Oct 7, 2026 · 47 min · 10 segments
**Alex Hoppe: Where does fashion come from?** Why does one pair of jeans feel right, while another looks hopelessly out of date? And how much of our personal taste is shaped before we even enter a…
Kevin CanersHost
Can you draw the line between those two things? They, they seem a bit separate to me on first glance.
Um, so the sort of the big finding, certainly the most surprising finding from my fieldwork was that a lot of fashion design is happening in India and in China and in, uh, in Bangladesh even.
So what I found is that suppliers in India, they started out just doing the very basic assembly, and then they also learned how to do, uh, pattern cutting.
And, you know, 10 years later, they also figured out how to do kind of the next step.
Like, there's been immense amount of skepticism, like active skepticism, saying design is one of the things that will not be offshored.
And so this phenomenon of upgrading that I found, I think it's, it's happening in apparel.
... heard about the Chinese is they would try to get these factories over there and then learn from the whole process-
Can you draw the line between those two things? They, they seem a bit separate to me on first glance.
Um, so the sort of the big finding, certainly the most surprising finding from my fieldwork was that a lot of fashion design is happening in India and in China and in, uh, in Bangladesh even.
So what I found is that suppliers in India, they started out just doing the very basic assembly, and then they also learned how to do, uh, pattern cutting.
And, you know, 10 years later, they also figured out how to do kind of the next step.
Like, there's been immense amount of skepticism, like active skepticism, saying design is one of the things that will not be offshored.
And so this phenomenon of upgrading that I found, I think it's, it's happening in apparel.
... heard about the Chinese is they would try to get these factories over there and then learn from the whole process-
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