Category Archives: DESIGN

Killer Jeans: Sandblasting continues…

A new report by the Clean Clothes Campaign exposes the continued use of sandblasting in the Bangladesh garment industry, despite it being banned by some big brands and outlawed in Turkey since 2009. The CCC recognise that this problem is not exclusive to Bangladesh, and like the International Textiles Garment & Leather Workers’ Federation [ITGLWF], call for global action on the issue.

”This report shows that a voluntary company ban is simply not enough – governments worldwide should enforce a national ban as well as enforcing import bans.” Clean Clothes Campaign 2012

Sandblasting is a technique used to distress denim and the practice is widely accepted as being dangerous to workers health, including exposing them to the risk of Silicosis, an incurable and potentially fatal lung disease. These concerns are made more worrying where health and safety precautions are inadequate or non existent. The Deadly Denim report contains the findings of research conducted in Bangladesh including interviews from garment workers, suppliers and heath care professionals; it also explores why sandblasting is still widely used despite the known dangers, and offers recommendations to brands, governments and international organisations.

The issue of sandblasting is one which should lead us all to question the real cost of the clothes we buy and whether it is ever acceptable for people to risk their lives in the production of fashion items.

UPDATE II // The NICE consumer project

As promised here is an update of the second NICE consumer consultation webinars, The Art of Sustainable Consumption. At this session we heard from four speakers presenting a range of responses to sustainability. In bringing them together we were able to imagine what ‘sustainable consumption’ might look like and also how some of these approaches could be linked.

Giordano Capuano -Vivienne Westwood- presented the model of ethical production behind Westwood’s Ethical Africa collection. The project began as part of an initiative of the International Trade Centre, which aimed to link luxury brands in the West to producers in communities where poverty is high. The exciting thing about this project (and others like it), is the long term ambition which involves, empowerment through meaningful work and training, and sharing skills that will help to achieve sustained trade opportunities in global markets. Whilst this example demonstrates positive production and sourcing, it is not a solution to ethical production that could be replicated in all sectors of the fashion industry today.

Next up Henrik Lampa (H&M) talked about how H&M is actively seeking to improve its supply chain through a more sustainable fabric sourcing policy, guided by research from Made By. Conventional cotton production has a negative effect on the environment and can also be damaging to people the land they rely on through the heavy use of pesticides and water; working towards ‘better’ cotton is a step in the right direction, and H&Ms efforts here will hopefully prompt other companies to follow suit!

[For insight into the limitations of current LCA models and benchmarks, check out Pulling Wool over our Eyes: The Dirty Business of LCAs, by Tone Skårdal Tobiasson, Editor at www.nicefashion.org, and Kjersti Kviseth, Partner 2025design.]

Of course we also know that fast fashion is problematic in relation to the volume of disposable goods produced, and the production speed that is necessary to be competitive. These factors can translate into difficulties for suppliers and negative conditions for production workers; however it is hard to see how improvements here can be made from within individual companies when this would compromise their competitiveness in their market sector. Perhaps tackling this problem requires a multi-brand approach that will give all companies a level playing field whilst improving conditions for garment workers?

The next presentation by Mo Tomaney of Central Saint Martins, focused on design-led responses to sustainable consumption. Mo inspired us with these case studies from the design world, Junky styling, From Somewhere and Gary Harvey. Finally she introduced the student program Reclaim to Wear, which aims to prompt the next generation of designers’ to think sustainably. As a student designer myself this is of real interest to me, and I believe design could be involved at every level of sustainable consumption in diverse and exciting ways. Design can also act as a valuable conduit between seemingly conflicting needs, such as the desire for rapid change and the need to reduce waste.

Aptly, the last speaker Ellen van den Adel, talked about post-consumer textile waste. Discussing how the consumer benefits emotionally from the knowledge that their waste will be reused, and how consumers understand the message about recycling and many do recycle or want to. However the viability of the textile recycling industry is threatened by a number of factors which are likely to become more influential into the future. In response to this Work in Progress have collaborated with Textile 4 Textile to develop an automatic sorting machine capable of sorting textiles by colour and fibre type; this sort of technological advancement may help protect the used textile trade. Education and dialogue between companies, designers and textile recyclers could also help to improve the end of life opportunities for our clothing.

The seminar inspired a level of optimism about what is already happening to improve the sustainability of the products we consume, at the same time an approach to disposable ‘fast fashion’ remains unclear. This is the most complex of topics as it is inseparable from broader themes such as our economic structure, competition, and many social and cultural factors (for example the speed at which information travels today is related to the rapidity of trend cycles), all of which go far beyond fashion itself.

