Change through clothing?

It's Fashion Revolution Week. It's five years since Rana Plaza. Five years since 1,138 people died and over 2,500 were injured in the collapse of a building in Bangladesh, filled with garment workers making clothes for global brand names. The workers who died were mainly young women, treated badly, paid badly, pressured to work in unsafe working conditions, whose human rights were routinely abused, and who worked long, hard hours yet lived largely in poverty. Millions of other garment and textile workers around the world are just like them. It shouldn't be this way. It doesn't have to be. And we can change it. One place to start is with the clothes we wear.

There were some events taking place around the world this Fashion Revolution Week about making fashion and clothing more ethical, more sustainable, fairer. There were some in Ireland. I didn't make it to any of them, but I realised that I wrote about ethical clothing ten years ago here. Funny how things come around. It's good to see so much more happening in Ireland and worldwide on this. I've bought clothes during Better Fashion Week in past years, when there was a pop-up ethical clothing boutique in the centre of Dublin. Now there is an established ethical clothing shop, and several Irish ethical clothing brands. It's good to see. Hopefully we'll see more. And more people buying less, buying better, keeping clothes for longer, mending more, and enjoying clothes that provide a good life to the people who made them and the people who wear them.

www.fashionrevolution.org - campaigning for ethical fashion worldwide.

re-dress.ie - ethical clothing in Ireland.

Fair Trade Fashion? - my blog post from 31st March 2008.

Fair and ethical clothing - my Flickr album of photos of fair, sustainable and ethical fashion.