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Welcome to Fashion Revolution Week!

Written by Claire Hood

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Posted on April 22 2021

It’s Fashion Revolution Week!

This week we really want to reflect with the rest of the world on the fashion industry and question who really makes your clothes. So here at Sustainable Fashion, we want to celebrate and embrace ethical and sustainable fashion and share some of our knowledge with you. 

ethical clothing online, sustainable fashion australia

For those who have no idea what we are rattling on about Fashion Revolution week began out of the devastating Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 in Bangladesh, that killed and injured thousands of garment workers. Despite workers expressing their distress and safety concerns watching the building walls and pillars crack around them, they were ordered to return to work. Through the rubble, garment labels from; Primark, Benetton, The Gap, Walmart and Adidas were among just some of the 27 giant fast fashion retailers found producing clothing in this building, contributing to the devastating disaster. 

 

Fashion Revolution’s 2020 Index states that “less than a quarter (23%) of brands disclose the company’s approach to achieving the payment of living wages to workers”. As you know, all our clothing is made locally here in Brisbane, Australia, and produced under Fair Work laws that preserve some of the highest standards and wages in the world. This is some 20-50 times the rate that the majority of clothing workers around the world receive. As all our products are 100% Australian made this means everyone in our supply chain enjoys the same standard of living and really the core of ethics is simply treating people equally. Our garments are sewn by local makers, working from a home studio and choosing their own working conditions, just like us.

ABMT textiles, sustainable fashion, fashion revolution

This year Fashion Revolution are pushing for a focus on 'what's in my clothing' to open more transparency into supply chains. Here at Sustainable Fashion, 70% of the fabrics we use are Australian made which include our; organic cotton, certified non-mulesed merino wool, bamboo and modal. All of these fabrics are knitted and dyed at Melbourne mills including, ABMT textiles who supplied the images above and below. For more information about the our fabric production with the mills refer to our journal post; Ethical Merino wool is back for 2020 winter

fashion revolution, sustainable fashion, ABMT textiles

In our most recent collection, Branching Out, as well as using our Australian made fabrics we also used fabrics produced overseas in Japan and South Korea as Australia no longer produces any woven fabrics for apparel.

We try to source fabrics from countries that have similar work standards to that in Australia, to ensure ethical production meaning no child labour, under paid workers and unfair working conditions and environments. 

(Picture above showing the dye lab supplied by ABMT Textiles)

In our upcoming RANT winter range, we will be featuring the ethical merino once again as the centrepiece of our collection. The future Bestowed collection will again showcase the organic cotton and superfine cottons we source from ABMT.

fashion revolution, sustainable fashion online, ABMT textiles

Ethical practises and transparency matters to us and is what we hold close to our heart in every collection we produce. We want you to feel as proud as we do everyday, when you wear Rant and Bestowed, knowing where your fabric came from and that our garments are 100% Australian made. Below are some examples of our care and content labels in each garment, where we now show the origins of our fabrics. 

In light of this week, we also wanted to share some of our favourite ethical and sustainable fashion documentaries and podcasts for you. Some must watch documentaries if you haven’t watched them already are:

- The True Cost

- River Blue

- Dateline on SBS Season 2021 Episode 5: Fashion's Great Unravelling

- Blood, Sweat and T-shirts

- The Next Black

 

And if time is not the essence, multi-task and listen away to these podcasts:

- Ethical Fashion Podcast

- Conscious Chatter with Kestrel Jenkins

- The BOF Podcast

- Wardrobe Crisis

- The Future of Fashion by Vogue Business 

 

Fashion Revolution are also holding online events all throughout this week if you're interested in tuning in, https://www.fashionrevolution.org/ecwd_calendar/all-events/ 

We hope you enjoy learning and reflecting this week!

 

With love,

Claire 

*Note from Sarah, Claire is our awesome intern who is also the daughter of my friend Lou who modelled for the RANT Home and Gum Tree collections.*

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