Fashion Revolution Week starts today all over the world Portugal included

Fashion Revolution Week, a week of awareness of the true cost of clothing, with a view to a more sustainable future, is marked from today, with several activities, in more than one hundred countries, including Portugal.

[dropcap type=”background”]B[/dropcap]etween today and Sunday, more than a thousand initiatives take place in more than 100 countries around the world in the name of “a fairer, safer and transparent fashion industry,” according to information available on the official website of the Fashion Revolution movement.

Today, Casa do Impacto in Lisbon hosts the GoParity Fashion Revolution Day initiative, “an investment platform for sustainable energy projects that promotes broadening access to opportunities and sharing of the benefits generated.”

Between 5 pm and 8 pm there will be debates, a documentary show and a swap market, a clothing exchange market to “raise awareness of the fashion industry“, read on the page of the event available in the page of the association Fashion Revolution, in which it is remembered that “more than 200 thousand tons of clothes are thrown away annually in Portugal and the recycling system is not prepared for the treatment of clothing“.

“Fashion Revolution as a movement encourages the creation of Fashion Revolution events. Anyone can have the autonomy to create their event,” told Salomé Areias, coordinator of the movement in Portugal.

Today’s initiative is the responsibility of GoParity, but it is encouraged and supported by Fashion Revolution Portugal (FRP), a non-profit association that focused its initiatives on Saturday in Porto and in Lisbon.

This year, the activities organized by the FRP are concentrated on Saturday, between 10:00 and 18:00, at Gate 76 in Lisbon, and at OPO’Lab, in Porto.

“In addition to the activities we have been doing in the last three editions, (this year) we will have a new one: Transparency Fair,” which emerged as “a response to brands’ demand for a place to display their product and to display their entire production, all its processes, “revealed Salmé Areias.

The official explained that before the requests were more “on the part of the consumer” and, for that reason, was made “a lot event for the consumer, to inform it, to sensitize it”.

This brand interest in “being able to show all the manual work, the kind of tools they use, the kind of chemicals they use, the whole structure,” was a “win-win” for FRP.

“What we wanted to do was also to encourage transparency. In addition to all this information that brands will bring, they will open doors, show who makes the clothing of those brands, and we will insist that they reveal much more: business, cost structure, “he said.

Associated with the Transparency Fair, there will be a masterclass, “offered by BCSD, the Business Council for Sustainable Development, [which] is an introduction to brands that want to venture into this process of the most ethical and sustainable good practices.”

In addition to the Transparency Fair, this year there will be a swap market, an exchange market that does not involve money, exhibits of documentaries and workshops for all those who want to repair their clothes.

The list of activities also includes an Ignite, “a platform for sharing ideas”. “It will be our talks, with speakers who come to talk about transparency,” she said.

Fashion Revolution Week was created by the British non-profit Fashion Revolution, founded after the collapse in April 2013 of the textile complex Rana Plaza, located in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which 1,100 workers died. The Rana Plaza was a nine-storey building that housed several confection units, where pieces were made for various fashion brands, such as Benetton, Primark or Mango.

This year, it will be featured at Fashion Revolution Week, globally, “as the future of the fashion industry must respect people and the planet with fair and decent work, environmental protection and gender equality.” “From Australia to Brazil, from Uruguay to Vietnam, more than 275 million people are expected to attend Fashion Revolution Week by asking the #whomademyclothes brands,” the organization says.

In addition, the Fashion Revolution association will announce this year’s edition of the Fashion Transparency Index, a ‘ranking’ of the transparency levels of 200 of the world’s leading fashion companies.