Category: Fashion

Grounded in handcrafting locally in LA from high-quality materials—including cork and Piñatex®—luxury vegan handbag brand Svala is donating 15% of its sales to the Boys and Girls Club of America, an organisation dedicated to supporting communities including the families of first-responders.tonlé is built around zero waste and believes that “every thread matters”. It has been affected by the general business slow-down, not least the closure of independent retailers who have cancelled orders. tonlé is focusing on supporting its Cambodia-based employees, and has come up with suggestions as to how we can help, via purchasing a sample box or a gift card, or donating to its “COVID-19 resilience fund”.

Clothes shopping used to be an occasional event—something that happened a few times a year when the seasons changed, or when we outgrew what we had. But about 20 years ago, something changed. Clothes became cheaper, trend cycles sped up, and shopping became a hobby. Enter fast fashion, and the global chains that now dominate our high streets and online shopping. But what is fast fashion? And how does it impact people, the planet, and animals?

It was all too good to be true. All these stores selling cool, trendy clothing you could buy with your loose change, wear a handful of times, and then throw away. Suddenly everyone could afford to dress like their favourite celebrity, or wear the latest trends fresh from the catwalk.

 

What is fast fashion?

Fast fashion can be defined as cheap, trendy clothing, that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments in high street stores at breakneck speed to meet consumer demand. The idea is to get the newest styles on the market as fast as possible, so shoppers can snap them up while they are still at the height of their popularity, and then, sadly, discard them after a few wears. It plays into the idea that outfit repeating is a fashion faux pas, and that if you want to stay relevant, you have to sport the latest looks as they happen. It forms a key part of the toxic system of overproduction and consumption that has made fashion one of the largest polluters in the world. Before we can go about changing it, let’s take a look at the history.

 

How did fast fashion happen?

To understand how fast fashion came to be, we need to rewind a tiny bit. Before the 1800s, fashion was slow. You had to source your own materials like wool or leather, prepare them, weave them, and then make the clothes.

The Industrial Revolution introduced new technology—like the sewing machine. Clothes became easier, quicker, and cheaper to make. Dressmaking shops emerged to cater for the middle classes.

A lot of these dressmaking shops used teams of garment workers or home workers. It was around this time that sweatshops emerged, along with some familiar safety issues. The first major garment factory disaster was when fire broke out in New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911. It claimed the lives of 146 garment workers, many of whom were young, female immigrants.

How to spot a fast fashion brand?

There are some key factors that are common to fast fashion brands:

• Thousands of styles, which touch on all the latest trends.
• Extremely short turnaround time between when a trend or garment is seen on the catwalk, or in celebrity media, and when it hits the shelves.
• Offshore manufacturing where labour is the cheapest, with the use of workers on low wages without adequate rights or safety, as well as complex supply chains with poor visibility beyond the first tier and of subcontracting.
• Cheap, low quality materials, where clothes degrade after just a few wears and get thrown away.

Asking questions is the first way to begin change.

Kubra Sait

The beauty of Fashion Revolution Week is that we all wear clothes, and we can all participate in the campaign. All we have to do is ask our favourite brands key questions that ensure the lives of garment workers are protected. So what are those questions? and why are they important?

 

Who Made My Clothes?

This is the first question we ask on Fashion Revolution Week. Before Rana Plaza brought the world’s attention to the plight of garment workers, many of us didn’t think about how or where our clothes were made. Asking Who Made My Clothes? is the first step, and it works on two levels. One, we as wearers of fashion make the connection between what we’re wearing and the people who stitch the clothes together. Secondly, we literally demand brands reveal the source of their products. No longer do we accept opaque supply chains, where clothing is sourced according to the lowest cost and fastest turnaround with no knowledge, or even regard for how these things are achieved. If we want an ethical fashion industry, transparency is key. We want to know who made our clothes, in what countries, even down to which factories. Once we know who made our clothes, we can ask the next four important questions.

 

Are They Safe?

A key change to come out of the Rana Plaza disaster is the Bangladesh Fire and Safety Accord. This agreement saw dozens high street fashion brands sign up to a regime of improved standards, inspections and training. The groundbreaking thing about the Accord is that it is legally binding, meaning brands that fail to improve standards risk being fined.

Are They Empowered?

Most of the worker rights enjoyed in many countries – such as the eight-hour working day – only came about after hard-fought battles by trade unions. Collective power is real power, but the right to join a union and organise in your workplace is not guaranteed for many garment workers. Unions can help enforce safety standards, working hours, pay and conditions. They provide a channel for workers to raise disputes and represent otherwise disempowered employees to management.

A personal insight into the struggle between being a conscious consumer (AKA buying only what we truly need), supporting ethical fashion brands and curating our own personal sense of style.

As a woman in her early twenties who is on an ever-changing path of self-improvement, ethics vs personal style goals is a really big issue. Since breaking from my awkward emo phase almost a decade ago, I have slowly but surely developed my personal style. Or at least, I think I have. The truth is, when most of your clothing comprises of hand-me-downs, you find yourself inheriting the style of the donors. In my case, it would be from my mother and cousin, and a few family friends. Luckily for me, they all have good taste, but getting the styles to work together flawlessly can be a struggle, and not all of them are quite me. While I have never been a shopaholic, before discovering the truth about fast fashion I would default to the cheapest, most accessible option, like dime a dozen department and chain stores.

“The idea that everything is purposeful really changes the way you live. To think that everything that you do has a ripple effect, that every word that you speak, every action that you make affects other people and the planet”

Victoria Moran