Rodarte and MAC Create Collection "Inspired By" Women in Ciudad Juárez

The violence in Ciudad Juárez has only affected my life in an extremely peripheral way: my husband has to go to Ciudad Juárez next week for an immigrant visa, and I have to drive down to the border to pick him up. Yet the thought of being in or around the most violent city on Earth for several days is terrifying; just researching the hotels can stir up nausea ("armed security guards and round the clock surveillance cameras..."). I get a pit in my stomach when I think about Juárez and when I think about my husband going there.

But this pit is nothing compared to what the maquiladora workers in Juárez must feel every single night, when they wake up at midnight to go to work in factories along the border, making clothes for the United States. It is nothing to what they must feel knowing that 5,000 of their fellow workers, friends, sisters, and relatives -- the women of Juárez -- have been killed in brutal, unsolved femicides starting in the 1990's and extending up to today when still, the corrupt, inept police force and government in Juárez and the unconcerned international community fail to act.

Somehow, it occurred to Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind the fashion label Rodarte, to base a collection off of the women and and maquiladoras of Ciudad Juárez. I am willing to suspend my disbelief to try to imagine that this could have had a positive and powerful impact on the fashion world, stirring up compassion and horror at the situation in Juárez and maybe even some activism to come to the aid of the Mexican women working and living there.

However, it didn't. The collection was enthusiastically received by the media and fashion's talking heads and token celebs with nary a mention of the fact that it was inspired by women working 12 or more hour days in factories, making from $.50 cents to $2 dollars an hour, living in shantytowns marred by industrial pollution. Nope. Instead it was "enchanted" and like a "ghost forest." Ohhh! I forgot exploitation, femcide, poverty, and violent crime are mystical in the fashion world. When embodied by thin, pale-skinned, wealthy young women in airy silk chiffon, I suppose these daily realities of life for the women in Juárez transition from terrifying to romantic.

To top it off, Rodarte paired with cosmetics company MAC to create a line of Juárez-inspired makeup with names like "Factory," "Juárez," and "Ghost Town." Because, the decision implies in a sweep of total insouciance, for chic U.S women, "Factory" is an abstract consumable concept, a shade of mint frost, whereas for Mexican women in maquiladoras, it's a sweaty, oppressive place where they're frequently harassed, threatened, raped, and killed.

I won't waste time going into why I find Rodarte and MAC's decisions appalling, and how I think the fashion industry can be incredulously and proudly indifferent to the social, political, and economic realities behind styles. I'll take a different angle here, and that's the way in which fashion bloggers called out MAC and Rodarte and forced them to issue apologies for the Juárez-inspired collections. MAC is now apparently giving a portion of the proceeds from the makeup line to a Juárez charity (they have yet to name which one...) and Rodarte, hopefully, will be letting this idea fade into oblivion.

Photo credit: Jrsnchzhrs