Review of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline (2012). Published by Portfolio Hardcover.

The blog posts in the next month or so might be my final concluding ones for a while—I’m moving to India on a Fulbright, to conduct research and write poems in Kolkata and West Bengal, which means my days are going to be filled with work rather than sitting around and reading a lot. I’m going to miss having so much free time!

For those who are new to my blog, welcome! I went to the Fashion Institute of Technology all of those years ago when I was an undergraduate, which means that I had my world steeped within fashion for a couple of years. I ultimately did not decide to pursue the industry as a career because of a plethora of reasons, one of which was detailed in this book specifically.

I’ve had my copy of Overdressed since I was a sophomore in college, but had never gotten around to reading it. Back then, I had read some chunks here and there, but never sat down and actually read it all the way through.

Anyways, I was staring at it sitting on my bookshelf and then decided now was the time, years after I had graduated. I also lowkey wanted to get rid of it, which is why I wanted to read it before I did so.

Here’s my review!

The average American owns way too many clothes than what they actually need.

The core argument of this book is tracking habits of the average American consumer and how Americans especially own a ton of clothes. These clothes, once we decide that we’re done with them, often end up in landfills, further polluting the planet even more than the act of creating the clothes already has.

Throughout the book, Kline interviews a lot of people throughout the industry, and I honestly started laughing every time the Fashion Institute of Technology was mentioned. It feels so surreal to have once been associated with that school, although I did not recognize any of the names mentioned.

Kline mixes together personal experiences with the hard facts, meaning that this is a bit of a book that fuses together genres. We get the more journalistic side of things with the personal, especially when Kline opens up her closet and sees how she, too, owns way too many clothes.

As someone who has studied this before, I found a lot of the core statistics to be content I’ve seen before in similar studies. I knew already going into this the average person owns hundreds of clothing items when you include accessories and shoes, and that this was a major problem.

That said, this is a good starter book if you’re just starting to get your toes wet in the information it’s presenting and discussing. If you have not read much about the fashion industry and how terrible it is, this is a great start.

My one of the critique of the book stems from the fact it was released in the early 2010s—it was before Internet shopping began to really take off, which means quite a bit of the content in the book is now really outdated.

For example, Kline brings up brick and mortar stores quite a bit, which is not as relevant in the world we live in today.

Most people are shopping online, rather than in person, which creates an entire new problem for the environment when it comes to delivery trucks, packaging, and everything it takes to get that product at your door.

Overall Thoughts

While I’m glad to have sat down and read this book, I also think that it solidified my decision to remove it from my bookshelf.

In one way, it kind of reminded me of why I decided to not to pursue the industry at the end of the day, and it is a much needed reminder as I see people all around me buying new clothes and outfits to post on their social media.

But as I mentioned before, this book didn’t present new information for me, and I found it outdated. Definitely do pick it up though once if you’re interested in what it has to say—it is still valuable.

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