WWHI Proposal – Ethical Fashion
What: The subject that I intend to research is about ethical fashion (a part of sustainable fashion). As the topic of ethical fashion is quite big, it can be studied from many different angles which contains the whole supply chain of the fashion industry. After changing research question for many times, I narrowed my research question down to “How to draw attention to labor equity issues in the fashion industry?”
Why:the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh took the lives of 1138 people, mostly young women, and injured about 2500, making it the fourth largest industrial disaster in history. This picture is in sharp contrast to the beautiful fashion I usually see. It occurred to me that the fashion industry is, to some extent, an industry built on human blood. I hope more and more people pay attention to the fashion makers’ working environment, salary, working hours, security problems, and other issues behind the glamourous fashion pieces.
How: First step: Researching, attending seminars in UAL, reading, watching YouTube.
I started to understand what people are doing for the change in fashion industry. I discovered that there is a group called Fashion Revolution, which holds many environmental protection activities and promote the concept of sustainable fashion on social media. I need to further research into the seriousness of mistreatment of labor in fashion production.
Second step: introduce intervention through social media and through UAL, the school platform.
First, I want to hold an online campaign named” where my T- shirt comes from?”. The starter posts a single piece of his/her own T-Shirt, tag the clothing brand, and asked: “where my T- shirt comes from”, and also tag 5 friends, ask them to do the same thing, similar to the ice bucket challenge years ago. The purpose of this campaign is to make people think about the story of inequality that might happen behind a T-shirt. In fact, as consumers, we have the right to understand if people are fairly treated in the production of clothing. If tens of thousands of people would join this campaign, it will popularize people’s concern about the fashion manufacturing industry on a large scale and drive change in the fashion industry.
Second, from the school level, with the support of UAL, we can arrange ethical fashion exhibitions and seminars, because UAL is the birthplace of fashion, and future fashion practitioners can get some information about the cruel reality in the fashion supply chain at school and make some change in the future.
What if: if the effort is successful a few things may happen. First, consumers will judge and support a fashion brand by how it treats its fashion makers. It will perhaps force the brands to seriously improve working conditions and equity of laborers. Second, I may continue to explore ethics in the fashion supply chain and help major brands to install effective ethical and sustainabiity conditions in their businesses. If it fails, I would reflect on reasons of failure, and keep on trying.