20 Sep Cross Stitch Graffiti at London Fashion Weekend 2011
To mark London Fashion Weekend 2011, we are asking you to join us in creating handmade Mini Protest Banners aimed at exposing the ugly side of fashion. We hope to see you 2pm-3pm Saturday 24th September at the Richmix for our workshop.
Using Mini Protest Banners, we hope to make people think about the side of the fashion that is often too easily dismissed by the industry in a non-threatening but challenging way during the fashionista’s calendar annual highlight.
For the past 2 years they have been tied up to lamp-posts, railings, and buildings near fashion hotspots to provoke people to care about their global neighbours on the other side of the global fashion industry.
This year we want you to join us. One banner compares the £3million which supermodel Kate Moss received from Topshop from a collection with the meagre 21 pence an hour earned by workers in Mauritius who produced clothes for the range.
Another banner contracts the lowest paid for the week’s models, £125 an hour, with the paltry £25 a month for most Vietnamese garment workers.
Join us in East London Saturday 24th September at the Richmix event: ‘Snapshots Fashion & Garment Trade: Rag Trade / Trading Rags’ to make your own mini protest banner.
In a non-threatening, but challenging way, the collective hopes to provoke people to care about their global neighbours on the other side of the fashion industry.
Anna McMullen, from Labour Behind the Label, said: “As London Fashion Week is revealed in all its glamour, nowhere is the disparity between retailers’ huge profits and poverty for garment workers overseas more apparent. It is high time fashion giants, such as Gap and H&M, took this seriously and committed to meet the cost.”
John Hilary, executive director at the anti-poverty charity War on Want, said: “Year after year we are told fashion companies are cleaning up their act, yet every few months a new scandal exposes this as a myth. The fashion industry has failed to deliver decent jobs for those who make our clothes. Now the government must step in with regulation to end this abuse.”
Margaret
Posted at 09:00h, 04 OctoberGreat photos, they really serve to illustrate your points well. It just goes to show that fashion is in the eye of the beholder. Whilst I liked certain aspects on the design, some I would not wear.
Craftivist Collective
Posted at 22:16h, 19 OctoberThanks so much for your comment Margaret. We love hearing people’s opinions. We love fashion too and sometimes its so frustrating seeing beautiful designs we want to wear and designers we want to support but the clothes are made really unethically so we just can’t part with our money and support them. Let’s keep encouraging those stores and designers to become more ethical so we can wear their garments with pride!:)x