Social Entrepreneurs winners Rosie O’Reilly and her colleague Kellie Dalton, founders of the non profit organisation Re-Dress came in to speak to our full time Fashion Buying and Merchandising students last week to engage them in a discussion on “sustainability in the fashion industry”.
Students watched a video called “The Story of Stuff”, (www.storyofstuff.com) highlighting how industry creates a constant demand for us to keep on purchasing new products, i.e creating newer versions of computer programmes.
It really made students think about how much “stuff” we all accumulate and the impact the production of all this “stuff” has on the welfare of those in poorer countries – the impact it has on our natural resourses and the role we must all play to reduce its effect.
Re-Dress then encouraged students to look at this from a specific fashion view point taking the lifecycle of a T-Shirt as an example. They discussed the first stage; the raw material stage through to production and explored the various ethical, moral, social and environmental challanges at each stage, and the complexity in finding a balance between making a profit and making an ethical decision.
As future buyers and designers of the industry, Re-Dress showed the importance of highlighting this conversation so we can work at designing and buying garments that are produced in a way that respects the rights of others and also to respect our natural resources and environment.
The classroon discussion also highlighted our role as consumers to make purchasing decisions that support such values and examine for ourselves – How much of this “stuff” do we really need!?
Re-Dress are organising an Ethical Fashion Week May 4th -May 8th. For more details see www.re-dress.ie
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