Eco Fashion World

When each new year starts, it is a time to do a self check in and think about the changes we would like to make in the coming year. As 2012 is in full swing, it is time to think, "What have I done so far this year to contribute towards improving the fashion industry? What have I done to make a difference?"   

Ethical Fashion expert Amisha Ghadiali calls on us to make 2012 ‘The Year of The Sustainable Wardrobe’ with each of us becoming conscious consumers and demanding that the fashion industry is changed. The global industry that employs one sixth of the world's population is riddled with issues such as fast fashion, toxic chemical use, forced labour and waste. Even though our awareness is deepening about this, most of us don’t have a clue how to think about making our wardrobes sustainable.

Amisha says “The responsibility to change fashion is shared between the fashion industry, governments and us. What we buy or demand makes an enormous difference to what is made. There is a whole vocabulary building up around ethical fashion, with phrases such as Pre-Loved, Up-Cycled, Organic and Fair-trade. It’s important that we all start to understand what these mean and this is the future of fashion.”

Amisha has collaborated with Visual Communication Designer Joana Casaca Lemos to develop a poster and checklist that makes it easy for us to think about what we buy and what we wear. As the fashion industry is now so global, they have translated their poster and wardrobe shopping checklist into a number of different languages, so that the message can be spread far and wide. The rules and checklist are free to download so as not to prevent anyone from joining in. They are designed to be realistic to the way that we shop and to give us motivation to change our ways.

“Clothes are an important part of our daily life. We have the opportunity to affect millions of people’s lives and to protect our environment by how we shop and what we wear,” says Amisha. “Rules are made to be broken, but by following these you can make a difference.”