Listen to the entire webinar and view the presentations here.

GET INVOLVED // A framework for sustainable consumption

“Consumers can play a pivotal role in transitioning the fashion industry toward more sustainable business models.” (BSR)

This year the Copenhagen Fashion Summit follows the theme of consumption, and will see the launch of a framework for sustainable consumption, developed by the NICE Consumer project. The framework will also be presented to the EU presidency council, and at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development later in the year. The NICE consumer is a collaborative project between the Danish Fashion Institute and BSR, which actively engages stakeholders from the industry, civil society and the government.

So how can we be involved?

As consumers we are an important part of the discussion on sustainable consumption. This project is giving people the opportunity to take part, through a series of free interactive webinars taking place in March and April. The sessions will introduce the project and track its development in the run up to the Copenhagen summit. Participants will also be able to interact with the speaker through online polling and Q&A sessions.

Anyone who is interested can sign up through the website, but hurry the first event will be held on the 13^th of March!

The Fair Wear Formula

The Fair Wear Foundation (FWF) has recently produced a short film which presents a clear summary of what they do, how they do it, and the reasons why. The organisation works towards fair labour conditions for garment workers. To define this they identify eight labour standards based upon the UN human rights principles. These objectives include maintaining a living wage, an end to child labour and the right for workers to form or join a union. The FWF supports brands in achieving these aims in an open manner and provides consumers with the information they need to shop ethically.

The position of the FWF is one of rational and constructive action, working in collaboration with many stakeholders to implement and monitor clear strategies for improvement. Brands who sign up may find they have work to do, but by signing up they are showing a genuine commitment to change. This is in contrast to the reactionary cut and run approach that is sometimes taken in response to exposure for labour rights abuses which can be more damaging to the workforce and does not help to address the long term issues.

When doing some customer research last year, I found that a lack of transparency in garment supply chains hampers efforts for change. I was told by many people that they didn’t have the information they needed to make ethical purchases. There was also a lot of confusion about what to believe, for example, when a brand’s ethical policy did not seem to reflect the reports in the news. The FWF provides consumers with a verification of labour conditions, however in the UK, there are still only a handful of brands signed up. This leads to another opinion repeatedly expressed to me: the lack of choice for ethical shoppers. If we as consumers want transparency and choice in the purchases we make, then maybe we should be the ones asking brands demonstrate their commitment to ethically produced fashion. One way may be to sign up for the FWF code.

Source: Fair Wear Foundation

Fashioning the Future Award winners announced, London

On November 10^th, the Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF), at London College of Fashion, announced the winners of this year’s Fashioning the Future Awards — themed UNIQUE.

Congratulations to Ashley Brock (United States), Sara Emilie Terp Hansen (Denmark), Evelyn Lebis (Sweden), Christian Frank Muller (Germany) Alice Payne (Australia), and Lara Torres (Portugal).

Here is a taste of just two of the award winning entries (now added to the ‘Projects for Change’ collection on the left):

“Man sinking to the floor” from “An impossible wardrobe for the invisible,” by Lara Torres, is “a video installation showcasing water soluble clothing in order to comment upon the transient and disposable nature of fashion.” (CSF) Click here to view the entire series of performances.

“Lara Torres present’s the recordings/documentation of seven performances in a video screening. These videos are based in the creation of temporary clothes that are produced with the aim of being destroyed. They refer to the los[s] of the object and the documentation of this loss. The action of effacing the clothes leaves a trace (the seams) translating a strong relation with memory and forgetfulness.” (Lara Torres, An impossible wardrobe for the invisible: vimeo)

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ThinkLifecycle, by Alice Payne, is “a widely applicable content management system joining new and existing industry practices in order for companies to evolve towards a sustainable fashion industry.” (CSF)

“The ThinkLifecycle CMS grew from the need for sustainability to be a central concern within the mass market design process, rather than a tacked-on extra. Mass market fashion is affordable, accessible and democratic. However, it is based on a linear model of production where resources are extracted en masse, manufactured into garments and then sold to consumers, who rapidly dispose of them to purchase new product.” (ThinkLifecycle)

Congratulations to all the winners, finalists, organizers and participants!

Source: the CSF

Photo Credit: Alex Maguire, via the CSF

READ // Let’s Clean Up Fashion 2011, Labour Behind the Label reports

Labour Behind the Label has released a new report, Let’s Clean up Fashion 2011: The state of pay behind the UK high street (LCUF).

With respect to a living wage on the high street, this is the 5^th edition in a series of LCUF reports from LBL.

