Category Archives: Fast Fashion

Social Alterations: Forum

How can education foster sustainable change toward socially responsible fashion and apparel design and manufacturing practices?

Social Alterations hopes to foster socially responsible fashion design education through aggregating relevant material that will inspire fashion/textile and apparel instructors, researchers, designers and design enthusiasts to get on board with thinking about consequence in the industry.

Sign up to the Social Alterations Forum if you’re interested in sharing and contributing ideas on curriculum, research, projects, materials, design, etc. with this community.

FEI Staff Training and Student Workshops

Ethics have a high profile in the fashion industry today. Are you equipped, as a tutor or student, with the knowledge and skills to engage with these issues?

Fashioning an Ethical Industry (FEI) runs staff training and student workshops at schools, colleges and universities on themes related to working conditions in garment manufacture. Through our training events we encourage staff and students to critically examine different perspectives on workers’ rights and initiatives to improve conditions.
FEI training combines our extensive knowledge with a participatory educational approach, building on participants’ existing knowledge and experience and using a range of activities and different media such as films, role-play and presentations.

More info: Fashioning an Ethical Industry

Source: FEI

Global Surplus in Organic Cotton Production

According to this article by Eco-Textile News, although 2008 saw an increase in demand for organic cotton by 33%, global production was left with an 8% surplus. The article cites information released by non-profit Organic Exchange, who also claim that demand for organic cotton will likely result in a 24% increase in 2009 an worry that inventory will remain too high.

The Organic Cotton Market Report will be available in Feb 2009 for review.

FEI Conference

A home worker's work bench in Belgrade, Credit: Clean Clothes Campaign via FEI

Fashioning an Ethical Industry: Putting Ethics into Practice March 11th, 2009

This is a one day conference that will bring together experts in ethical fashion, as well as students and tutors, to discuss the current state of the ethical fashion industry, and ways to put ethics into practice. There is no question this will be an excellent conference.

You can read more about this year’s conference and speakers here.

To read a report on last year’s event click here, or to listen to a podcast, click here.

Source: FEI

The nature of your garment is to fall apart?

Another interesting article taken from The Independent today, discussed some frustrations in dealing with products that not only fall apart, but are designed to fall apart.

Thought it might be time for another poll.

Fast fashion to blame for female consumer complaints in the UK

Consumer complaints in the UK surrounding poorly made clothing increased by 22% in 2008, according to this article by The Independent. The article cites a report by Consumer Direct released today. It claims that the biggest consumer complaint amongst females came from ‘defective goods’, at 34%.

According to the article, “[i]n the past five years, with the rise of “value” retailers, the price of clothing has fallen by as much as 25 per cent, while shoppers have bought almost 40 per cent more garments. This suggests fast fashion may be behind the increase in problem items.”

The article also cites statistics from another report, released by Global Cool, stating that female shoppers spent £11 billion on clothes that were never worn last year.

Fast fashion has created systems that cycle through clothing at a speed impossible for consumers to keep up with, and impossible to produce proper value items.

What an incredible waste.

feeling fashionably overweight?

The “Household Textile Environmental Impact Calculator” wants your closet to think about going on a diet.

The calculator asseses you based on annual water usage, energy usage, use of non-renewable resources, and pollution. Unfortunately the calculator doesn’t account for non conventional fabrics, such as hemp. What is impressive however, is the fact that the calculator takes you through the lifecycle of your garments: purchasing, care, and disposal.

The year is almost up, so Dec. marks a perfect time to start calculating and re-calculating to think about consumption practices for the year ahead. It doesn’t take long to calculate your annual textile environmental impact, and you may be surprised at how easy it is. I don’t know about the accuracy of it all, but one thing is for sure: the exercise promotes the process of reflecting on the lifecycle of your waredrobe.

So how did you rank?

Source: In the Loop and Ecotextile News