Views. Comment. Opinion. Fashion Revolution Day: What it is and why it’s important

One year on from the collapse of a Bangladesh clothing factory which killed 1,138 people, the world’s first Fashion Revolution Day is asking the fashion conscious to examine their conscience and question who exactly made the clothes they’re wearing.
Fashion is about each of us, our personal style, a collage of our cultures, locations and interests, represented in millions of different ways each day. Its beauty is in the eye of the wearer as well as the beholder.
Fashion should be about diversity, about shaping culture through its design, its making and its life on our bodies. It’s a chance to express ourselves in creative and practical ways. So how did fashion get mixed up in a system that includes harming, enslaving and even killing people?
It sounds extreme, but this is the reality for some of the 75 million people employed in the fashion industry worldwide.

The fashion industry employs 75 million people worldwide but more needs to be done to ensure the safety of all workers and responsible manufacturing (Picture: supplied)

The fashion industry has one of the most complicated supply chains in the world; it secures livelihoods, grows crops, applies emerging technologies, but does so with huge environmental and social costs.
Fashion Revolution Day says ‘enough is enough’. It is about standing up for the rights of the makers and designers and asks us as wearers and consumers of fashion to re-connect with and celebrate the skills and ambitions of all involved in this incredible industry.
Fashion Revolution is the uprising following the atrocities of fashion slavery, horrifically demonstrated last year at Rana Plaza, where 1138 people died and 2500 were injured.
Their deaths were a direct consequence of our insatiable need for cheap, fast fashion which puts pressure on the producers to deliver on time and at volume in factories not fit for purpose.
Fashion Revolution is about eliminating pressure on designers as pushers of ‘stuff’ briefed to encourage addiction and dissatisfaction, on makers as ‘machines of mass production’ rather than skilled creators and on customers, encouraged to value fashion’s churn over its charm.
Despite some great work being done by some of its leaders, too much fashion remains mired in bad practices.