Luxury: Behind the Mirror of High-End Fashion (2019)

From coats to handbags, the demand for brand name fashion accessories is at an all-time high. Beyond the glamorous façade lies a culture that thrives on the exploitation and abuse of its migrant workers. The DW Documentary Luxury: Behind the Mirror infiltrates these factories, farms and tanneries to expose the real cost of high fashion.

We all know the brand name fashion houses - Gucci, Prada, Polo, etc. But most aren't aware of their inner workings. How and where are their products actually produced? As shown in the film, even the most luxurious handbag begins its life as a dead cow carcass on the floor of a slaughterhouse.

The fashion industry is actually composed of a massive network of contractors and subcontractors. Not all of these entities are as strictly regulated as they should be.

The filmmakers discover that working conditions are especially repellent in the Italian tanneries, which are the factories where the animal hides are meticulously processed into leather. The factories suffer from lax safety measures, frequent worker injury, exceedingly long working hours, and shamefully meager pay. One whistleblower recounts an incident that resulted in the shredding and removal of three of his knuckles.

From there, the filmmakers travel to China where fur rules the day. Tens of thousands of animal skins lace the streets, and are offered at ridiculously low prices. To meet the insane demand, 70 million animals are killed for their fur every year in China. For animal rights activists, the demand for cheap fur comes at far too grave a cost. The animals are kept in abhorrent environments, and are slaughtered with a cruelty few have witnessed.

Undercover cameras expose the working conditions and abuses that thrive within the walls of these private operations. Luxury: Behind the Mirror also features several contentious confrontations with supervisors and other members of management who have allowed these lapses to occur without consequence. Meanwhile, the representatives at the top of the industrial chain claim ignorance to these infractions.

Persuasive and disturbing, the film provides a wealth of evidence that the underbelly of the fashion industry is anything but glamorous.

Summary by Top Documentary Films

Animal Rights   Consumerism   Corporations   Economics   Human Rights
Rate this video 
Economics
Capitalism
The Best Films For Action
Trending Videos
Louis Theroux: The Settlers (2025)
62 min - Fourteen years after his first visit and 2011 film The Ultra Zionists, Louis Theroux meets some of the growing community of religious-nationalist Israelis who have settled in the West Bank.Louis...
The Feynman Series: Experiencing the Grandeur of the Universe
10 min - The Feynman Seriesis a companion project with The Sagan Seriesin hopes to promote scientific education and scientific literacy in the general population. Music : Goldmund - ThrenodyNarration...
Planet Community: A 5-Part Series Exploring Cooperation in Action (2019)
50 min - What happens when people work together to create solutions to the social, economic, and ecological issues we face today? Planet Communityis an exploration of intentional communities that are...
Waste = Food (2007)
49 min - Man is the only creature that produces landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in nations like China and India. The waste...
The Stimulator: Food Fight!
18 min - This week: 1. Warming up police intelligence 2. A hungry man is an angry man 3. Farm land not airports 4. Vintage riot porn: The battle for Narita 5. Bosnia burns 6. Bilbao welcomes the IMF 7...
Why Does Trump Hate Sesame Street?
8 min - Why is Trump so hell-bent on defunding PBS? Its part of a larger plan one where he can control not just what we do, but what we think.
Fantastic Fungi
Critiques of "Wokeness" from a Left Perspective
Subscribe for $5/mo to Watch over 50 Patron-Exclusive Films
Subscribe $5/mo View All Patron Films

 

Your support keeps us ad-free and financially independent

Our 10,000+ video & article library is 99% free, ad-free, and entirely community-funded thanks to our patron subscribers!


Want to double your impact? You can subscribe for $10/mo or more as an extra show of support.