The future of fashion is slow and steady, not fast and cheap, a mantra that Ayesha Barenblat, founder of Remake, lives and breathes everyday.

It takes a garment worker 18 months to earn what a fashion brand CEO makes on their lunch break. It takes seventy-five million people to make our clothes, and of those people, 80 percent are women between the ages of 18 and 24. It’s believed that 100 pairs of human hands touch our garments before we ever see them in store or online. And if that’s not enough, it takes 2,720 liters of water to make a t-shirt, which is said to be how much we normally drink in three years. Three years!

Where did I get this information? From Remake, the revolutionary advocacy group on a mission to build a conscious consumer movement.

Remake’s founder, Ayesha Barenblat, believes that fast fashion is out, and slow fashion is in. With a focus on the millennial woman, her wish is to essentially remake the relationship between the women who make our clothes and the consumers who purchase them. By putting a face, a story, and a name to the ever-anonymous clothing manufacturing industry, Barenblat has been able to create a relatable, human connection that is normally obsolete.

Barenblat’s story is nothing short of eye-opening. From the beginning of a movement to the future of where it’s going, Remake is working tirelessly to put slow fashion permanently on the map.

“On April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza fell down. I was working at Better Work, a partnership between the International Labor Organization and World Bank to improve working conditions inside the fashion industry at the time,” said Barenblat. “As the death toll mounted, and I saw firsthand retailers whose labels were inside Rana Plaza worrying about the legal precedent of compensating the victims families, I was moved to want change sooner and faster.”

 The 2013 Rana Plaza collapse she’s referring to occurred in an eight-story commercial building in Bangladesh due to a structural failure. And, according to Clean Clothes Campaign, it ultimately claimed the lives of 1,134 people, and is considered to be the worst industrial garment-factory accident in history.

“Having worked on the inside of the industry for a long time, I made the business case for retailers to invest in the lives of garment makers. When Rana Plaza fell down, it [became] clear to me that it would take a groundswell of consumer demand to truly move the needle,” says Barenblat.

The inspiration for Remake had been laid, what she needed next was “a people’s movement” that refuses to tolerate deaths, the atrocious human rights abuses, and the extreme environmental degradation in the quest for cheap clothes.  

Today, her vision has grown into something truly admirable. Remake is focused on contributing to the slow fashion movement and educating consumers in three ways, including creating stringent sustainability criteria that sets the tone as a call to action “for what good looks like.” The first of the three includes Remake’s long-term goal for slowing down fashion, which involves immersing millennial fashion designers into maker communities.

The second includes Remake’s grassroots efforts involving stories, films, social media campaigns, and pop-up events aimed at inspiring millennial shoppers to think more consciously.

The third and final element involves a curated capsule collection and brand spotlight that helps take the guesswork out of where to shop ethically. Determined to shatter the myth that slow fashion is neither fashionable nor affordable, Remake is changing the way consumers shop.

If sustainable and ethical fashion is important to you, or you’re just cluing in and want to learn more, Remake is an invaluable resource. Like Barenblat says, “We do all the hard work for you, making the discovery of beautiful, everlasting statement pieces easy. On the backend, we look hard for supply chains that are transparent [and] brands that are not simply greenwashing and running clever marketing.” Akin to the campaign Remake runs, Barenblat’s passion, compassion, and knowledge about the garment industry, and what it takes to make slow fashion mainstream, is as crystal clear as it comes.

A reality not to be taken lightly, Barenblat warns that buying more “is making us unhappy, exploiting women around the world, and degrading our planet at a pace so rapid that we are looking at hard choices by 2030, such as growing cotton or food, giving people access to clean water, or using water for fashion production.” 

“We have to go back to buying fewer, better things,” she says. “That five dollar impulse buy tee won’t make us happy, is filled with chemicals that touch our skin, and is entrapping a generation of women into poverty.”

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Labor issues in the garment industry are widespread around the world, and an investigation in Los Angeles has revealed it’s rampant among Made in the USA products as well.

More than $3 million in back wages are reportedly owed to more than 1,500 garment industry workers based in the Los Angeles area, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The investigation found that the back wages come out to $1,900 per laborer, “the equivalent of five weeks of typical pay,” reports the Times. “The cases revealed Los Angeles workplaces with ‘all the features of a sweatshop.’”

The situations were shocking: Some of the work environments included “shaky elevators with flickering lights” and the sewing employees “were paid 9 cents per piece of clothing stitched — a rate that often falls below minimum wage,” the Times reported, and some of the employees’ pay stubs “could be redeemed only at check cashing stores that charged fees.”

With much of the garment industry moving its labor to countries like Bangladesh, China and Vietnam, Los Angeles’ garment factories have dramatically decreased in the last two decades. But it’s still employing more than 46,000 workers, making it the second-largest manufacturing industry employer in the area, behind transportation equipment, and the wages are almost half the countywide average of $1,161, reports the Times.

The contractors cited for owing back wages work with some of the nation’s best known brands that boast their Made in the USA products, including Macy’s, JC Penney and Kohl’s, and according to the Times, “The Los Angeles garment industry runs on a system in which retailers order from manufacturers, who rely on a network of subcontractors to cut, dye, sew, trim and finish items. Profit margins are slim and competition is intense.”

Many of the contractors are willing to pay the penalties over labor issues because paying the penalties is cheaper than paying the people what they’re rightfully owed.  And even when the issue is identified through an investigation, workers aren’t guaranteed payment. According to the Times, a report released earlier this year by the UCLA Labor Center and the National Employment Law Center “found that it is very difficult for workers to recover unpaid wages, even when the state rules in their favor. From 2008 to 2011, workers recovered only 42% of about $390 million in unpaid wages verified by the state, the report concluded.”

