The 1995 bust of an El Monte, California factory where seventy-five Thai immigrants worked 18-hour days behind barbed wire producing designer clothes for $1.60 per hour underscored the dark side of American fashion and consumerism. While this case led to new California laws banning such labor conditions and practices, and compensations ranging from $10,000 to $80,000 for the workers, demands for 8 billion items of clothes per year in America have fostered sweatshop conditions in the US and abroad. In the US, they are especially associated with ethnic enclaves or manufacturers in the US—Mexico borderlands. More corporations have been accused of underpaid and dangerous labor conditions overseas—in the US-controlled territory of Saipan (hence, “Made in America”) or Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Latin America and Africa. Major designers and distributors like Nike, DKNY, Guess and others have been implicated; celebrity television host Kathie Lee Gifford broke down in tears on air after accusations that her clothing line was produced by child labor. College students and labor activists in the 1990s increasingly organized boycotts of these products and lobbied institutions, government and manufacturers for changes—although ethics, here, must struggle against constant demand.