Something tells us American Eagle wouldn't sell too many cargo shorts as "Bangladeshi Swamphen."
On Sunday night's "Last Week Tonight," John Oliver took a hard look at fast fashion companies like H&M, Forever 21 and Zara, which offer trendy clothes at rock-bottom prices that are made almost entirely overseas under conditions that are difficult to monitor. But how else will our Midwestern tweens dress like, as Oliver puts it, "Fortysomething alcoholics attending the funeral of a Tel Aviv nightclub owner?"
Oliver also called out The Gap and Walmart for finding ways to make us forget about their child labor and unsafe factory violations, like increasingly absurd commercials and pretending like they had no idea anything problematic was going on.
"I guess at this point it seems sweatshops aren't one of those '90s problems we got rid of, like Donnie Wahlberg, they're one of those '90s problems we're still very much dealing with, like Mark Wahlberg," Oliver said.
To further encourage people to stop being blinded by low prices and think about the impact of fast fashion, Oliver announced that he'll be sending the cheapest lunches he could find, from completely unknown locations, to the heads of H&M, Walmart, The Gap, Joe Fresh and The Children's Place on Monday to show them what poor supply chain management tastes like. Watch the video to see him conclude his segment by putting on a fashion show and -- even better -- yell the phrase, "Eat this wagon of mystery chickens!"
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