Just reading about made to order fashion on BoF (its being a possible solution for wasteful pre-production wholesale models), and it concludes:
"Szeto believes that it’s not too late for fashion to become more efficient. “A shirt takes 20 to 30 minutes of labour time,” he said. “So why does it take a month to make?”"
In what world does a shirt take 20–30 minutes to make? There are definitely ways to speed up production with automated manufacturing but, even giving them the benefit of the doubt, and assuming this is an incredibly simple shirt—no fancy cuffs, pleating, do away with the yoke, who needs a notched collar, let's machine the buttons on, what flat fell seams?—when considering all the different processes, 20–30 minutes is still a stretch. And here Szeto is talking about made to order and custom sizing, so economies of scale become trickier to apply—there are still ways to sew in bulk but, ultimately, you're stuck with cutting / prepping individual units.
MTO is an interesting solution to the traditional pre-produced wholesale model—lower start up costs, less waste stock, flexibility in terms of design—but this whimsical statement for how long it takes to make a shirt sums up so much that is wrong with the industry. The time and labour of the people who make clothes is undervalued at every step and opportunistic labels have forced cut corners, little to no labour rights and questionable safety standards throughout production chains. There are ways to do fashion better, and made to order is one, but don't present it as an option and then conflate it with unrealistic caveats that undermine its potential benefits.
