The Mechanics Of The Global Garment Industry Illustrated By The Life-cycle Of A Cotton Tshirt

NPR’s Planet Money published an amazing piece of journalism on the mechanics of the global garment industry illustrated by the life-cycle of a cotton tshirt. Alex Blumberg narrates as they follow the shirt from cotton seeds in Mississippi, to the rhythm of the machine weaving process in Indonesia, to the lives of people in Bangladesh and Colombia where the shirts are made, to the box container ships that make global shipping affordable, and eventually onto our bodies. Well, not our bodies, yet. Order a shirt here.

Not only is the story of the shirt, the earth-straddling industry that makes it possible, and the impacts of industry on people’s lives interesting and, in my preachy opinion, capital-I Important, but the presentation is also fantastic–wonderfully shot, concise videos; detail-rich supplementary text, and well-designed infographics. A good way to spend your lunch hour, especially if you care about clothes.

-Pete