MixedThe New York Review of BooksThomas writes with fact-heavy authority, in a series of travelogue-style reports, about the ecological calamity of the fashion industry ... Thomas provides an excruciatingly detailed history of two of the most problematic fashion staples: denim and the cotton it is made of ... Thomas makes an effort to keep the reader from grabbing a set of pinking shears and attacking her book by focusing, in the second half, on fashion players trying to make improvements ... Fashionopolis is primarily a Marley’s Ghost–style warning of the irrevocable destructions to come. One imagines that a more attentive editor might have caught a few of the book’s redundancies. In the moments when she relaxes and allows her own voice to come through, Thomas is engaging and vital, sort of a more taciturn Joan Rivers. But she prefers to quote others pointing fingers and pontificating about the dangers of greed rather than point a steely finger herself. I wished she had allowed herself a little more style and subjective latitude ... With her focus primarily on changing the behavior of the reader, Thomas lets some of the more flagrantly abusive garment industrialists off too easily. That her book doesn’t rabidly name and shame more polluters and human rights violators feels like self-censorship and an overabundance of caution. Dana Thomas is no Ralph Nader ... Thomas never quite lays down the gauntlet and says that multinational conglomerates should be regulated by state and federal agencies in such a way that they are not incentivized to pollute or commit human rights abuses.
