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Extinction Rebellion And The Fight Against London Fashion Week
The Extinction Rebellion funeral finale at London Fashion Week made headlines this past September. A group of 200 protesters donned funeral attire, their message grievously clear – we are in the process of killing our planet. The protest was written up in The Guardian and more ironically, Vogue, among other publications. Most of the articles described the event and noted the demands of the activists but there were precious few details about what was to come. Protests, demonstrations and disruptions are tools to foment awareness and support for issues that require urgent attention. The act of galvanising people to collectively express their views has – for a long time – been an instinctive method of provoking change. From…
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Fast Fashion And The Art of Convenience
The psychological minutiae of how we shop is fascinating. The whole world of advertising pulls on our insecurities and battles with our want to express ourselves through fashion. Deciding what to wear, and why, has always been complex. Throughout history, clothing has been not only a practical thing but also a way of showing social class, sexuality and personality. With the rise of fast fashion through globalization, our choices of what to wear seem endless. But a new factor is starting to be taken into account, and that’s the ethics of the clothes you’re buying. Fashion to some people is not an art, or an expression but just a convenience.…
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Extinction Rebellion: London Fashion Week Are You Listening?
Written by Emma SummerscalesBlog: http://emmasummerscales.com/ Instagram: @studiothrift This Sep XR will attempt to shut down London Fashion Week in a bid to raise awareness of the environmental destruction caused by the fashion industry. They have written to the British Fashion Council asking that it be cancelled. Do you agree with the proposed disruption and do you think cancelling LFW will make the fashion world stop and listen? Greenpeace has been campaigning about climate change since the 1970s and there’s no doubt that the actions of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion (XR) have caused a necessary explosion in media coverage and awareness. London Fashion Week (LFW) wasn’t cancelled, but XR did…
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Fashion’s Climate Emergency
Twitter: @theeasyethical / Blog: The Easy Ethical It’s no secret that fast fashion is unsustainable, despite government attempts to keep this fact hidden. They talk about making our homes energy efficient, using public transport and eating locally, but fast fashion always seems to forgo a mention. But it needs urgent attention. Not only are we consuming fashion made of material harmful to the environment, we’re consuming it at an alarming rate. A lot of us love fashion, and a lot of us are simply unaware that our purchasing habits are causing so much environmental destruction. How many people name fashion when they talk about what they perceive to be the…
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Fashion’s ‘Now’ Culture Fuels Our Climate Emergency
London Fashion Week has always made the headlines. With its history of bold innovation, the showcase of new fashion is well established in Britain’s culture. But this September, London Fashion Week will feature in headlines of a different kind. Extinction Rebellion intends to shut down London Fashion Week and its aims are supported by science. Textile production is one of the most polluting industries, contributing 1.2 billion tonnes of cO2 equivalent (CO2e) per year, which is more than international flights and maritime shipping. And let’s not forget that cumulatively, the industry produces about 20% of global waste water. The science is stark and Extinction Rebellion’s protest must be bold. It’s…
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Dear Fast Fashion: There’s No Plan(et) B
Written by Olivia ZambriWebsite: www.gemifique.com IG: @gemifiqueco The growing millennial consumer group has emphasized the importance of becoming more educated about the origins of products and the industries they come from, and with this newfound enlightenment, companies deservedly feel the pressure to switch to less controversial practices in order to align the company’s values with those of their consumers. It is a company’s moral responsibility to determine and enforce the ethical standards that they use to market their products or services. It is also a consumer’s right to know where their product came from, how and where it was made, and whether it was tainted by any processes fueled by…
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Fashion Influencers And Our Climate Emergency
by Caitlyn HowittIG: @caitlynhowittx / @caitlyn_fashion We know that reducing our fashion footprint is a critical step that needs to be taken to reduce carbon emissions, so why do we find it so difficult to give up our ASOS addictions in favour of more ethical practices? Social media influencers. I’m a 22-year-old woman and I can’t help but wish that I was ‘one of them’. Getting sent free clothing, taking amazing selfies and making hundreds of thousands for essentially being photogenic. It really does seem like easy money. I envy them, but at the same time loathe them. It would be a completely different situation if they promoted sustainable/slow fashion, but they…
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#UseItMore
by Tessy MorelliIG: @tessy.morelli One good lesson I’ve been taught since I was a child is to take care of what I have before desiring something else. It’s a lesson that hasn’t been easy to accept. Back in the 2000s when I was a teenager and all my friends main weekend’s activity was to go shopping with their parent’s cash, always wearing the most fashionable clothes, I was forced to sneak into my mum’s, auntie’s, and grandma’s closets in order to find something “new” to wear the next weekend. I started to be defined by everybody as “creative”, “extravagant”, “strange”; it wasn’t a choice. I deeply wanted to be more…
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Fashion and Waste
by Ana BoguskyIG: @mrsamericanmadeBlog: www.mrsamericanmade.comTwitter: @mrsamericanmade If you could advise government policy to set new sustainability standards for the fashion industry, where would you start? What changes are necessary for genuinely sustainable fashion? Waste is what we throw away and what we do not use. But what really happens when we throw things “away”? In a perfect world, fashion would be a more circular industry instead of linear. But new materials are currently very often made from virgin (and irreplaceable) resources instead of making new materials from old ones. Plus, there is no “away” when things are discarded. They end up in the landfill. And in garment manufacturing, it is no different because…
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Let Us Not Die From Habit
by Shan Purdy IG: @shanpurdyphotos Jared Diamond’s ‘Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive’ talks about how past societies have thrived and flourished, but then died out through habit. The most interesting case study was that of the Greenland Vikings. They built churches and a cathedral, wrote in Latin and Old Norse, wielded iron tools and even followed the latest European fashion trends. They lasted almost 500 years, and finally vanished in one winter because of their inability to adapt to their surroundings; because of their inability to change their habits. When I read this, I instantly thought, ‘Well..isn’t this the way our society is heading? Isn’t this the…
