Meg Lukens Noonan sat down at the edge of the oval table with a class of journalism students surrounding her. She passionately read a chapter from her book The Coat Route about her first meeting in Sydney, Australia with a tailor of a coat worth $50,000. Noonan traveled to eight different cities in over two years, leaving her two teenage daughters and husband behind, on the search for the story behind the coat, which made her reconsider the fashion industry.
Writing this book allowed Noonan to travel the world, something she was truly passionate about, but that meant scouring the globe completely alone, in strange places, putting her family life on the backburner. Her husband thought she had lost her mind, but completely supported her.
“He thought it was a pain to do the grocery shopping. He never read the book until it came out and said it was a pleasure to see what I was doing for all these trips. I was lucky my family understood,” said Noonan.
Noonan did chance to return home during her journey, but she loved the feeling of waking up in a place she has never been before and having no one expecting her to be anywhere, except for the times when she met with the cast of characters involved in creating the coat.
One main question was always on Noonan’s mind when meeting the influential designers of this work of art, “What do I wear to meet this people?” It was a constant worry. Noonan owned one, plain grey dress that she planned to wear to dinner with a glamorous fashion designer. She decided to enhance her look by buying a fifty-dollar, faux leather jacket from Zara. After learning how certain luxurious clothes are hand-made from the finest materials, she had a change of heart and realized this jacket was massed produced in terrible working conditions. “I returned the jacket. It is me saying I don’t want to be a part of this anymore,” said Noonan.
The whole experience opened her eyes to the mass-produced fashion industry. Even though clothes are cheap and stylish, it isn’t worth it to Noonan, who even has Forever 21 clothes bursting out of her teenage daughters’ closets. “I won’t keep feeding this fashion beast of trying to look a way I’m supposed to look,” said Noonan.
Noonan wished she had a chance to walk through a clothing factory in China to understand the other spectrum of the fashion industry, comparing the highest handmade garments, to the cheapest manufactured clothes. Her realization led to a bigger picture, the struggle between the wealthy and the poor. Even the tailors of handmade designs for the rich, are on the verge of losing their jobs, but there are also poor workers mass-producing clothes.
Noonan transformed the way she viewed the fashion industry from sewing together the story of this $50,000 coat. With her family’s support, Noonan’s travels brought her closer to the truth. She is enjoying time now, relaxing from this daunting event and helping promote her very own work of art.