American Apparel ‘used fake comments to fuel founder’s bad boy image’

Ex-worker tells documentary series staff would post on articles about Dov Charney

A documentary series has revealed how American Apparel helped fuel its founder’s bad boy mythology in order to bolster interest in the clothing company online.

In the nine-part Big Rad Wolf, a former employee reveals she would leave approved fake comments under salacious articles about Dov Charney on celebrity media blogs such as Gawker and Jezebel, in order to manufacture his reputation as predatory.

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Can the centre hold? Germany looks to its Covid-stricken high streets

Minister battles to rescue retailers amid fears for 50,000 shops and hundreds of thousands of jobs

The stakes for Germany’s high streets could not be greater when the economics minister, Peter Altmaier, summons trade representatives across the country this month for a series of crisis workshops to discuss how to save them from collapse.

In Germany, as elsewhere across Europe and beyond, the coronavirus pandemic has blown a huge hole in street retail – accelerating the decline in footfall precipitated by the rise of online shopping.

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Proof is in the pudding: M&S and Waitrose win Christmas food test

Tasters compile league table of items such as turkey, gravy and yule logs from 52 UK stockists

Marks & Spencer and Waitrose have swept the board in an independent taste test of this year’s Christmas food and drink, both clinching first place in three categories of the UK’s festive favourites.

M&S was awarded top spot for its Christmas pudding, gravy and frozen turkey in the annual exercise by the Good Housekeeping Institute, while its rival, Waitrose, triumphed in the Christmas cake, champagne and yule log listings and was also rated for a vegan centrepiece.

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World’s garment workers face ruin as fashion brands refuse to pay $16bn

Analysis of trade figures reveals huge power imbalance as suppliers and workers in poorest parts of the world bear cost of Covid downturn

Powerful US and European fashion companies have refused to pay overseas suppliers for more than $16bn (£12.3bn) of goods since the outbreak of Covid-19, with devastating implications for garment workers across the world, according to analysis of newly released import data.

Two US-based groups, the Center for Global Workers’ Rights (CGWR) and the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), used previously unpublished import databases to calculate that garment factories and suppliers from across the world lost at least $16.2bn in revenue between April and June this year as brands cancelled orders or refused to pay for clothing orders they had placed before the coronavirus outbreak.

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‘We’re going to miss the community’: Elephant and Castle shopping centre closes after 55 years

Mixed feelings as icon of working-class London and Europe’s first ever large indoor retail centre makes way for development

After 55 years the final few traders were packing up their shops and stalls at the Elephant and Castle shopping centre in south London with mixed feelings about what the future might hold.

“It’s time for a change, because really everything has to be different,” Luz Villamizar, a “60-something” trader said with tears in her eyes. “It’s time because this is not a nice building now, anymore.”

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Terence Conran, designer, retailer and restaurateur, dies aged 88

Family pay tribute to Habitat founder as ‘visionary who revolutionised the way we live in Britain’

Sir Terence Conran, the man who dragged Britain’s front rooms and parlours into the modern age almost single-handed, has died at the age of 88, his family has announced.

A designer, retailer and restaurateur who founded Habitat in 1964, Conran was at the centre of an aesthetic revolution that established England, and London in particular, as a European creative powerhouse.

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From cool beans to has-beens? The Covid threat to Britain’s coffee shops

Why the chains and independents at the heart of Britain’s high streets are in deep trouble

It’s the multibillion-pound industry that kept on growing, based on a bean that Britons couldn’t seem to get enough of: coffee.

Until, that is, the pandemic struck. As is the case with many businesses hit hard by coronavirus, the ubiquitous coffee chains that have powered city centres and high streets across the UK are in deep trouble.

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Lego reports sales jump after Covid crisis kept families at home

Shoppers globally bought toys online while physical stores were hit by restrictions

Lego, the toy brick company, has enjoyed a lockdown boost to sales as families around the world were forced to spend more time at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Total sales rose by 14% in the first half of 2020 and sales were up by more than 10% in its largest markets – including the Americas, western Europe, Asia Pacific and China – despite the closure of toy shops for months in some countries, including the UK.

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How Britain’s high streets are recovering after lockdown – visual analysis

Data reveals that three in 10 shops hadn’t reopened after coronavirus restrictions were lifted – with some areas lagging further behind than others

Following the reopening of the UK’s retail and hospitality sectors through June and July, there were hopes that the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic could be lessened.

But research from the Local Data Company shows that, as of July, 29% of English high street shops hadn’t reopened in the weeks after lockdown relaxation – with that proportion increasing to as much as 54% in some areas.

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Sexual assault, forced labor, wage theft: garment workers in Jordan suffer for US brands

Activist groups work towards improving labor conditions in textile factories but abolishing the industry’s ‘norms’ is an uphill battle

Mehedi Mehedi, a 36-year-old Bangladeshi garment worker who had spent 14 years working in Jordan, left the country forever last December. It was not an easy decision to make: Mehedi had met his wife in Jordan, he had no guarantees of finding a job back in Bangladesh, and he was desperate to work in order to support his chronically ill father.

In Jordan, Mehedi had been working for a subcontracting factory that supplies apparel to brands like Ralph Lauren, Under Armour, and American Eagle. But after spending his last six months without regular pay, he had reached a breaking point.

