“Wow, that’s so amazing” was my initial reaction when seeing the advert of the first hijabi model for H&M, Mariah Idrissi, which has been going viral over the last few weeks.

H&M’s advert was about highlighting diversity, which featured people of different faiths, genders, shapes and different backgrounds. It was probably one of the most diverse campaigns I have seen.

The ‘Close the Loop’ campaign aims to promote H&M’s mission to get the world recycling to make fashion more sustainable. This is coming from a brand that has been accused of using sweatshops in 2013 during the disaster at Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, killing over 1,000 workers.

According to Clean Clothes Campaign’s most recent report H&M has failed to make fire and building safety repairs in Bangladesh, despite announcing to improve conditions in factories after the Rana Plaza collapse. H&M has not respected its commitments to ensure the safety of workers in Bangladesh. “If only H&M was willing put the same energy into actually meeting their much lauded sustainability commitments as they do into promoting them, we may well be closer to seeing a safer garment industry in Bangladesh,” said Samantha Maher of the Clean Clothes Campaign. For more on the report: http://www.cleanclothes.org/news/press-releases/2015/10/01/h-m-fails-to-make-fire-and-building-safety-repairs-in-bangladesh

Some are calling it H&M’s revolutionary fashion campaign, but does marketing to Muslims, Sikhs and others signify mainstream acceptance? Or is it just smart marketing seeking multicultural customers?

A few years ago Gap was also praised for using a Sikh model in one of their campaigns. As wonderful as it is seeing more diversity in the mainstream, it would be fair to say this has been a long time coming.

Tweets on the story:

This piece is less about the victory in representation and more about the global ramifications of the companies being represented. In order to look beyond the mainstream discourse we have to acknowledge the realities that come with living in a globalised world, namely neoliberalism. Neoliberal structures currently hold some of the most important influences in world economics and development.

The fashion industry is no stranger to sweatshops and unfree labour. According to Henk Overbeek, in ‘Neoliberalism and the Regulation of Global Labour Mobility’, “globalisation involves international expansion of market relations and the global pursuit of economic liberalism.” One of the essential factors of neoliberalism is the expansion of the market. Overbeek states that, “ever more people, countries and regions are incorporated into the global market economy. Human existence are invaded by market relations and subordinated to the pursuit of private profit.”

Thus, mainstream retailers care more about profits than people, no matter how appealing their marketing may seem.

The complexities of unfree labour in the global South and North requires an understanding of the various structures that hold unequal policies in place from neoliberalism to capitalism. Unfree labour has always been a necessary component to capitalism. The current period of globalisation has shown no break in the deployment of unfree labour from sex workers, subordinate health workers to domestic and child labourers. The pattern has reasserted itself for those who are prepared to look beyond the glitzy adverts for production and consumption to the hidden underclass that is making all this possible.

On the surface these adverts echo short-term victories for minorities in the mainstream, but beneath the surface the neoliberal and capitalist driven structures remain at the forefront of long-term development problems that drive companies like H&M forward.

For more information Watch this award winning documentary by Laila al-Arian:

Read David Harvey’s classic A Brief History of Neoliberalism