Unraveled cover art

Unraveled

The Life and Death of a Garment

Preview

Free with 30-day trial
Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Unraveled

Written by: Maxine Bedat
Narrated by: Maxine Bedat
Free with 30-day trial

₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹1,005.00

Buy Now for ₹1,005.00

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Longlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award

A groundbreaking chronicle of the birth - and death - of a pair of jeans, that exposes the fractures in our global supply chains, and our relationships to each other, ourselves, and the planet

Take a look at your favorite pair of jeans. Maybe you bought them on Amazon or the Gap; maybe the tag says "Made in Bangladesh" or "Made in Sri Lanka". But do you know where they really came from, how many thousands of miles they crossed, or the number of hands who picked, spun, wove, dyed, packaged, shipped, and sold them to get to you? The fashion industry operates with radical opacity, and it's only getting worse to disguise countless environmental and labor abuses. It epitomizes the ravages inherent in the global economy, and all in the name of ensuring that we keep buying more while thinking less about its real cost.

In Unraveled, entrepreneur, researcher, and advocate Maxine Bédat follows the life of an American icon - a pair of jeans - to reveal what really happens to give us our clothes. We visit a Texas cotton farm figuring out how to thrive without relying on fertilizers that poison the earth. Inside dyeing and weaving factories in China, where chemicals that are banned in the West slosh on factory floors and drain into waterways used to irrigate local family farms. Sewing floors in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are crammed with women working for illegally low wages to produce garments as efficiently as machines. Back in America, our jeans get stowed, picked, and shipped out by Amazon warehouse workers pressed to be as quick as the robots primed to replace them. Finally, those jeans we had to have get sent to landfills--or, if they've been "donated," shipped back around the world to Africa, where they're sold for pennies in secondhand markets or buried and burned in mountains of garbage.

A sprawling, deeply researched, and provocative tour-de-force, Unraveled is not just the story of a pair of pants, but also the story of our global economy and our role in it. Told with piercing insight and unprecedented reporting, Unraveled challenges us to use our relationship with our jeans - and all that we wear - to reclaim our central role as citizens to refashion a society in which all people can thrive and preserve the planet for generations to come.

©2021 Maxine Bedat (P)2021 Penguin Audio
Business Development Engineering

Critic Reviews

"A sharp angle on the hot topics of globalisation and sustainability, seen through the 'biography' of a pair of jeans. Bédat illustrates the environmental, economic and social pressures building up in the global fashion and garment industry and uncovers the unseen consequences of our thoughtless shopping choices." (Financial Times, Best Books of 2021, Business)

"Required reading for the conscientious." (Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and New Yorker writer)

Unraveled is at once fascinating and disturbing. Read it before you buy a new pair of jeans, or anything else, for that matter. It will forever change the way you look at fashion." (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction and New Yorker writer)

What listeners say about Unraveled

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.