Fashion and social impact, the keys to understanding

In recent years, a lot of attention has been put on the need for the fashion industry to protect the environment. Many companies from fast fashion to high end brands now advertise conscious collections made with low-impact materials and grand environmental claims that aren’t always backed up, leaving space for greenwashing to creep up. However, garment makers’ working conditions and labour standards aren’t subjects that are often talked about. According to Fashion Checker who reviewed 108 major European and North American brands, 93% of them still fail to grant their workers a living wage. And consumers should have the right to know who has really paid the price of the garments they’re wearing.

The collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh in 2013, which resulted in the death of more than a thousand garments workers, was a wake-up call for the fashion industry to hold brands accountable for what happens in the factories where they source their products. Non-profit organisation Fashion Revolution was founded as a result of this tragedy and has now grown into a global movement asking for cultural, industry and policy change in order to end human exploitation in the fashion industry. Every year in April during Fashion Revolution Week which commemorates the anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster, consumers are encouraged to ask brands who made their clothes on social media. At the same time, Fashion Revolution ranks 250 of the world’s largest fashion brands and retailers in its yearly Fashion Transparency Index according to what information they disclose about their social and environmental policies, practices and impacts in their operations and supply chain – and the results aren’t anything to brag about.