Anthropologist Giulia Mensitieri Exposes Fashion's Precarious Labour in New Graphic Novel

The book, illustrated by the artist Danicollaterale, was released on October 1 by La Découverte/Delcourt. It draws on 15 years of research by Mensitieri, a doctoral researcher in social anthropology at the CNRS, into the working lives behind the industry's prestige.

One scene described in the work takes place in a small Paris flat, where a dozen women work through the night around a scrap of fabric that must become a haute couture dress within hours. The finished piece is destined to sell for between €70,000 and €100,000.

Yet the workers each leave with an envelope of cash paying no more than the hourly minimum-wage rate. Mensitieri describes these "little hands" of couture as a mixed group: students, factory workers, people from Asian immigrant backgrounds and professional seamstresses brought in as reinforcements.

The researcher observed one such workshop operating at full tilt in the run-up to a Fashion Week. Her account asks how a person can be dressed in Chanel yet lack the money to buy a beer at a bar that same evening.

Across the industry, the book examines the gap between fashion's glamorous image and the exploitation and precarity faced by many of the people who produce its most expensive garments.