Since 2009, there have been more than 1,600 Labor Department investigations of the garment industry in Los Angeles, with 89 percent of those investigated resulting in violations.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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A recently released report from MCL Global indicates that the Vietnamese garment industry is causing severe environmental impacts and increasingly exploitative incidents among its work force.

“The Sustainable Sourcing Map” published by the research organization implied that extremely poor levels of safety and health were found in the Vietnamese garment sector, alongside several instances of excessive overtime. Nonetheless, the country is proving a magnet for investors from neighboring countries where wages are rising such as Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.

The countries included in MCL Global’s Sustainable Sourcing Map are China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Pakistan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Philippines, Myanmar. The report covers the environmental, labor rights and economic impacts of the garment industries in all included countries, with a detailed summary of the reasons behind investing in and sourcing from these countries. The major problem highlighted in terms of labor rights is that although wages may be rising, they amount is marginal, and the conditions for workers are only deteriorating.

In Vietnam, the wages for the garment manufacturing sector are predicted to rise by 15 percent, but not necessarily for the laborers on the lowest rungs on the industry’s ladder.  No only are the health and safety concerns in the country escalating and overtime exceeding legal limits, but the industry’s main industrial parks in Ho Chi Minh City are discharging over 6,700 tons of waste daily. Up to 2,000 tons of this waste are industrial toxins. With the increased investment in the local garment industry and politically charged increase in export-led growth, this level of pollution doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

After the globally covered tragic incident of Rana Plaza in 2013 that raised general awareness of the injustices and exploitation of the garment industry have caused manufacturers in Bangladesh and India to come under scrutiny, many are turning to their Eastern Asian counterparts in Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam. Vietnam has in fact experiences a 13.14 percent growth in bookings for apparel shipments compared to India’s 7.5 percent growth, while Chinese factories are slowing down due to rising wages. As the global landscape of the garment manufacturing industry changes, the exploitation it has fostered may only escalate and impact different regions if not addressed by consumers, buyers and large name brands alike.

Image: Ika-Ink

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What you don’t know about your clothes will kill you, claims a new book.

It’s not enough to ensure your clothing is made by people being paid fair wages, is constructed of organic fibers sustainably harvested and is manufactured consciously. Killer Clothes, by Anna Maria and Brian Clement, explores topics related to documented studies regarding the toxic role of spandex, how petro-chemicals affect hormonal balances in women, and how the military is using service men and women as guinea pigs for garment testing.

Helpfully for such a heavy topic, the authors give readers the tools and resources to make more empowered clothing choices. Co-authors Dr. Brian Clement and Dr. Anna Maria Clement are Co-Directors of the internationally known Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida and have created wellness and disease prevention programs followed by more than 300,000 people. (They have authored a dozen previous books on natural health antidotes to illness and disease.)

We caught up with them recently to ask some questions about their book.

We think about where our clothes come from and who makes them but why don’t we consider how toxic they are? Why are we not worried enough?

Most people never consider that the clothes they adorn their bodies with are often made out of petro-chemicals. These man-made fibers notoriously spew out chemicals and fumes that inherently go through your skin and contaminate your bodies systems. There have been many well documented studies that highlight the disease-causing effects of these disastrous fashions. People think more about the way they look than their health and this is why this profoundly obvious issue is not front and center in the consciousness of the public.

It seems logical with the increase in spandex that there’s been an increase in obesity. You talk about how the increase in man-made clothing has coincided with fertility problems and cancer. Can you explain your thoughts on this?

The skyrocketing use of spandex may be like the historic question, what came first the chicken or the egg. These stretchable clothes allow for belly expansion. Does that not mean the garment industry is giving license to eat more? We also see a direct connection between tight under garments, most often made with oil fibers, and infertility. There have been several studies over the years that have revealed this serious concern. The tightness with males, pressures the testicles, reducing sperm counts. In addition with both female and males, the petro-chemical cloth mimics estrogen which is readily absorbed through the skin causing hormonal imbalances.

I found the quote referencing The Emperor’s New Clothes to be interesting. You explain how the Western fashion world sees the “Emperor” as “an economic altar on which our considerations of health and safety have largely been sacrificed.”  Are we that obedient?

After World War II, the rapidly expanding oil industry was not satisfied with the mass profits they made by producing fuel. This spawned a type of insanity where they convinced farmers to grow food with their chemicals (fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides), and in addition began weaving their chemistry into less expensive cloth. This created an economic alter that negated the precious question of whether or not this effected our overall health. This is not only obedience it is insane.

On your chapter called “We Are All Guinea Pigs,” you say the military has been knowingly using service men and women as guinea pigs for wider consumer applications for civilians. Have there been studies showing the effects on the service men and women from having toxic uniforms?

When one enlists in the service to protect their country, they unknowingly present their self as a research subject for a wide variety of military and civilian study. As you have read in our book Killer Clothes, the man-made fibers in hot desert conditions were literally igniting and burning soldiers. Rather than this being reported as a lead story in international news, it was buried and soldiers were told they could not wear these garments when off-duty.

What does the future of our clothing look like and how can we best make our voices audible enough for The Emperor?

If you are conscious enough to be concerned about our present state of affairs in the clothing industry, wait until infrared anti-odor socks are in your local shops or how about the nano clothing which places metallic in the man-made fiber. One must be astute or they can be fooled. Nano particles (The NY Times reported potential problems they may cause in the brain and other organs in the body), are actually being used to make the
wood fiber tencel clothing that is emerging as a new “Natural” fiber. How about the resist static fabric that literally can throw off neurological function in the body as well as the brain waves. The only term that can be rightfully used in describing these obvious missteps is a dangerous future for garments.

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