Factory Girls

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Nobody expects Louis Vuitton ads to reflect reality, but Business Week argues that a current campaign crosses the line from fantasy to outright deception. In the ads, young seamstresses construct Louis Vuitton purses and watches by hand. But most LV products are made in factories like the one the author visited in 2004: "It was no sweatshop. The building was modern and airy, with windows overlooking the Normandy countryside. But the work being done there didn’t resemble in any way the painstaking handiwork shown in Vuitton’s ads. Indeed, the factory managers – who had been recruited from companies making such things as mobile phones and yogurt containers -- talked proudly about the strides they had made in automating every step of the process." [Business Week]