The paper I propose is a comparative study of the transformations of the market for clothes under the impact of political consumerist movements in Switzerland and France. Recent studies on movements targeting market actors have identified different ways through which movements change markets: they market actors through campaigns, facilitate and enable individual actions of political consumerism, put in place new tools of private regulation such as labels, and create alternative niche markets such as markets for local or fair trade food. Consumption thus becomes a political issue in many different ways. My study on the market for clothes and its transformation to incorporate ethical issues – conditions of production, but also environmental questions such as organic cotton or recycling, addresses the articulation of such different tactics within a given market. On this market, I observe the rise of a niche for ethical fashion around a number of “social entrepreneurs”; the emergence of labels for fair trade and organic clothes; and the existence of antisweatshop campaigns fighting for global standards to improve working conditions in clothing factories. Using a variety of sources (interviews, participant observation, document analysis, archives), the paper discusses the social and political determinants for these different groups, shows the different frames they build on, and looks into the tensions the co-existence of these approaches produce. In particular, it reveals that there may be an inherent tension between creating an alternative market for activists keen on according their consumption practices with their ideology, which from one point of view can be seen as a form of exit, and changing the “mainstream” market through the expression of voice. Finally, the comparative perspective helps explaining why the “ethical” transformation of the market for clothes differs from one country to the other.
