Dear Influencers…

Dear Influencers,

Boy, do you influence! You’re often more powerful than brands, and have more clout than celebs. With your millions of followers, you speak in a language that provokes, amuses and connects. You share advice and ideas, helping people find their online tribes and to feel accepted and inspired. You’re trendsetters. And not just in matters of fashion and style, but also when it comes to changing attitudes towards inclusivity, diversity, gender.

You can shift sales, but also heart and minds. People trust you, follow you, want to copy you.

This is why I am asking you to use your power to shine a light on an unseen, untold story. A story that is a part of everyone’s life, but can be difficult to know how to approach it.

Think, for a moment, not just of your thousands or millions of followers, but of the thousands and the millions of people behind you; the ones that make the things you own, the screens you appear on, the outfits you chose to wear to define the person that you are, the clothes you suggest your followers should buy. Whether you are feeling polished and glam, or in a onesie state of mind, everything that you wear, was made by human hands.

About 75 million people work directly in the fashion and textiles industry, and about 80% of them are women between the ages of 18 and 24. Many are subject to exploitation; verbal and physical abuse, working in unsafe conditions, with very little pay.

These are the untold stories behind our clothes, and right now, your silence is deafening. We, the world, need you to comment.

Your voice can help them. We want you to set the trend for a better fashion, and to help improve the lives of the millions of people working in the fashion supply chain.

If we start talking about this, if we begin to understand that our privileges can be used to impart privileges to others, then we might just change this culture of excess and enter a period where we can still buy things, but things that have meaning. Things that are available and affordable and that afford a decent life to the people who make them.

I ask you to take a look at Fashion Revolution and join us. We are a global movement, we are growing stronger every year, and we would love you to come on board. Our voices have the power to help change the industry for the better.

Download our guide for getting involved and join us for Fashion Revolution Week (24-30th April 2017).

Try our #haulternative, and join YouTube vloggers, including CutiePieMarzia, Grav3yardgirl, Maddu, Noodlerella and Shameless Maya, and share a better way to haul that’s creative and meaningful, from upcycling to swaps to finding gems in charity shops.

[download image=”https://www.fashionrevolution.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Resources_haulternative17-e1486128036179.jpg”]
Download the ‘#Haulternative: a guide for fashion lovers‘. It’s shows you how you can do a different kind of haul. A way of refreshing your wardrobe without buying new clothes. We call it the #haulternative.
Download Also available in Polish, Portuguese and Spanish [/download]

With us, you will start to look at fashion in a different way, you will discover ways to be more creative with the choices you make, you will find out that your voice and your actions can make fashion a force for good, and you won’t stop enjoying stuff, quite the contrary, you will love it even more.

Demanding accountability is the next frontier. We need to look at a fashion horizon that goes beyond just loving a brand because it looks good, but trusting it because it does good.

We love fashion, but we don’t want our clothes to come at the cost of people or our planet. Understanding where clothes are made, who makes them, and in what conditions, is vital (literally). Asking that brands disclose the provenance of their clothing is an important first step: and by provenance we don’t just mean the country of origin, we mean that we want to know the village, the factory, the sewing machine, the hands that made those clothes. It starts with a simple question; #whomademyclothes?

Because it’s not just about Made In Italy, or Made In China, or Made In India.

We ask you to look out for clothes that are Made In Dignity.