Saturday I went to a talk in the Cocoon space in Orchard to attend a talk organised by Susannah, the founder of Zerrin,
She interviewed four beautiful women about their vision of Fashion Revolution :
- Rakhee Shah, founder of artisanal fashion label Maisha Concept.
- Laura A. François, founder of Clothing The Loop
- Anisa Johnny, Senior Lecturer, Fashion Marketing and Management at Raffles Singapore.
- Selina Altomonte, editor in chief of Honeycombers.
As you can imagine the talk was very interesting even if sometimes I was a bit lost due to my poor capacity to be fluent understanding all the different english accents 🙂
Anyway I could understand the main thinks. They talked about sustainability and green attitude, organic etc…of course but the main thing they said was : « Think about the impact all the way from scratch… »
In fact I translated in : « Have common sense »… fair enough to buy organic but if this has to travel all around the planet to come to you, is it sustainable ? and we can go on for 10000 questions.
What I thought after the talk is, that in fact we have to ask ourselves what do we care of ?
- Do we care about the planet ? Yes ? then ask yourselves : what amount of water was used to grow the plants, what amount of residue was dispatched on the rivers to transform and dy the fabric, how far did the fabric travel ? etc…
- Do we care about the people ? Yes ? then ask yourselves in what condition the workers are treated ? how much they are paid ? do they have a real life or a 18 hours a day working life ? …etc…
- Do we care about wearing a brand ?…well, I guess after the first 2 questions this is none of our concern, but if it was, then which brand is complying with all what we care about? this is a question to which I do not have an answer, but maybe that is why I am not aware of a big brand being caring about all that, except when they do Haute Couture.
The girls then talked about consumer conscious. I feel that, right now a lot of consumers are conscious. What I still dont know is, if fast fashion brands are conscious of what matters, or if they are only conscious about making more money for their shareholders ?
My answer to « Who made my Clothes ? » is simple : I made it, and I’m teaching people how to make it for themselves, meaning :
- choosing your fabric
- sewing the clothe and realising the time it is taking leading to the 1000 times questions my students ask : »How come we can pay a shirt so cheap when you need 10 to 12 hours to do it? «
- wearing it over and over again because we love what we do !
Personally, I sew EVERYTHINK I wear and I am happy of it, even if sometimes it is not perfect.
Sewing means to be able to accept we are not perfect. Sewing means we deal with a manual activity which gives us satisfaction.
Sewing means we realise the know how is a real skill to be carried on through the time and the generations.
Sewing means I am involved in a creation path who says I am part of this world because I am able to leave a print of something I have done.
As a conclusion to my thoughts about Fashion Revolution Day, I will add :
« Remember, You can sew everywhere … »
COUTURE NOMAD 