Who made my clothes?

This week marks the 5th anniversary of the collapse of the Bangladesh factory complex that killed 1,138 garment workers and injured a further 2,500 in one of the world’s worst industrial tragedies in history. Every year, fashion revolution revives this “WHO MADE MY CLOTHES” campaign for a systematic reform of the fashion industry with a focus on the need for a transparent supply chain. Do you know who made your clothes that you’re wearing right now? Do you know if they are paid minimum living wages, if they work at a safe environment? I generally try and talk about how to shop and style ethically in most of my posts, but today I had to dedicate this post solely to that.

A lot of us don’t put much thought into this, because who has the time for all that right? Honestly, if you are an educated human being who is aware of what’s happening around the world with the wake of fast fashion, you should! Because if you’re reading my blog with a working internet connection and a smart device, you pretty much have access to everything that you need to know about how the fast fashion industry is ruining the planet and exploiting the basic human rights of the people in developing countries. All it takes is a little awareness among people to actually make a change in the way things currently work.

So I’m asking this to every person who reads my blog – be it a blogger or not, to actually help raise awareness about this and talk about it on social media. You never know who you might influence. Being in the blogging industry, I can tell you one thing. Fast fashion companies are the first to get in touch with you to give you free stuff to advertise on the blog. You can easily notice this trend – a person starts blogging, a few months into it they would share wishlists and clothes from Shein or Zaful and advertise it as c/o (courtesy of) on their blog. Have you ever thought how these fast fashion brands afford to send you stuff worth $50-$100 for free just for the sake of advertisement? It is because they pay their workers so less and the actual cost of the item is probably 1/10 of what they advertise on their site. So what do they do with all that profit? They use that to advertise their brand so that more and more people overpay for the cheap quality clothes that are merely use and throw and rebuy when the trend changes. In the same way, if you pay $100 for a dress, it also doesn’t mean the company is paying their workers fairly. In fact J.C.Penny and Zara are some of the brands that were sourcing from the Rana Plaza factory at the time of the incident!

I recently saw this in Everlane’s website –

This is what transparent supply chain looks like. You can go and see pictures of the factory where each item is made and even read biographies of people who made your clothes on their website. Every fashion brand should be able to do the same – that’s the end goal of fashion revolution. So I urge every one of you to reuse the clothes you already have as much as you can and put some quality thought into your future purchases at least from today!

Now that I’m done with my rambling for the week, I want to share a few pictures from my recent visit to Filoli , another gem in the Bay Area! I wore this one shoulder top that I previously styled in this post with a sequin skirt with a 5 year old palazzo pant, both from India! Oh and guess who’s back in action – my fav cultgaia bamboo bag! Did I mention, they produce these bags ethically? 🙂