The findings have ranked Levi Strauss and Gap Inc. with a score of 1 out of 5 (along side H&M, and others), while Zara, Monson and NEXT were found with the highest scores at 3.5 out of 5.

According to LBL, initiatives taking living wage seriously must be grounded by four essential pillars:

Taking a collaborative approach
Worker organizing and freedom of association
Examining commercial factors paying the cost
Rolling it out: developing a route-map for sustaining a living wage

“The fact is that workers do speak out to demand better wages. At best they are often ignored; at worst they are persecuted, threatened, dismissed or harassed. Companies must do more to ensure respect for trade union rights in the quest to provide a living wage for garment workers.” (Labour Behind the Label, Let’s Clean Up Fashion 2011: Pg. 1)

Readers who have followed LBL’s LCUF reports in the past will likely be surprised to see Gap Inc. with such a low score, considering the company received one of the highest grades in the 2009 report. According to LBL:

“Gap plans to work on developing good management and human resource systems with suppliers, which are needed. However, Gap supplied no evidence of plans to translate this work into real wage gains for workers. More worryingly, it states its intention to focus mainly on the achievement of compliance with minimum wages. This shift seems to suggest Gap has given up any plans to work towards providing living wages to workers in its supply chain altogether. We hope this isn’t the case.” (Labour Behind the Label, Let’s Clean Up Fashion 2011: Pg. 28)

LBL has created on online petition calling on Gap and H&M to do more. Click here to take action.

For readers on twitter who’d like to spread the word, here are some suggested tweets via LBL:

Which highstreet brands are doing most to improve pay & conditions for workers? Find out from Let’s Clean up Fashion: http://bit.ly/lcuf2011

Who’s ethical on the highstreet? Find out in the NEW edition of Let’s Clean up Fashion: http://bit.ly/lcuf2011 @labourlabel

Enough to feed your family – too much to ask? Gap & H&M seem to think so. Take action to ask them to reconsider: http://bit.ly/r3zw2O

Click here for company profiles and scores, and here for advice from LBL on where to shop.

Fun Find | Vintage Chinese Fashion Magazine

Ling long Magazine Covers Issue 81, 1933 C.V.Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University

Remember about a year ago when I posted an overview of the exhibit The Evergreen Classic: Transformation of the Qipao that was showing at the Hong Kong Museum of History. This is somewhat of a follow-up to that post. Yesterday, while perusing my twitter friend feed I came across this:

Having lived in Shanghai for a long time, I couldn’t resist clicking on the link and up came the website for the online repository of Ling long Magazine at the C.V.Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University. On this site you can find every issue of Ling long Women’s Magazine from 1931-1937. You may already know that Shanghai, and other cities in the ‘Orient’ were pretty happening places in the 1920s and 30s [check out the video below for proof].

This magazine was the woman’s guide to it all! It “was popular during a time of dramatic material, social, and political change in China.” Specifically the era after the end of dynastic rule and into the upheaval of the Republican Era. This collection provides a glimpse into the then newly ‘modern’ China through the magazine’s discourse on the ‘modern’ Shanghai woman in this period of change. The magazine addressed these changes with openness asking the reader to decide what is the definition of a ‘modern’ woman by providing them with contrasting points of view. As the website states:

Ling long Magazine Back Cover Issue 32, 1931 C.V.Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University

“In many ways, Shanghai’s New Woman was little different from her global counterparts; she bobbed her hair and challenged gender boundaries just like they did. Yet she was also born in a particular modern Chinese context full of contradictions. Reformers idealized the New Woman as free and liberated, an example of China’s break from her oppressive and conservative past. Critics of the New Woman, however, suggested that her excessive consumption and unrootedness represented the dangers of unbridled modernity and foreign influences.

The Ling long woman epitomized the Shanghai New Woman. She lived in both the fantasy world of popular culture and on the streets of everyday Shanghai. Photographs in the magazine ranged from glamorous movie stars to the actual authors of articles, and from society ladies to students. Just as the Ling long woman had multiple identities, the magazine called her a variety of both Chinese and English names: xin nuxing and xin nuzi (new woman); xiandai nuzi (contemporary woman); modeng nuxing (modern woman, modern girl, girl of this age, and girl of today).”

This is such a great resource for all sorts of fields from social science to design to advertising to linguistics. There are some English translations of articles on the website. But, it is a lot of fun to just peruse the magazines for the fashion trends and old ads. It’s interesting to notice some differences and similarities between the Eastern and Western models and movie stars. For example, I noticed that there’s a lot less smiling from the Chinese women than the Western women [at least in the magazines I looked at]. The website also provides a great list of resources for people interested in learning more about the Shanghainese woman in that era.

