Buy new:
$14.91
FREE delivery: Saturday, April 20 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
List Price: $18.00 Details

The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Except for books, Amazon will display a List Price if the product was purchased by customers on Amazon or offered by other retailers at or above the List Price in at least the past 90 days. List prices may not necessarily reflect the product's prevailing market price.
Learn more
Save: $3.09 (17%)
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Saturday, April 20 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Friday, April 19. Order within 5 hrs 29 mins
In Stock
$$14.91 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$14.91
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime
FREE delivery Tuesday, April 23 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Condition: Used: Like New
Comment: The cover shows no damage or marks! Ship within 24 hours!!
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Other Sellers on Amazon
Added
$10.00
+ $4.99 shipping
Sold by: Gama1521
Sold by: Gama1521
(21807 ratings)
89% positive over last 12 months
Only 10 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Added
$12.15
+ $3.99 shipping
Sold by: SuperBookDeals---
Sold by: SuperBookDeals---
(41575 ratings)
72% positive over last 12 months
In stock
Usually ships within 4 to 5 days.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Added
$13.00
+ $3.99 shipping
Sold by: Prime Deals, USA
Sold by: Prime Deals, USA
(4283 ratings)
91% positive over last 12 months
Usually ships within 6 to 7 days
Shipping rates and Return policy
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion Paperback – August 27, 2013

4.4 out of 5 stars 702

Great on Kindle
Great Experience. Great Value.
iphone with kindle app
Putting our best book forward
Each Great on Kindle book offers a great reading experience, at a better value than print to keep your wallet happy.

Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.

View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.

Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.

Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.

Get the free Kindle app: Link to the kindle app page Link to the kindle app page
Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$14.91","priceAmount":14.91,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"14","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"91","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"ESg4Pmsg9ZPh9fUJ6S8HLajevg88AYLj5ArE4oDALNTp3xTDOaFS1FQrtRRxHfjknqPWplOPEwqoThrqxTsDt0TxjVPqzCtmfIrNYdHB7QhIGPkM5HlWAQJGaCIdasB32MCdUTO%2FqytRd0W4nMUZxA%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$13.41","priceAmount":13.41,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"13","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"41","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"ESg4Pmsg9ZPh9fUJ6S8HLajevg88AYLj37oheAYsRR6fSVgvPzBnS6zoJmspy7s5wQZL0RC2vAXoe%2Bb08K8l9TIMxArNW3xeGdIQLHWNeAw7mosdapuPvnvATd3naEnpxGLIWzEdWH8Lg762j3wtowCTn4BprxJ7WbJllRu%2B5C3%2BlvoK19BDZvT9thC39iAh","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

“Overdressed does for T-shirts and leggings what Fast Food Nation did for burgers and fries.”
—Katha Pollitt
 
Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. Stores ranging from discounters like Target to traditional chains like JCPenney now offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. And we have little reason to keep wearing and repairing the clothes we already own when styles change so fast and it’s cheaper to just buy more.
 
Cline sets out to uncover the true nature of the cheap fashion juggernaut. What are we doing with all these cheap clothes? And more important, what are they doing to us, our society, our environment, and our economic well-being?

The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now

Frequently bought together

$14.91
Get it as soon as Saturday, Apr 20
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
$15.49
Get it as soon as Monday, Apr 22
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
$11.59
Get it as soon as Saturday, Apr 20
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Cline is the Michael Pollan of fashion…Hysterical levels of sartorial consumption are terrible for the environment, for workers, and even, ironically, for the way we look.”
—Michelle Goldberg, Newsweek/The Daily Beast

“How did Americans end up with closets crammed with flimsy, ridiculously cheap garments? Elizabeth Cline travels the world to trace the rise of fast fashion and its cost in human misery, environmental damage, and common sense.”

—Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation

Overdressed is eye-opening and definitely turns retailing on its head. Cline’s insightful book reveals the serious problems facing our industry today. The tremendous values and advantages of domestic production are often ignored in favor of a price point that makes clothing disposable.”

—Erica Wolf, executive director, Save the Garment Center

 

About the Author

Elizabeth L. Cline has written for AMCtv.com, The Daily Beast, New York, The Etsy Blog, Popular Science, The New Republic, The Village Voice and seedmagazine.com. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
 
Visit www.overdressedthebook.com

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Portfolio; Reprint edition (August 27, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1591846544
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1591846543
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.48 x 0.7 x 8.19 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 702

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Elizabeth L. Cline
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Elizabeth L. Cline is the author of The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good and Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
702 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2014
I remember the day I first shopped at Forever21 with my mom. "Finally," I thought. "Clothes that are cute AND fit me." I was sixteen then. Now more than ten years later, I hardly have any clothes at all. My mom had encouraged me to throw away clothes every year because she hated clutter and clothes that are hardly worn. In fact, she asked me to clean out my closet last week since I'm hardly home now.

When I got sick and tired of not having clothes to wear because I'm older now, I started looking up "good quality clothes." Some websites explained wearing 100% cotton was better. That's when I realized most of my clothes are polyester or some other unknown fabric. Viscose? Rayon? No one ever told me that the material of fabric mattered. I never thought of it.

