What is Fashion Revolution?

TOGETHER, WE ARE FASHION REVOLUTION!

At Disarray HQ, we believe that sustainability, waste reduction and fair trade is an everyday responsibility.

When Fashion Revolution Week kicks off each year, we’re always super excited to learn more about the action we can take as both producers and consumers, to help eradicate the exploitation of people and the planet, at the hands of the fashion and textiles industry giants and in particular so called 'fast fashion brands'.  

Fashion revolution is our opportunity to contact our favourite fashion brands; either publicly (via social media), or privately via email to ask ''Who Made My Clothes?''.

We can choose dig deeper into production supply chains and learn how to recognize when a brand is simply 'green washing'.  Its up to all of us, as a global community, especially those of us who are affluent and educated enough to make considered decisions about what we wear, to demand complete transparency throughout the manufacturing process from source to surplus.

We can ramp up the conversation and hold brands to account by simply asking designers, producers and retailers 'Who Made My Fabric?''.  If you are not yet familiar with the Fashion Revolution movement then you may have wondered about the following trending hashtags popping up in your social media. 

As consumers we can use the tags #WhoMadeMyClothes & #WhoMadeMyFabrics to draw attention to our public posts. Such posts are more powerful still when our questions are accompanied with a photo of the fashion brands' clothing label on a garment.

Fashion Revolution is not a blame game, its about education, development, responsibility and accountability. Its very easy to point a fingers and name and shame the repeat offenders but why not take positive steps forward with your activism too. Let's 'big-up' our favourite ethical brands and show our support and appreciation for their commitment to the Fashion Revolution by leaving great reviews and 'sharing' links to their online stores with a little statement about why you support them too. 

Fashion Revolution week gives us a great opportunity to take you on a virtual tour behind the scenes of our small ethically conscious, independent fashion brand. As always, our team are truly committed to upholding the values of this essential campaign.  

Furthermore, it's just so empowering to learn that every single one of us, has the choice to vote with our wallet and take more care about where and how we shop for our clothes, in order to reduce exploitation of our fellow humans and our environment.    

(Pictures of missing and deceased loved ones are held aloft in despair at the site of the fourth biggest industrial disaster in living history. This was a man-made death sentence caused by the neglect of people in the pursuit of profit and one which was entirely avoidable and which will undoubtedly occur again unless we take action NOW).

This year, as we continue to pick our way through the global pandemic and fathom how to move forward after such life-changing loss of loved ones, co-workers, communities and careers, it seems more poignant than ever to remind ourselves why revolutionaries Orsola de Castro & Carry Somers founded the world’s largest fashion activism movement.

“Fashion Revolution week happens every year in the week surrounding the 24th of April. This date is the anniversary of the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse. Rana Plaza, a building in Bangladesh, housed a number of garment factories, employing around 5,000 people. The people in this building were manufacturing clothing for many of the biggest global fashion brands. More than 1,100 people died in the collapse and another 2,500 were injured, making it the fourth largest industrial disaster in history. The victims were mostly young women”

– Fashion Revolution (April 2021)

(Image credit: businessoffashion.com)

This is our chance to speak out for all those human voices who continue to be silenced by oppression, cruel working conditions and modern-day slavery. It is a matter of urgency.

“Many of the world’s biggest fashion brands and retailers are complicit in the forced labour and human rights violations being perpetrated on millions of Uighur people in the Xinjiang region of North-western China, says a coalition of more than 180 human rights groups. There is mounting global outrage over the atrocities being committed against the Uighur population in the region, including torture, forced separation and the compulsory sterilization of Uighur women.

The coalition of human rights groups says many of the world’s leading clothing brands continue to source cotton and yarn produced through a vast state-sponsored system of detention and forced labour involving up to 1.8m Uighur and other Turkic and Muslim people in prison camps, factories, farms and internment camps in Xinjiang. It says that the forced labour system across the region is the largest internment of an ethnic and religious minority since the second world war’’.

- The Guardian (July 2020). 

Collectively as consumers and producers, we have the power to demand complete transparency in the fashion & textile industry and its supply chains. We have education and affordable alternatives on offer to fight fast fashion.

It’s not about guilt and shame, it’s about empowerment. When we choose to ignore fleeting trends in favour of investing in our own personal style, our purchases become more considered. By escaping the influence of fast fashion brands, we can take time and space to be more careful consumers.

How can ‘looking good’ ever ‘feel good’ when it’s at the cost of human lives and suffering?

Learn more about the action you can take at fashionrevolution.org and discover Discover more about our own story in this series of Blog posts and by visiting our Ethics and Values page too.

Be sure to follow us on Instagram & Facebook for more stories and snippets as and when they happen.