Manifesto for a Fashion Revolution
Fashion Revolution has launched its Manifesto for A Fashion Revolution with a strong message demanding radical revolutionary change for the fashion industry and clothes that don’t exploit people or destroy our planet.
The Manifesto was launched in Parliament on Monday 23rd April at Fashion Revolution’s annual Fashion Question Time event. The event marks the start of Fashion Revolution Week, a global movement to commemorate lives lost in the name of fashion, while promoting a conversation around supply chain transparency.
The Manifesto lays out a vision with 10 action points for a cleaner safer fashion industry. These cover dignified work, freedom of association, celebrating craftsmanship, solidarity, protecting the environment, circularity, transparency and accountability and a celebration of life.
Orsola de Castro, Founder and Creative Director of Fashion Revolution said: “We’re delighted to be able to set out our credo, our vision of the future. We want millions of people to sign our Manifesto.
“We want your signature to be a part of a global legacy so that every time something is unjust, or people are exploited and the environment is degraded, you can reach back to it and reiterate that you can’t stand for abuse, you signed the manifesto, you are ready for change. You are ready to stand up and be counted, and the more citizens that are willing to put their signature to these principles, the more we will be able to quantify the demand for a better industry.”
April 2018 will be the 5th year anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse and 5 years since Fashion Revolution was born. During that time, millions of people have joined Fashion Revolution to demand a fairer, more transparent industry.
Five years on, Fashion Revolution has seen the effect of its #whomademyclothes campaign. It has seen how the industry can and will respond to pressure from the people who buy their clothes and how transparency has become fundamental for building trust.
Carry Somers, Founder and Global Operations Director said: “Now is the time for us to expand our mandate. We will continue, always, to talk about transparency, but that’s just the start of the conversation and we are ready to delve deeper.”
“Revolutions come with manifestos and manifestos incite revolutions. We want our manifesto to motivate as many people as possible, to be riotous, something that belongs to everyone, that defies elitism, and that gives us all agency.”
Fashion Revolution hopes that millions of people will sign the manifesto. It wants signatures to become part of a global legacy. The organization will take the Manifesto to policymakers, and brands. They will ask designers and producers to hang it in their workplace, we will use it in colleges and at events. They will share it widely on our social media and ask our friends and partners to do the same.
Orsola continued: “Manifesto for a Fashion Revolution will lead you to an all singing, all dancing, proactive and pirouetting technicolour dream of a manifesto, with words that beg to be shouted, with statements that open your eyes in surprise and others that make you shut them to meditate further. Because we love fashion and our manifesto is also a bit of a love song.
“Our Manifesto will bring you right into our world and show you a better future, starting now: please sign it.”
www.fashionrevolution.org/manifesto