That's when I stumbled upon this book. It explained everything I had been wondering for years. How did Forever21 manage a two dollar tank top? Why is it so hard to find clothes that last or stay in style? How my mom used to say, "Buy it. It's cheap. If you don't like it, well, it's only 10 dollars." And why an older fellow once said to me, "Wow, you buy a lot of clothes. More than once a month?" (I bought clothes once a week because I thought that was normal.)

There may be writing errors in the book as stated by another reviewer, but I'm just looking for answers. And this book did the job. It was a fun read.
6 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2012
This book came to my attention through one of the fashion blogs I follow, FashionAtForty. In this post she (not only looks really cute) but also gave a pretty good overview of what she had found in the book thus far, having read only the first half.

I have conflicted feelings about clothing. On the one hand, I'm very aware that I should be able to look great with fewer items than what I actually own; on the other hand, all of my sources for current trends -- blogs, magazines, style shows, and shops -- show people in an almost infinite mix of shapes, colors, and prints. How much is reasonable to carry in my closet? How much is a reasonable clothing budget?

Overdressed didn't give me answers to these questions, but it did offer more meaningful factors to consider when I make purchasing decisions than simply "do I want it?"

The book focuses primarily on "fast fashion," defined as "a radical method of retailing that has broken away from seasonal selling and puts out new inventory constantly throughout the year. Fast-fashion merchandise is typically priced much lower than its competitors'." The introduction, "Seven Pairs of $7 Shoes," and the first chapter, "I Have Enough Clothing to Open a Store," describe the shopping habits of the author herself and of young women known as "haulers," who make YouTube videos of their shopping hauls. The focus of these two chapters is the consumerism that breeds from the price and abundance of fast fashion.

I watched 3 minutes of a 15 minute haul video in the interests of research... I have never seen anything so incredibly painful in my life. She didn't even try on the clothes, just sort of held it up enough to see the fabric, but not the shape of the garment, and talked about what she liked about it.

Chapter 2, "How America Lost Its Shirts," describes the history of the garment industry in the United States.

Chapter 3, "High and Low Fashion Make Friends," examines the relationship between price and value. Summary: there isn't necessarily a correlation between high cost and high quality.

In Chapter 4, "Fast Fashion," Cline recounts the history of fast fashion and its impact on the retail world and also the United States garment industry.

Chapter 5, "The Afterlife of Cheap Clothes," was perhaps the most painful section of the book. Cline debunks what she calls "the clothing deficit myth." So often we buy clothes thinking that if they don't work out, no problem, we'll pass them on to a donation recipient like Goodwill and they will find their way to some needy person grateful for our cast-offs. "Of all the clothing that we dump off on charities' doorsteps... less than 20 percent gets sold through stores. About half of it doesn't even get a shot at the stores, going straight into the postconsumer waste stream and on to such facilities as Mid-West Textile" from where it will be sorted and sold by the ton to secondhand clothing dealers, rag companies to be pulped and made into insulation or carseat stuffing, bundled to be sold by the ton to Africa, or put into landfills.

Chapter 6, "Sewing is a Good Job, a Great Job," describes the industry conditions for garment workers and some innovative business efforts.

In Chapter 7, "China and the End of Cheap Fashion," Cline recounts how she went undercover to various clothing manufacturers in China and Bangladesh to learn more about the overseas industry. She found many of her assumptions about garment manufacturing were outdated and misguided, and that seeing the conditions, not only of the factories themselves, but of the environments in which they operated, changed her understanding of the fashion industry. She also predicted the coming end of fast-fashion as we know it: the rising standard of living in China will drive prices up, and other countries will not be able to move into the void as national infrastructure in places like Bangladesh will prevent them from being able to operate under just-in-time principles on short deadlines, as fast fashion requires.

Chapter 8, "Make, Alter, and Mend," is perhaps the weakest chapter of the book. This is not entirely Cline's fault. The conditions she describes that led to the rise of fast fashion -- international agreements such as NAFTA, pricing conditions, the intense marketing practices to which consumers are susceptible, and the economy generally -- are not conditions that can easily be altered, no matter how alert consumers are. Where we can make alternate choices in food purchasing practices by choosing to buy organic or local or at a farmer's market, no such alternate clothing marketplace exists. I can attest myself that it is difficult to determine the manufacturing practices of any given clothing brand, and the "fast" nature of fast fashion means that no single brand has consistent practices among its entire line of offerings. Eaters can grow even a small amount of vegetables in their own homes, but learning to make clothing is much more complicated, expensive, and time and labor intensive. Cline spends a lot of time talking up the possibilities of making one's own clothing, or buying refashioned vintage (a possibility that erodes with every passing year), but even she admits that she doesn't know if she'll be spending time sewing her own wardrobe two years in the future. Her most meaningful suggestion is to slow down, to buy more intentionally, to pay closer attention to fit and quality of construction, to be willing to spend more per piece while holding total amount spent steady.

Cline ends the book on a hopeful note in Chapter 9, "The Future of Fashion." She lists a few conscientious designers and clothing retailers who are working to bring quality and morality back to the fashion industry and describes their methods for achieving those ends.

