April 20, 2022 |
Fashion Revolution Week fights every year for a safer and more egalitarian place for all those working in the fashion industry worldwide. Returning this year in commemoration of the fourth largest industrial disaster in history – the Rana Plaza Collapse, which killed over 1000 and injured over 2000 people in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2013 – this week’s events are based on the theme ‘Money Fashion Power’, focusing on mainstream fashion businesses which rely on the exploitation of labour and natural resources for commercial success.
Since 2017, Fashion Revolution has realised its objectives through the Fashion Open Studio. The initiative has launched exhibitions, presentations, workshops and talks with emerging designers driven by the desire for growth and self-expression through creativity. The social and environmental urgency pushes designers to find increasingly innovative and creative solutions for the industry.
For this year’s FRW, Fashion Open Studio presents an inspirational cohort of 17 designers from 12 different countries who are actively working to disrupt business and rebalance the distribution of power and wealth, creating a space for design pioneers to share their work and their solutions, setting an alternative fashion reality that chimes with Fashion Revolution’s values.
Highlights include a textile mural making workshop with Mariah Esa, the designer that repurposes waste from the fast fashion industry to create garments, to White Weft’s Eco-System of a Jean, a London based studio specialising in reworking denim waste. Other events include Francisca Gajardo, founder of Y.A.N.G (You Are The Next Generation), going through her integrational co-design programme, and Revival London, a brand that sources the best from local manufacturers’ offcuts to give a new lease of life to the fabulous and forgotten, with a vision of inspiring more conscious and circular ways of creating and consuming fashion. As well, a conversation with the founders of Pattern Project will take place, a micro-factory start up on a mission to offer an alternative to the mass-production of clothing, explaining their vision with a tour of their custom fit and customisable patterns.
Top image: Mariah Esa. For a full schedule of each Fashion Open Studio event, click here. Fashion Revolution Week ends April 24.
