Interact more with the social responsibility aspect of sustainable fashion.
This aspect entails improving labour conditions, properly ventilated work stations and healthy buildings. Eradication of slave and exploitative wages, along with abusing workers and ignoring their basic human rights. A socially responsible business will ensure that that the interests of their employees are well taken care of, interests including health insurance and retirement plans. These implications are especially important in the fashion and beauty industry where most processes cannot be fully automised.
Kylie Jenner has been making headlines in the past couple of weeks, this is nothing out of the ordinary for the billionaire make-up guru and reality tv star. However, recent headlines have been in very poor taste considering that her factory workers have been complaining about uncomfortable working conditions and little pay. This might very well be speculation and as outsiders we do not fully grasp the working relationship she has with those who manufacturer her billion dollar products. These allegations, however, whether fully accurate or altered need to be treated with the gravest importance.
It is therefore our responsibility as slow fashion consumers to ensure that these conditions are eradicated for good. As mentioned before, our ability to purchase products is our power. By revoking our buying power we are ensuring that labour relations are revisited and that a dialogue is created between employees and their management. Our buying power essentially decides whether or not a business continues to operate or has to shut down because it does not value its mode of production. People sell their labour in exchange for money and if they are being robbed of their rights, it defeats the purpose of labour relations because it means that only one party benefits from a contract entered into by two parties. Let us do our absolute best to ensure that fair trade is honoured through every production stage of the products we consume.
