More to the point: Just buy the best VALUE, regardless of where it's made (/mined/harvested/…).

Without this paradigm, there'd be no real point to importation.

The other thing about this, is that insomuch that Cobb mentioned the division of labor, she didn't employ the tactic herself (beyond hiring the shoemaker) and she could have. It isn't necessary to go across an ocean when a trip across town would suffice.

And the calender (18 months) and the costs were ludicrous. If you have yourself set up properly, it's a matter of days (starting from staples e.g. fiber) to a finished product. However, I can understand how it'd take students and art majors months to figure it out. For the life of me, I will never understand how a theatre professor considers themselves a master of apparel production. The results -at least in this case- speak for themselves. A 100 mile suit can look like anything you'd find off the peg -100 miles around Philadelphia. We couldn't do that within 100 miles of many other places in the US but certainly there.

But comparative advantage exists at a level way below a finished suit. Think of Friedman's pencil example in his Free to Choose series. He starts by saying nobody in the world knows how to make a pencil. He goes through each part of the pencil and lists some small fraction of the ideas a humble pencil embodies. Same goes for a suit. You might get comparative advantage in an area in the production of one of the kinds of thread in a suit, but it unlikely you would also find in the same area advantage in its stiching, the production of all other materials, the integration of the suit, the design, branding, marketing, distribution, retailing, etc. And each of those categories undoubtedly has several if not dozens of specializations.

I think this is the value of the suit example, it shows the near-miracles the price system can achieve and the size of its advantage over rival production systems.

"NEVERTHELESS, this whole thing seems stupid, misleading, and strawmanish. For a fair comparison, you'd have to take someone already skilled in the hardest part (probably the tailor), and work from there with local materials. The suit as is looks like an amateurish job. There's no way that's characteristic of what it's like in a serious transition to locally-made clothing. Historical weavers did a lot better….Don't botch a tailoring job and use it as proof of a broader theory."

Very good! Actually, the person with the hardest job, the one with the greatest control over the quality of the finished product is a a pattern maker. As it happens, I am a suit pattern maker. I've worked in apparel manufacturing for over 27 years.

Cobb's exercise was a bad example. It looked so bad because she didn't want to hire professionals (many theatre profs consider themselves an authority on apparel production -don't ask me why). She hired a shoemaker, why not professional weavers, or heck, just buy it from local producers (woolrich, the amish)? Then, she could have hired a real designer (who would have put the buttons on the correct side of the garment for one), a real pattern maker and a real sample maker instead of cobbling a bunch of what was described as "artisans" together. The result was amateur because it was put together by amateurs. [The terms artisan and craftsman are used entirely too loosely these days.] By no means does this mean that sustainable apparel has to look this ugly! Like anything -the shoemaker for example- you just hire people who know what they're doing. Easy, although it's harder to separate the wheat from the chaff these days without samples. Usually, if they have an "artist's statement" you can safely eliminate them from consideration. But, if you want to control every step of the process, well, then you get the result you see there.

I see a lot of designers who do the same sort of thing, control wise, not hiring the right people to do something because they think they know it all. This is a useful example of the problems created by control freaks run amok. That's what this really illustrates, poor sourcing by someone who wasn't qualified to run the project and that's it.

Ryan Fuller said
That is, unless your local area happens to have a comparative advantage in the item in question, but then you wouldn't have to bother with a "buy local" policy in the first place. Just buy the best, regardless of where it's made.

See, that's the thing that makes this even uglier. That part of PA has a comparative advantage!!! Down to including the skilled professionals. I think it was more important for her to control the vertical process. You know, give her arty friends something "real" to do. They can't be making a living at this.

Actually, the whole "comparative advantage" thing means that you're either getting worse quality for the same cost, or paying more to get the same quality.

That is, unless your local area happens to have a comparative advantage in the item in question, but then you wouldn't have to bother with a "buy local" policy in the first place. Just buy the best, regardless of where it's made.

"Local" doesn't have to mean "crap" any more than "import" has to mean "high quality".

I think it was partly just trying to do something in entirely the wrong place – like if they'd tried this in Iowa, it would have been made of corn.

I use this as a supplemental text in my lower level International Trade class.

The more I think about it the more I agree this example of division of labour is flakey.

I have to take issue with your complaint about the $5 cost of a $35 shirt for two reasons. First, those comparisons inevitably miss fixed costs and probably a good deal of the marginal costs of distribution and retailing. Second, markup doesn't have anything to do with division of labour. It is competition which determines that. Division of labour drives cost, not markup.

I support elimination of all tariffs and artificial barriers to international trade.

I think most people who revel in self-sufficiency are idiots who don't understand the concept of an "opportunity cost".

NEVERTHELESS, this whole thing seems stupid, misleading, and strawmanish. For a fair comparison, you'd have to take someone already skilled in the hardest part (probably the tailor), and work from there with local materials. The suit as is looks like an amateurish job. There's no way that's characteristic of what it's like in a serious transition to locally-made clothing. Historical weavers did a lot better.

If you want to show why international division of labor is so great, explain why the retail price of a new dress shirt is still $35+tax, rather than the $5 (manufacturing + shipping + huge profit margin) it should cost at this point.

Don't botch a tailoring job and use it as proof of a broader theory.

Whoa, that's *way* more complex than just putting together a hippie suit.

http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Essays/rdPncl1.html

"Last year, Cobb asked her students at Drexel University to trace the provenance of their clothes. When the task proved impossible, she realized how far removed we are from what we wear."

This is an example of defining an arbitrary measure of what is acceptable and then, when finding a breach of that measure, declaring outrage and demanding action. At least in this case it was her own time she was wasting. The usual inclination is to waste everybody else's.

I forget the title, but there's a book that tracks a t-shirt from the cotton farmer all the way to the used clothing markets in Africa. Cobb and her students should have just gone to the library.

Maybe a couple of Alpacas at least.

Of course, usually what is created for the runway or for costume is hardly what the end consumer will wear. I could be the ready-to-wear line would just be some burlap and twine.