Explaining T-shirts to kids

I am an avid Planet Money podcast listener. I have also read Pietra Rivoli's excellent "The travels of a T-shirt in the global economy".
So I was excited when earlier this year, using Kickstarter, Planet Money finally worked out a way to make t-shirts and follow their travels in the global economy. I signed up for the Kickstarter project to support their effort, despite the quite sizable international shipping charge.
Knowing we are receiving the end result, the podcasts about the t-shirts have been fascinating. Then came the most recent talking to workers in Bangladesh - who made the men's shirt and in Colombia - who made the women's one.
The Colombian one, particularly affected me because the women working here were on better wages and working in better conditions. Admittedly they are not great but at least it is better than other places. But then the bomb shell - the women they had spoken to may not have jobs past February. Jockey are pulling out of using the factory because labour is cheaper elsewhere. 
Our t-shirts are due to arrive in the next week or so and I am not sure how I will feel putting on a top, knowing the women who sewed it may be out of work. The podcasts and the t-shirt purchase really connected me, the end user, with those making the product in way even reading the book did not. 
Life is a complicated thing but hearing the voices and a little bit of the lives, you couldn't help but take the women's side in the situation. Shareholders would get a little less, the Jockey guy might not get as big a bonus for saving money but these women would have at least some money to keep their families going.
Over breakfast explaining this to eight year old Lucy she was shocked. She was shocked workers in Bangladesh earned $3/day and even in the better conditions in Colombia the wages were $13/day.
She couldn't understand if the person, who was in charge of shifting the manufacturing away from Colombia to another poorer nation, was also sad about it - why they were doing it anyway?
She immediately checked all the labels on her clothes and wanted to start a charity for clothing workers. 
If it seems so wrong and crazy to an eight year old, why do we all shake our heads so often in defeat at where we have got to with the global economy?
I spend so much of my time explaining to the kids to share nicely and not to be greedy and yet the examples every day show them what hypocrites us adults are.
Meanwhile Tristan is just excited his underpants have days of the week on them.

Trinny & Susannah

I quite like Trinny & Susannah's approach to dressing. I did go through my clothes and try to get rid of everything they said would not suit my figure style. I am not sure if they came over they would notice.
But there is something inside that wants to yell at the end of their books - "It is just clothes! Who cares which bracelet you wear!"
They also seem to completely ignore the emotional attachment to clothes. "If it is not right for you get rid of it" - seems to be their catch cry. But if that ring was given to you by your now dead grandma, does it really matter if it makes your fingers look fat instead of skinny?
After reading a few of their books you do start to look at women in the street and if they are dressing "right" for their figure. Today I saw a lady in a rainbow coloured hoody, with a funky, knitted hat. I did think to myself T & S would cringe at the sight of it. True it probably wasn't doing much for her hips but when I looked at her, I thought anyone who wears such a cool hoody looks like someone I would love to know. If she had been wearing clothes the T & S way, I would have thought... nothing.
Sometimes those very things you are trying to hide can be a point of jealousy. Four year old Lucy said - with some envy in her voice - "Mum your bottom wobbles. You are just like jelly." Who wouldn't want to be like jelly? It is sweet, delicious and always a hit at parties.

Clothing and its lack of improvement

How come with all the leaps in technology, clothing still is designed to embarrass us?
We can make television turn on from a distance with the gentle press of just one button but one button can be our undoing in the clothing department when it decides to fall off.
I have had the sewing on the side of a fly zip come undone while out on a day trip so the fly was done up but there was a hole right beside it.
I have been giving training to a customer on an instrument when I have felt my bra undo it self.
I have walked to work only to arrive and realise there is a sock stuck up the bottom of my trousers from the bedroom floor.
Stockings are the most ridiculous piece of women’s clothing that have let me down so many times by getting holes and ladders, I now refuse to wear them and have so far found no time when they are compulsory.
I have sat in a meeting and suddenly realised my top is on the wrong way round and quietly turned it around under my jacket, while appearing engrossed in the current talk.
I worked with a girl - where we wore white smocks with snaps down the front - who in an enthusiastic greeting to a male colleague, found her dress unpopped itself down the front.
In a work place where white tops were required I have had to buy a new top at lunch time due to lunch jumping onto mine and refusing to let go. I had to ask the shop assistant to cut off the tags so I could wear the top immediately and she could scan the barcode without me having to lie on the counter.
I still have blocked out from my memory my first year in high school when the most disgusting of all shorts were THE thing to have. They were Adidas and made of towelling material and were basically just towelling knickers. The worst kind of shorts for anyone without pencil thin thighs.
I had a bra that was fitted to be the right size but the style of its cut meant if I got a bit too active a breast would pop out.
I have sticky taped and stapled a hem that suddenly unravelled itself while at work. Sticky tape through the washing machine is not a good idea.
There is so much media generated on technology and the increasing pace of changing technology. Yet there is an enormous hole in the technology research market. The boundaries of clothing needs to pushed, not just in the area of beautiful design, which the fashion designers are doing wonderfully, but in the area of lowering the embarrassment risk to wearers.
We are well on the way to clothing being more than just keeping us warm or protection from naked flames. In the building industry there are masters who are designing intelligient buildings with lights that automatically come on, heating that turns on when you enter a room and off when you leave. This same attention to detail and intelligience needs to be woven into our clothing. Jeans with flies that can never be left undone. Tops that automatically tighten impercepably when you bend over a table.Hipsters that stretch and shrink depending on if you are standing or sitting.
I think we would all be happy to pay extra for these sorts of conveniences in our clothing.