Absurdity
When asked about child labor in China making his shoes
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Chet Dalton, founder and chief creative officer of lifestyle footwear brand Solebound, told reporters on Tuesday that he was "genuinely floored" to learn that children have hands small enough to complete the stitching on his signature Aria midsole, calling it "a dexterity I frankly did not know existed in nature."
The remarks came after independent labor monitor Fairchain Watch published a report alleging that three Solebound contract facilities in Guangdong Province employ children between the ages of nine and fourteen to perform fine-thread work that adult hands are too large to execute efficiently.
Dalton, who was at the podium to preview Solebound's spring line, described as "emotionally grounded," paused for approximately six seconds before responding. A publicist in the front row made a noise that witnesses described variously as a cough, a gasp, and the sound a person makes when they realize they have left the stove on at home.
"I want to be really clear," Dalton said, "that Solebound is committed to craftsmanship. That has always been the north star. When I designed the Aria, I was thinking about the human hand. I just did not specify which human."
He then held up a shoe.
Fairchain Watch executive director Linda Osei, who was present, noted that the Aria retails for $340 and costs approximately $4.80 to produce, a figure Dalton disputed by saying he found it "reductive" and that it did not account for "the emotional labor of the design process."
Osei asked what emotional labor a nine-year-old in Dongguan receives in return.
Dalton said he would have to "circle back on that one" and gestured to a slide showing a sunset.
The situation did not improve when a second reporter asked whether Solebound had performed any supply chain audits in the past three years. Dalton said yes, absolutely, and that the audits had returned "very positive feedback," before his chief operating officer, Marcus Gill, walked to the microphone and clarified that the audits had been conducted by a firm Solebound owns a fourteen-percent stake in.
Gill described this as "a feature of the process, not a flaw," which is a sentence that will almost certainly appear on a government subpoena.
Dalton regained the microphone to announce that Solebound was launching an immediate internal review, to be completed by a committee of people he described as "really thoughtful individuals who care deeply," none of whom he named, and all of whom, Osei later confirmed, appear to work in brand marketing.
A Solebound spokesperson told reporters after the event that the company "takes these concerns extremely seriously" and is "in active dialogue with its manufacturing partners," which is the sentence every company has agreed to say in the interval between getting caught and paying the settlement.
The spokesperson also confirmed that the spring collection will ship on schedule.
Dalton, asked one final time whether he felt personal responsibility for what the report described, thought carefully and said that he felt the word "responsibility" was being used "in a pretty loaded way" and that what he preferred to focus on was "the larger conversation around global supply chains and the complexity therein."
The reporter asked if he had read the report.
Dalton said he had read a summary of the report.
The reporter asked who wrote the summary.
Dalton pointed at Marcus Gill.
Gill had already left the room.
The spring line features twelve colorways and a new insole technology Dalton described as "so precise it could only have been made by the most careful hands in the world," which everyone agreed was probably true.
This is satire. The events and quotes are invented and none of it is real news.