This is definitely a fun find!

ATTEND // (sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out, New York

If you’re in New York, check out (sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out, hosted by EcoSalon, Of Rags, NYC Fair Trade Coalition and Textile Arts Center.

Not just for an evening of shopping and celebrating, but also education! FREE education!

“(sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out is a collaboration that celebrates sustainability’s place in the fashion world and in the global economy. The term sustainable is in parenthesis for the event title because this word itself is not the focal point of the event, rather, the evening aims to show that anything fashionable should simply make a positive impact and not need a qualifier to differentiate it.” (Ecosalon)

Click here for the details, and enjoy the festivities!

Otto von Busch Hacks Fashion Theory

As you know, we’re huge fans of Otto von Busch for his innovative work and research in ir/responsible fashion and hackivism.

In a recent project, Otto hacks fashion theory through a series of small booklets. We’ve just added them to our required reading list and so should you!

“Fashion is the celebration of the immediate future. By being constantly new, fashion indicates that the future can be something else, and it pulls us there, by force almost, promising the endless possibilities of the new, the unwritten, our possible better self.” (The Virus of Fashion, Axel Trumpfheller and Otto von Busch: Pg. 27)

Click here to access and download the booklets.

Thanks to TED for sharing this project with us (stay tuned for the launch of their new site), and congratulations to Otto on his new post as Associate Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons New School of Design in New York!

Mass Faintings, Fixed-Duration Contracts and the ILO’s Better Factories Cambodia Program

You’ve likely followed the mass faintings of garment workers that have taken place in Cambodia this year. While most reports have cited gruelling working conditions and worker exposure to toxic chemicals as likely causes, reasons for the faintings remain unclear.

Fast Facts // Cambodia

“The face of the Cambodian garment worker is that of a young, rural female.” (Tearing Apart at the Seams, Yale Law: Pg. 8 )

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Earlier this month, while investigating the faintings, the International Labour Committee’s Better Factories Cambodia (ILO-BFC) program offered various recommendations to factories, including the obvious suggestion that they adhere to full compliance with the Cambodian Labour Law (Media Update 06-08 August 2011 “Actions Have to Be Taken to Prevent Mass Fainting”: ILO-BFC)

Speaking of the Cambodian Labour Law…

Cambodian garment workers have seen a difficult year. Back in September, guest writer Dr. Robert Hanlon inform ed us on how the Cambodian court was cracking down on garment worker protests. The Clean Clothes Campaign still continues to fight for the reinstatement of workers who were fired during the protests: “Over 300 Striking Garment Workers Still Victimised.”

Add to this a recent report out of Yale Law School’s Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, “Tearing Apart at the Seams: How Widespread Use of Fixed-Duration Contracts Threatens Cambodian Workers and the Cambodian Garment Industry.”

The report highlights an amendment to relax restrictions on fixed-duration contracts would compromise the rights of garment workers under both Cambodian and international law. As a result, the authors advise the government not to amend the current labour law.

“The Cambodian government has been considering amending the labor law to ease restrictions on fixed-duration contracts. The country’s apparel industry is already facing heightened international scrutiny because of the mass firings of workers who participated in a strike last year over low wages. One of the main competitive advantages of the Cambodian garment industry is its reputation for progress on protecting workers’ rights, so it is important to understand the human rights consequences of using FDCs and the impact that permitting their expansion could have on Cambodia’s competitiveness.” (James Silk, director of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic)

The study calls for the ILO-BFC program, along with other relevant parties, to work with stakeholders to support long-term contracts. In return, the program has stated it will investigate “how the general trend in using short term contracts can be converted in the industry wide understanding of the long term benefits of changing over to longer term employment relationships” (Media Update 17 August 2011, “Yale Law School releases a report on Fixed Duration Contracts”: ILO-BFC).

While we wait to learn how all of this will continue to play out, we thought we’d leave you on a positive note, and (re)draw your attention to an important health and safety education initiative we posted on our Facebook page a couple of weeks ago: The ILO-BFC’s Garment Workers Open University 2011.

“Each Sunday, nearly 500 workers, from 20 garment factories, attended a full-day training to learn some basic knowledge about the Cambodian Labour Law, and obtain information about social protection services available to them.” (ILO-BFC)

Check out the training resources available through the ILO-BFC, as well as their 2011 tentative training schedule. Click here for the list of active factories registered and monitored through the ILO-BFC.

Social Alterations

An education lab for responsible fashion