The Silkening Route of Fashion Sustainability - part two: Supply

‘Who are you wearing?’, is the most asked question on a red carpet or any glamorous event. But no one ever responds with - ‘I am wearing an extraordinarily expensive brand of which was made in Southeast Asia, and with the help of minors and children, sourced poorly and transported halfway around the world’.

I understand that luxury fashion is trying to be more ethnic, local and sustainable, but this is a true story, every other day.

The ‘class’ of fashion, is inversely proportional to the supply chain of the fashion industry.

When the ethnic Uighur Chinese clashes were going-on amidst the pandemic, it was pointed out how multinational companies such as Zara, Nike, Gap and Adidas were among the 83 brands that were directly or indirectly linked to manufacturing factories that exploit Chinese Uighurs. Over 180 human rights groups were calling for an immediate halt to the abuse of the Uighurs in Xinjiang factories, where an estimated 80,000 are forced to work.

To understand this, let me tell you a better story.

Fashion, or the creation of any garment, takes effort, intricacy and precision.

From the Pashmina of Kashmir to the Paithani of Maharashtra, it takes careful choice of the most select yarn, a highly skilled weaver, a lot of time, precision, creativity and just the love for their craft. But today, in the age of second-copy mass-markets on one end, and Zara and Shein, the process of ‘making of a garment’ has completely transformed.

It is no longer about a premium thread, but rather getting the cheapest fabric, getting it made in the cheapest country and having distributors everywhere for it to be shipped easily.

For the longest time, world’s most premium leather from the world’s largest slum - Dharavi. And hair for in-demand wigs, came from India’s revered - Tirupathi temple.

Vietnam and Cambodia, increasingly pivotal hubs for apparel and footwear production, have plummeted in the global rankings for modern slavery since 2017. Sub-national regions, including the cotton-producing region of Xinjiang, China, and Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital city and garment-making hub, carry even higher risks of modern slavery than their respective national averages.

For an average person, to buy something is to go to a store, like something and just purchase it. Something that can be now done on the click of a button. But if we depe-dive into the process of it - can we really make something for ourselves?

From a humanitarian perspective, even a piece of fabric, let alone the final product, has literally someone’s blood, sweat and sadly, tears involved.

I know it seems far-fetched, but isn’t it our basic duty to think about how our most beloved clothes have been made?

In 2021, multiple legal complaints were filed against some of the world’s largest fashion brands in major garment-producing countries across Asia to hold the global fashion industry legally accountable for human rights violations in the countries where their clothing is made. The Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), made a report about how things were being carried out in the pandemic as well with the company taking complete charge of every worker’s fundamental human rights.?

H&M was held jointly liable for alleged labour abuses that took place in 2020 at a supplier factory, where it had claimed that the brand “has total economic control over the workers’ subsistence, skill, and continued employment”.

A similar legal complaint has been submitted against Levi Strauss, Columbia Sporting Company, Asics, DKNY and Tommy Hilfiger claiming they are acting as “shadow employers” at a supplier factory in Katunayake (Sri Lanka) where workers lost their jobs and did not receive full pay. It was also confirmed that Inditex, the owner of Zara; Uniqlo; Skechers; and SMCP, which owns brands like Sandro and Maje — had profited from human rights crimes in the Xinjiang region of China.

In late 2021, a report on ‘Worldwide decline in labour rights strikes at heart of global supply chains’ was released, and it focussed on some of the following points.

When things seem so bleak, there is a lot to think about, and yet so little. Because if we really focus, we know that it is us, the consumer, that has been fuelling the industry and increasing demand, which leads to undue horror. It is not our mistake though, because there is so much we don’t know of.?

The reality beyond any picture is never happy. Almost every thing that we see is a farce, sad but true. I know that me writing this is not going to change the reality of a worker in Vietnam. I also know that even hundred, thousand, even 1 million people changing their consumer preferences - is not going to change how the system works. But if you work in sustainability in an extremely high climate-risk world, you got to be hopeful.

So what can be done??

Here are few pointers, and feel free to add:

• Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence, especially in vulnerable hotspots
• A consistent law across regulations for fair wages and a regular system of checks and balances
• Complete banning of a few places and processes - zonal boundaries can be created
• Develop standards and practices for designing garments that can be easily reused or recycled. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition has created an index for measuring the full life-cycle impact of clothing and footwear products
• Establish higher labour and environmental standards for suppliers and set up mechanisms to make supply chains more transparent. For example, the software company EVRYTHNG and packaging maker Avery Dennison have together launched an effort to tag clothing so consumers can trace how individual items were produced all along the supply chain
• Provide suppliers with guidance and resources for meeting new labour and environmental standards and hold them accountable for performance shortfalls

There is a lot to say here, but nothing really matters until we see a change. It is important to understand that every movement is humane.

It is an us v/s us situation. Whether it is me writing about the environmental impact of war, or sustainability from the perspective of Africa or Palestine, it is a human problem.

Fashion has been much beyond luxury. It has been a form of protest, a statement in itself. And it is about time- that we take a stand who are behind this.