They say you can have good and cheap, cheap and fast, or good and fast but you can never have all three together. For the fashion industry, and for ethical campaigner Carry Somers, this statement rings true. Just under three years ago in Bangladesh nearly 1,200 workers lost their lives when the Rana Plaza garment factory in which they were working collapsed. The fashion industry had been concentrating so hard on producing cheap clothes and turning around new trends quickly, that ‘good’ never had a look in. Conditions were found to be far below a safe standard, and as eyes turned to other factories around the world, similar problems emerged.
For Somers, founder of Fashion Revolution, the Rana Plaza disaster was a wakeup call. A conversation began in the media and fashion industry around clothes manufacturing and Somers took the opportunity to try and ensure the conversation continued by founding Fashion Revolution Day.
The concept behind the day is simple:
1) Turn an item of clothing you are wearing inside-out, label showing.
2) Take a picture
3) Upload it to social media and ask the brand the question 'Who made my clothes?'
This year the day takes place on April 24th, the anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster and 2015 marks its second year. Last year over 60 countries participated and #insideout trended worldwide on twitter with 6.6 million hits on google on the day.
At present, most consumers don’t know how or where their garments are made. This lack of accountability breeds the conditions in which disasters like Rana Plaza can happen. As stated on Fashion Revolutions’ website “It takes a lot to make a garment. Not just the bits we hear about but also the farmers who grow cotton, the dyers, sewers and other factory workers without whom the industry would not exist. These people, the people who make our clothes are hidden from us, often at their own expense.”
Somers believes that by making the fashion industry more transparent, companies will have to become more accountable and moves can then be made towards legislating a fairer, more sustainable future. “On Fashion Revolution Day,” she states “people come together to challenge the current system”.
Somers's great motivation to change the fashion industry came about as many of these things do, by accident. She explains “I had completed a Masters in Native American studies and was waiting to start a PhD. I spent time with producer groups in Ecuador and had seen how much they had suffered at the hands of middle men, a few of the people I talked to had even had arson attacks. I wanted to help them and make a little money for my holidays”. She soon realised that this was a more worthy way to spend her time then a PhD, and she started her fashion brand Pachacuti which still runs to this day.
Somers certainly practices what she preaches. “Pachacuti is a brand that meets the highest social and environmental standards, our Panama hats can be GPS tracked down to the makers house in which they were made. But we also compete in terms of fashion with some of the top stores around the world. We’re setting an example to the others to show that you can be sustainable and profitable at the same time.” Pachacuti was in fact announced in the first round of companies worldwide who had been approved by the World Fair Trade Organisation.
Other brands that are also setting a sustainable example according to Somers are G-Star, Eileen Fisher, and H&M, although she does admit that “H&M talk very loudly about the bits that they are doing, but there is certainly a lot more that they can do.”
She explains that “You are unlikely to come across anyone earning a living wage in the entire garment industry. In terms of conditions, they are seen to be improving since Bangladesh, however audits are still announced in advance so they have time to send home underage workers and to unblock the fire exits.” Somers says that all it would take to ensure safe working environments and a living wage for all workers would be for everyone in the UK to pay an extra 25p per garment.
Until this happens should we be avoiding cheaper high street brands altogether? According to Somers, that is not the answer. “A lot of the cheap clothes are made in factories alongside the luxury brands. So really the price you pay is not an indication of the garment being made in more ethical conditions. The best thing to do is research, be curious, and then do something about it with the answers you find.”
The fact of the matter is that we can no longer pretend we don’t know about cheap labour. An industry insider recently told Somers that “for every one person that contacted their brand last year and asked “who made my clothes?” was taken as representing 10,000 people who felt the same but couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it.” “The consumer has power,” Somers explains,” we can influence policies, we can influence brands, we can make a difference.”
Carry Somers will participate in the launch conference of the European Year for Development 2015 in Dublin Castle on Thursday. For more see dochas.ie
Find out more about Fashion Revolution Day at fashionrevolution.org
#fashrev
