RE: F21 into Sweatshop Labour?

In response to Ashley's post on Forever21 running sweat shops in LA

I feel pretty conflicted about the whole sweat shop boycott thing. I mean, at least some of those women are admitted illegal immigrants…they’re breaking the law just by being in the country, they aren’t even legally allowed to hold employment in the USA, but they’re complaining about workers rights? It feels more than ironic to me. F21 shouldn’t get away with running a sweat shop period, and definitely not with employing illegal immigrants….but still. Call me ignorant, but it feels an awful lot like when that guy who bought a stolen designer watch from a thief at 40% of its actually value (knowing it was stolen) then tried to sue the thief because he found out it was a fake Rolex. The irony...it's laughable. When you break the law, don't you get what's coming to you? Am I alone in this? I get a little passionate when it comes to immigration for obvious reasons....so maybe I've missed the point.

At the end of the day, I dunno. One of the big problems that blog had with F21 is that they rip-off designer styles. Even though I never really shop at F21, here I am over here loving unique-vintage.com even though I know that a lot of their dresses are blatant rip-offs of more expensive designs. Part of me justifies that since I would NEVER spend $500 on the Jovani gown, buying the $80 knock-off isn’t actually losing them any money and, in turn, I accept that the gown I get will be of poorer quality details and materials. But I also know that if they’re not getting any royalties for the design it’s still wrong either way. I know it’s wrong, so why do I do it? Why do we do that?