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Added on 12/29/07
Neat piles of shirts with familiar labels PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA—Cham Roeun folds eggplant- and lime-colored tank tops into tiny square units, one after another, until they are stacked in cotton-blend towers. Their labels say XL or L, but they are all...
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Neat piles of shirts with familiar labels PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA—Cham Roeun folds eggplant- and lime-colored tank tops into tiny square units, one after another, until they are stacked in cotton-blend towers. Their labels say XL or L, but they are all the same size: tiny, tiny, tiny. At Psah Toul Tom Poung in Phnom Penh—known to Western expatriates and tourists as the Russian Market—38-year-old Roeun hawks seconds from nearby garment factories, bought, she says, through a broker. Hers are frocks with stitching errors or missing buttons or one sleeve slightly longer than the other. There are men's Hawaiian shirts and women's button-down tops and zip-up sweaters, stuff destined for the Gap or Old Navy or Banana Republic if it hadn't been rerouted out the back door to this market. Roeun's stand is surrounded by dozens of similar stalls administered by women who fold and refold hundreds of shirts all day long. Many of their goods have no imperfections at all, of course. Roeun's clothes are... See less
Highlights:
There is a belief among stall keepers in Cambodia that if you have problems with the first customer, you will have poor sales for the rest of the day. It is nearly noon, and this woman is Roeun's first customer. "OK, how much?" Roeun asks her. "Dollar-fifty," she says. "Two is too much."...