Fashioning an Ethical Industry Conference

This post is long in the making. In March, I attended the Fashioning an Ethical Industry Conference at the Zandra Rhodes Museum, in London. Organized by Labour Behind the Label the conference focused on different ways to achieve an ethical fashion industry and featured a range of speakers, from Ineke Zeldenrust (one of the founders of the Clean Clothes Campaign) to Trish Clarke (who works on corporate social responsibility at Topman) to Kate Fletcher (a freelance sustainable consultant and promoter of slow fashion). Interviews with a number of the speakers can now be found on the conference site.

Concomitantly with the conference was an installation by the Amsterdam-based artist Siobhan Wall titled the Clothes She Wears. It consisted of eight outfits, which constituted the clothes worn by eight different woman working in the garment district in different countries. Each outfit was accompanied by a tag describing the women's relation to the outfits, as well as with the garment industry. Partially founded by the Clean Clothes Campaign, the installation was subtle and moving. (You can find a small catalogue of the exhibit on the Clean Clothes Campaign website.)

Francesca