> It's an interesting book. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250145031/

They also made a movie of it [0], I lived in Italy during the financial crisis and it had become commonplace to see large migrating Chinese coming from the North (likely illegal migrants in Milan's clothing factories) come to the central part of Italy looking for work on farms and restaurants. It was hard times as this was taking place as the large migration from N. Africa was happening and they were living in the parks and making the locals irate.

It all came to light when our resident cheese maker, who used to work in the fashion Industry, had to tell them in broken Mandarin that we were fully staffed and couldn't accommodate them, but to try elsewhere further South--a typical way to brush-off a problem as is the running theme with Gomorrah.

I soon realized how dirty the Fashion Industry was as the Zara scandal was ettin into full swing and the workers were taking to writing messages about not being paid for the garments they made [1] as the factories were in sweatshops in Xinjiang or Brazil.

I wouldn't all it interesting so much as it is sobering and eye opening to the perils of offshore manufacturing practices and Italy's fashion Industry was just one of many of these horrors; Foxxcon's electronic manufacturing reliant on African rare earth mine exploitation make all of this pale in comparison.

> That's Italy!

It's anywhere you want to see where manufacturing costs get pushed to be the smallest possible line-item/expense in a value chain; the US is notorious for using forced labour in prisons for these kind of things, too. It's sad because it is a common practice in the worst labour camps/prisons in Russia (Siberia). It's where Britney Griner was going to serve her sentence, which incidentally is also where the Nadya of Pussy Riot spent several years in and was very candid about what was awaiting for her there.

0: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929425/

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdNvPSD8H1k

> My mom was indignant about it because she sold men's clothing for a living and could tell you exactly how a fake Tommy Hilfiger shirt was worse in so many ways than a real one.

Gomorrah opens with a description of Italian clothing manufacturing. As described there, the difference between a fake shirt and a real shirt is that they were made to the same specifications under one and the same contract, by different factories, and the real one got delivered faster than the fake one did. Only the first guy to deliver gets paid.

It's an interesting book. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250145031/