Today is the start of Fashion Revolution week! This year, from Monday 18th to Sunday 24th April, the annual campaign will take place. This campaign is the world’s largest fashion activism movement. This week the revolution wants to reinvent a just fashion world for people and planet, by letting people actively participate in online or in-person events all around the world.
About fashion revolution week:
The event is hosted each year around the 24th of April in memoriam of the Rana Plaza disaster of 2013.
Rana Plaza was a Bangladesh building that hosted several large fashion factories, employing around 5000 people. The building collapsed on the 24th of 2013, killing 1100 employees and injuring another 2500. After this terrible event, the movement was born as no-one should die for fashion.
Vision and goals:
For the last few years, Fashion Revolution Week has had a clear vision for the future:
“A global fashion industry that conserves and restores the environment and values people over growth and profit.”
Therefore, they made some clear goals to reach this vision. First of all, they want to end human and environmental exploitation, as well as create safe working conditions with living wages. Second, a more distributed balance of power should be established in the fashion industry. Third, they want to strive for a stronger labour movement in the fashion industry that also works to conserve precious resources and regenerates ecosystems. Finally, create a more transparent culture with accountability for everyone, while ending the throwaway culture, where Heritage, craftsmanship and local wisdom are recognised and valued.
How?
The movement wants to help people recognise that they have the power to make a change, rather than making them feel guilty by possible mistakes. To do so, a diverse movement is built to raise public awareness and educate people about the challenges in the fashion industry. Furthermore, platforms are built where people can voice their opinions and inspire others to consume less and take better care of their clothes.
Other than that, Fashion Revolution also wants to make changes in the industry. They want to highlight where the industry is moving to slow or shine a light on the social and environmental impacts of the global fashion industry. This pressure will help retailers and brands change their policies.
Last but not least, they want to push for policy changes by influencing governments to play a more active role in regulating the industry.
Komrads Contribution:
A lot of the values of the Fashion Revolution Week coincide with the values of Komrads. We also strive for a planet with no waste, which is why we have our beautiful sustainable sneakers. Moreover, we also value fair and safe working conditions for the factory workers extremely high. That is why our sneakers are being produced in Portugal. The reason why is simple. This way, we are sure that our sneakers are made in good working conditions, with correct wages for the employees and definetly no child labour is being used whatsoever.
