The covid-19 pandemic saw major disruption within the retail sector. As shops shut, retailers cancelled orders from suppliers, refused to pay for goods already in production or in process, delayed payments by long periods and demanded reductions in price for clothes that had already been shipped. Meanwhile, issues of worker exploitation and covid-unsafe working environments made their way into the headlines. In June 2020, workers in Leicester garment factories were found to have been paid as little as £3 an hour and were alleged to have been trafficked, to have been forced to go to work despite testing positive for covid-19 and to have been involved in furlough fraud. The revelations about working conditions were not confined to the UK: 2020 saw millions of workers—largely women—made destitute in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam as suppliers were forced to lay off workers and were unable to pay living wages.