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The fashion industry echoes colonialism – DfID’s scheme will subsidise it | Meg Lewis

Covid-19 has exposed the fragility of supply chains, which rely on the labour of black and brown workers. The deep inequalities won’t be fixed by injecting funds at the top

Is the UK governed by parliamentary democracy or big businesses? It is a question that should concern us all, yet it is becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between the two, as the government hands out multimillion-pound contracts to private firms with dubious track records, and ministers revolve between roles at big banks and government. Last week, the line between UK aid and private businesses was called into question, as the Department for International Development (DfID) announced the decision to direct £4.85m of taxpayers’ money towards the work of large retailers including M&S, Tesco and Primark.

The DfID funding is intended to support large companies to fix vulnerable supply chains and ensure that “people in Britain can continue to buy affordable, high-quality goods from around the world”. These aims, along with the fact that UK brands have been entrusted to deliver them, set off alarm bells for labour rights campaigners like myself, who advocate for better working conditions in the global garment industry.

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Fear and fatalism in Birmingham as Covid cases surge

Some say the young are flouting the rules, others doubt the statistics. Most are anxious about what a lockdown will bring

If news that Birmingham was facing a local lockdown troubled drinkers around the Gas Street basin on Thursday afternoon, they were determined to forget it.

“This is the first time I’ve got dressed up and come to town,” said Pam, who didn’t want to give her full name, as she fluffed her pink hair. “I know what’s going on, I’ve worked in Covid wards. I’m not worried being here, but it does feel weird.”

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China retail sales fall fuels concern for global recovery from Covid-19

Retail sales dropped 1.1% in July while industrial production remains subdued

Fears over the strength of China’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic have been raised after retail sales slumped in July and industrial production remained subdued.

Fuelling concerns for the world economy, retail sales in China dropped in July by 1.1% compared with the same month a year ago, missing predictions for a small increase in consumer spending.

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DfID scheme accused of ‘putting UK aid in pockets of wealthy companies’

£6.85m programme places emphasis on benefit to businesses rather than protecting workers in the developing world, say critics

A newly announced aid programme that promises to help workers in the developing world supplying goods to British high street chains like Marks & Spencer, Primark and Morrisons has been condemned for using taxpayers’ money to “pick up the bill” for improving workforce conditions.

The £6.85m scheme, announced on Thursday by international development secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, is being promoted explicitly as benefitting British consumers to ensure they “can continue to buy affordable, high quality goods from around the world”.

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Covid led to ‘brutal crackdown’ on garment workers’ rights, says report

Brands including Primark, Zara and H&M accused of failing to protect workers at factories in Asia from ‘union busting’

Some of Europe’s biggest retailers, including Primark, Zara and H&M, are failing to stop Covid-19 being used as a pretext for union busting, human rights activists are warning.

Millions of garment workers in some of the poorest parts of Asia have lost their jobs since coronavirus shutdowns hit the retail industry worldwide.

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Face masks to be mandatory in shops in England, says Hancock – video

Face coverings protect workers and give the public greater confidence to shop, Matt Hancock has said. The health secretary confirmed in a statement to the House of Commons that shoppers would be required to wear masks while in shops and supermarkets. Those who do not will face fines of up to £100

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Coronavirus: what are the rules over face masks in English shops?

Exemptions, enforcement and business reaction to the news that coverings will be compulsory from 24 July

With the government set to announce that wearing a face covering in shops and supermarkets will be mandatory in England from 24 July, here’s what you need to know about the new rules:

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No going back to normal after the pandemic? Don’t bet on it | Gaby Hinsliff

After every crisis, great thinkers declare life will never be the same again. But don’t underestimate the pull of old habits

As the US army rolls into a newly liberated Paris, a woman sits serenely under the only working hairdryer in the city. The war photographer Lee Miller’s iconic shot of a salon reopening amid the rubble in the summer of 1944 could easily have become an image of heartless vanity when Vogue published it. Who cares about a hairdo, when millions have died?

Yet at the time it somehow managed to convey both ingenuity and hope, in a world far enough steeped in death to long for a little frivolity. The return of being able to care about something that doesn’t actually matter must have come, in the circumstances, as a blessed relief. When Boris Johnson announced the reopening of British hairdressers this July, Miller’s picture sprang to mind.

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‘My life became a disaster movie’: the Bangladesh garment factory on the brink

One factory owner tells how coronavirus cancellations by UK brands have seen him struggle to pay wages

As high streets across England opened this week and hundreds of people jostled through the doors of clothing shops, thousands of miles away in Chittagong, Bangladesh, Mostafiz Uddin is worrying about how to pay his workers’ wages.

At Denim Expert Ltd, the sustainable clothing company he founded in 2009 as a sustainable apparels clothing company, hundreds of boxes of jeans are crammed against walls and packed to the ceiling. These boxes contain 38,000 pairs of Burton jeans, worth more than £200,000 that were ready for shipment in early March. But as the UK went into lockdown that month, an email pinged into his inbox that tore his life apart.

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‘We have no money for food or rent’: plight of Bangladeshi garment makers

Clothing factory workers in Bangladesh were hit twice by Covid-19, once when their factories closed, and again when global retailers cancelled orders

Nazmin Nahar, a 26-year-old garment worker and mother of two in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is living on borrowed rice. She hasn’t had the wages to pay for food or rent for more than two months.

Even though the hours were long and the targets relentless, Nahar had been happy working at Magpie Knitwear, where she earned £150 a month, making clothes for UK brands such as Burton and H&M. Then, in late March, Bangladesh went into lockdown and the factory closed. When it reopened on 4 April, Nahar was told she had no job to go back to.

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