) Bourke handbags were once a staple of American quality and fashion, but like many other fashion designers, have went the way of cheaper manufacturing via Chinese labor.
