"The story of a £4 Boohoo dress: cheap clothes at a high cost", 22 June 2019

... Made in the UK, at factories in Leicester and Manchester, the £5 dress epitomises a fast fashion industry that pumps hundreds of new collections on to the market in short time at pocket money prices, with social media celebrity endorsement to boost high consumer demand. On average, such dresses and other products are discarded by consumers after five weeks...

Missguided, an online rival to Boohoo, which also sources products from Leicester, took the low pricing even further this week by promoting a £1 bikini...

But behind the price tag there is an environmental and social cost... “The hidden price tag is the cost people in the supply chain and the environment itself pays,” said Sass Brown, a lecturer at the Manchester Fashion Institute....

There is no evidence that factories in the Boohoo and Missguided supply chains pay illegal wages. However... Prof Nikolaus Hammer... carried out research into the fashion industry in Leicester, where he found employees working in appalling conditions, with no employment contracts, earning on average £3 an hour. It was the brands, he said, who held all the power over manufacturers to keep cutting their prices. “They will go to the manufacturer and say that person down the road can do it for 1p less, and they get the job,”...

Carol Kane, the co-founder of Boohoo, told MPs the £5 dress was a “loss leader” drawing people to the website. She said the company employed three people in Manchester, three in Leicester, and 10 in China to carry out audits at their producer factories each month to ensure proper working practices...