The True Cost

This week we have been focusing on 'the big idea' within are seminar sessions; the brief was to focus on raising awareness amongst students of the environmental and ethical issues connected with the fashion industry, working in a group we would create two posters one will be the big idea itself and the other will look at the idea generation process.

As research for are big idea we looked at a number of ethical and environmental issues relating to the textiles/ fashion industry one of the sources that was hugely influential was 'The True Cost' documentary. It shows the impact that the fashion industry has on the world as well as highlighting the unfair treatment of people in third world countries that produce the clothes we wear, the documentary covers a number of topics and issues with one of the main focal points being how the price of the clothes we buy is falling, becoming for affordable this has been decreasing for a number of decades whereas 'the human and environmental costs have been growing dramatically'. We are able to see within the documentary untold stories from people directly involved in the industry from factory works themselves to more familiar faces such as Lucy Siegle who we know well for reporting and speaking about environmental issues. "The True Cost is an unprecedented project that invites us on an eye opening journey around the world and into the lives of the many people and places behind our clothes".

Human rights and Globalisation are some of the key themes of the documentary, 97% of the clothing that is now sold is made overseas but we as the consumer are often blind sighted to these facts and rarely give a thought to the people who have made that new winter coat you've just brought or that new handbag you do desperately need, and to most people these figure are shocking (even though they should shock and make everyone consider the purchases they make) around the world there is a staggering 40 million garment workers, but even with this high volume of workers they still lack access to the same basic human rights that people in the west receive. On a daily basis the fashion industry connects millions of people around the world affecting both agriculture and manufacturing to retail, in the new globalised world it is one of the leading industries of the 21st century. Today it shows some of the "highest levels of inequality and environmental destruction the world has ever seen", we need to now look at how we can over come this but in a way that can still operate on a globalised level, in a way that appreciates and values both people and the planet who are essential parts of this rapid growth.

From the documentary we looked at a number of the issues that were brought to are attention but the one that we thought would work really well when it came to working towards producing are big idea was the effect the textiles industry has on world wide water pollution, some of the facts were truly shocking for us and for me personally it's something that I have barely thought about; we always hear about the unfair treatment of the factory works in the news,and disasters such as the deadly Rana Plaza Bangladesh factory collapse and we do hear of some polluting factors on the environment but nothing along the lines of water pollution. This is why we feel that it would be a good focal point for the idea, as we will it will have both a shock and educational factor.

#fashion #truecost