Current state of the Fashion Industry
The fashion industry sometimes gets a bad rap. After all, the entire industry is about looking good. Concerns of the average consumer like comfort, budget or practicality are of little concern to top designers. So it’s refreshing when we find fashion companies and designers that actually care about issues that effect society and the environment; not just 6-inch stilettos or thousand dollar handbags. Designers from all around the world are doing their part to increase efforts to become more sustainable, by creating beautiful and mindful products that give back to both local and international communities in need and most importantly by decreasing their ecological footprint.
Why we need a Fashion Revolution
Fashion companies are sparking a revolution striving toward changing the world in the most stylish way possible! To change the current reputation of the industry; clothing brands are modifying their present mission to include more philanthropic causes and increase sustainability efforts. The fashion industry has an infamous reputation for being incredibly wasteful and harmful to the environment, so they are working harder to boost sustainability efforts. Sustainability and fashion are two words that are rarely found in the same sentence. However, what most people don’t know about fashion is that it is the third most polluting industry in the world after oil and agriculture. Being glamorous has a surprisingly huge impact on water, global climate change, and toxic pollution. The fashion industry happens to be the second largest consumer and polluter of water. From growing textile fibers to the transportation of fabrics around the world; clothing is a giant contributor to global climate change. One pair of denim jeans, for example, requires between 1,000 - 3,000 gallons of water to grow the cotton. Afterward, the polluted water is often released directly back into rivers, lakes, and oceans. Cotton, leather, and other raw materials grown in industrial farming operations require large land and energy footprints. Many of these operations take place overseas and require a great deal of energy to freight from China to America.
The Movement…Fashion Revolution Week
The Fashion revolution is a worldwide movement that is looking to increase sustainability practices and ethical standards within the fashion industry. The goal is to ignite a movement that can radically change the way clothes are sourced, produced and purchased. This will ensure that merchandise is made in a safe, clean and fair way. This movement sprouted Fashion Revolution Week ,April 24th-30th.; founded as a tribute to the 2013 Rana Plaza tragedy, where 1,134 people were killed and over 2,500 were injured due to poor working conditions at a factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This factory was a huge manufacturing plant that was used to produce clothes sold worldwide. This spurred the globally trending social media campaign #whomademyclothes. A week used to encourage consumers to ask retailers "Who made my clothes?", and demand transparency within the fashion supply chain.
c.HAIR.i.TEE® a Charitable Fashion Brand Sparking Change
c.HAIR.i.TEE® is a company founded on a business model that has combined sustainability with charity. c.HAIR.i.TEE® is an American owned company that uses upcycled products to create fabulous and one of a kind hair ties. All products are made from recycled, reclaimed and renewable materials and are designed with the lowest possible impact on the earth. The profits are then donated on a quaterly basis to a non-profit that is voted upon by c.hair.i.tee employees.
Show your support by changing your spending habits
Fashion has the tendency to be extremely unsustainable, however you have the ability to be a conscious and sustainable consumer. You can do that by changing your buying habits to force retailers to adapt. Consumers need to urge fashion brands to create an industry that values people, the environment, creativity and profits equally.
Here are some ways you can join the movement:
Investing in clothing made out of sustainable materials
Buying vintage or remanufactured clothing instead of brand new clothing. (Remanufactured clothing can save more than 13,000 pounds of CO2 emissions a year)
Not tossing your old items, but instead recycling and donating your old clothes! (If every American recycled one more T-shirt a year, we would recover 210 billion gallons of water and 1 million pounds of CO2)
Purchase from companies that have made a conscious effort to chafe their supply chain process
