Here's How Much The Workers Who Made That Fashion Nova 'Fit Are Underpaid

in case you follow any of the major pop culture power players on Instagram, you are likely to be able to see a photo featuring Style Nova merchandise at least as a week. A number of members of the Kardashian-Jenner family member have worn the brand, as have Teyana Taylor, Amber Rose, and Cardi B, who collaborated with them to the tune of some major bank. It's a big brand with the influencer set, also, given its ability to turn designs around almost instantly, its dedication to building a span of sizes in basically everything they make, and price points few people can mention "no" to.


Although such dedication to appeasing a consumer comes at a cost, often purchased by the most marginalized people in the fast-fashion food chain. On Monday (December 16), the New York Times published a report that perplexing the grueling conditions that several people who work for the factories that sew Style Nova clothes experience. According To the
U.S. Labor Department, some workers are paid mere cents per each article of clothing and are owed a total of $3.8 million in back taxes by their employers, who are connected to Style Nova through secondary suppliers.


In a statement supplied to the New York Times, Style Nova’s general counsel Erica Meierhans mentioned, "We have already had a rather efficient and positive meeting with the Department of Labor in which we talked our ongoing commitment to ensuring that all workers involved with the Style Nova brand are appropriately compensated for the work they do. Any opinion that Style Nova is accountable for underpaying anyone working on our brand is categorically false."


Style Nova is far from the only agency to use subcontractors that oversee the manufacture of their clothes. Many companies buy clothing from overseas factories whose staff can often subjected to dangerous conditions and little to no pay. In 2013, H&M reported it would make sure a "fair living wage" for each person along its allocate chain. That promise was shifted so that around half of its suppliers would see “improved wage management systems” in 2017, Vox noted. The necessitates made of garment workers are almost habitually relentless, too: Brands have primed consumers to expect new product on an almost-weekly basis, so the churn required is never-ending. Style Nova has infamously duplicated KarJenner outfits much less than 24 hours soon following the mega-influencers wore the pieces; Zara cycles through an estimated 840 million individual units of product every year.


In the U.S., Federal law stipulates that an organization isn't liable for wage theft committed by its vendors if it may credibly claim they didn't know about such conditions. Style Nova indicated to the New York Times that it will put vendors who are noticed in violation of labor laws on a six-month probationary period; after a second violation, the firm would suspend any orders or agreements it made with that vendor.


Complicating matters is the ways in which some of those organizations operate. The Times spoke with one seamstress who says the business she worked for rebranded three times throughout her time there, and alleges she was once paid $3.46 per hour for a 65-hour work week, which amounts to $225 per week.


Meierhans stressed to the New York Times that Style Nova “is not accountable for how these vendors nickname their payrolls.” When asked for comment, a representative for the brand gave MTV News the statement it had offered the New York Times.


It's not likely that Style Nova's grip on retail is going to let up as soon as soon. The retailer has a larger footprint on Instagram than most competitors, and in 2018 landed the best spot among most-Googled brands. Wage growth is also relatively stagnant nationwide, so young people looking for varied clothing options might feel that brands like Style Nova are better suited to their financial range than other retailers. And when MTV News talked with young people about the demise of fast-fashion Goliath Forever 21, many explained they preferred Style Nova because they could more reliably find clothes that fit them; among the litany of the style world's problems is its lack of inclusive sizing for plus-sized people.