In all, this was a fascinating, eye-opening read. Cline has an engaging voice. She used the contents of her own closet and her own shopping habits to illustrate the nature of fast fashion. She did an amazing amount of research, including, as mentioned, her trips to China, Bangladesh, and the Dominican Republic, but also research into historical shopping and manufacturing practices, public policy conditions, post-consumer processing practices, and the environmental impact of textile production.

I would really have loved it if she could have offered more guidance into choosing labels and researching the values that guide brands' manufacturing practices. Illustrations would have been incredibly helpful -- both of the factories she visited, and also of the clothing construction she described. It should be noted that I read this book on my Kindle, and I do not know if such illustrations were available in the paper copies.

Other reviewers have commented on some of the editing issues in this book. As I read, I did note where those came up, but in many cases they were misused words rather than formatting or copy-editing mistakes, so I chalk that up to a failure with the publisher. I appreciate Cline putting together such a well-researched, eye-opening book, that will certainly guide my future purchasing decisions.
19 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2021
I purchased this book originally for myself to listen to while on walks. My boyfriend took an interest in the book and started requesting that I put it on while on drives. Together we've learned so much about the world of fast fashion, and the state of the fast-fashion industry circa 2009. I sew my own clothes and already had a lot of strong feelings about the textiles I use, but I'd only gone on what I knew in terms of the science behind textile creation. It was helpful to see how the topics which I'd only seen on a microscopic level, played out on a macroscopic level. While the information in this book is definitely dated, and we are looking forward to moving on to more contemporary books on the topic, this book was a great primer for anyone interesting in learning more about where their clothes come from.
2 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2012
As a stylist, it is always concerning that consumers will tend to buy cheap and poorly made fashion. This book has been an eye-opener on the fashion industry as it operates today - and given me a great deal more ammunition! The author argues convincingly that we are wearing 'rags' - poorly designed and constructed fast fashion made out of cheap materials. We are not doing ourselves any favours, let along the planet. I had expected a very 'green' approach - the environmental message is clear, and especially fascinating within the context of this wildly out-of-control industry. Most Gen X and Ys have never constructed a full garment and so have no idea of what constitutes quality in clothing. This book will change the way you look at clothing forever - to quote the author "cheap clothes not only undermine those who sew, sell and design them, they're the pitiful result of decades of price pressure that has erased the craftsmanship and splendor of what we wear...When we can recognize how clothing is put together, what it's made of, and can visualize the long journey it makes to our closets, it becomes harder to view it as worthless or disposable. Instead, we begin to want to own garments that are unique and made with a level of skill sand good materials that cheap fashion simply can't provide us." Note that the book largely discusses issues within a US context.
11 people found this helpful
Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Sonia Maria da Silva
4.0 out of 5 stars A realidade do fast fashion
Reviewed in Brazil on August 6, 2021
Achei muito bom !
Faz uma retrospectiva de como o consumo de roupas mudou nas últimas décadas.
Anu Bararia
3.0 out of 5 stars Okay okay
Reviewed in India on January 2, 2021
Could be shorter for what it conveys. A light read if you have toooo much time at hand. I had to scan through pages to get pretty much what i already knew.
2 people found this helpful
Report
Luisa
5.0 out of 5 stars Interessante
Reviewed in Italy on October 26, 2017
Anche se non condivido alcune delle fonti citate (sono ad esempio a volte semplici pagine web le quali a loro volta dovrebbero citare la loro fonte o ammettere che sono pareri personali), molte delle riflessioni sul mercato della moda odierno sono condivisibili e sensate. Probabilmente molte di queste considerazioni, senza rendervene conto, le avete già fatte mentre gironzolate nei negozi. Leggerle qui, per esteso e contestualizzate, vi farà capire che avevate assolutamente ragione: i prezzi sono ridicolmente alti e del tutto scollegati dalla qualità del prodotto, tanto per dirne una.
2 people found this helpful
Report
Laura
4.0 out of 5 stars Food for thought
Reviewed in Australia on August 15, 2017
The author brings to light some very important truths. As the consumer we have more power than ever before. Maybe it's time we harness this.
If your after a light hearted yet serious discussion regarding the fashion industry this is the book for you. Be inspired till the last page.
MrsKastrup
5.0 out of 5 stars Read It
Reviewed in Canada on March 2, 2016
GREAT book showing the ugly sides of 'fast fashion'. I really enjoyed the majority of this book - I was so excited I read it in one day. Fast fashion has really changed the way we think about clothing and what we wear - and it is not for the better. People are buying TONS of clothing that they don't wear and they can buy so much because it is SO CHEAP. It makes no sense. I really appreciated how she discussed what happens to donated clothing - because so many people think they're doing something good by donating the clothes they don't want. The truth is - so much is donated that is junk (too trendy, poorly made, ill-fitting) and a lot of it can't be re-sold, reused or recycled. For the most part, fast fashion is bad business that is wreaking havoc on the earth and humankind (a loaded statement, I know, but in many ways - its true!).
2 people found this helpful
Report