MADE IN THE USA (from now on): Waiting For the 2014 Olympics
by Julia Sneden
Isn’t it amazing what a little outrage on the Senate floor can accomplish? Bowing to bad publicity, and at what will no doubt be of considerable expense to his company, Ralph Lauren has announced that his designs for the 2014 Winter Olympics will be made in the USA. It’s too late to re-do the uniforms he designed for this year’s Olympics, of course, but apparently he won’t again make the mistake of farming them out to China.
Of course no one has mentioned that the great American public is every bit as guilty as the Ralph Lauren Company. We buy items made out-of-country all the time. We’re in hard economic times, and who doesn’t shop for the best bargain? It’s a global economy these days, and American companies save millions contracting out production to countries where workers are paid pittances and often work long hours in sweatshops to boot. Countries in Asia and South America and Central America and Europe provide goods to us all the time. Just examine the labels on that new package of sheets (Sri Lanka?), or inside your new sneakers (Mexico?), or on a tag sewn into the seam of the sweater (People’s Republic of China?) you give your husband for his birthday.
These days, one occasionally reads about people in this country who object vociferously to the terrible conditions of workers in foreign lands, but I don’t know why anyone expects Big Business to be sensitive to their plight. If Big Business were sensitive, or anything but profit-based, it wouldn’t have moved those jobs abroad in the first place, leaving American workers to fend for themselves in a downward-drifting economy. That’s not a pretty thought, is it.
It’s great that at least an honest-to-God American designed the outfits for our Olympians. Mr. Lauren has once again made them look snappy for opening and ending parades, although one of the women’s outfits includes high-heeled sneakers that look perilous for any athlete who depends on her legs to carry her to glory. One misstep and it’s goodbye medal!
In all the brouhaha of the past few days, we have been reminded that the US Olympic Committee is a privately funded organization. It is not run by the government. The theory seems to be that it is therefore out of reach of its critics in this matter. Of course it does look to the citizens of this country when it sets out to raise money, and it might be wise to be a bit more responsive to its supporters’ disapproval.
For Mr. Lauren, however, it seems likely that this is a one-time mistake on the part of his corporation, and not an insidious plot to enrich the Chinese and humiliate America.
What distresses me far more than this Made-In-China flap is the fact that while the right shoulder of the uniforms bears an Olympic patch, on the left breast is a large, RL Polo Player logo.
Photo: The Rhinelander Mansion in New York City housing Ralph Lauren's flagship store. Wikipedia
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