Blockchain, Summer Projects and Social Impact
After a semester of researching technology innovation in the apparel supply chain and what blockchain could mean for the garment industry, I truly believe it could revolutionize the industry, as long as it’s done right. Imagine picking up a sweater in a store and scanning a code to know exactly how much the garment worker made and if that is a fair wage, or the specific location of the mill that produced the yarn and if it’s sustainable.
Although this technology could bring much needed transparency to the industry there are a few steps that need to be taken in order to make the blockchain impactful. I wrote a post for the Fashion Revolution USA blog about what the industry needs to do to get ready. Head on over to their blog to take a look and let me know what you think!
After talking to industry experts from Goodweave, the UN Global Compact and fashion brands, it became clear that there needs to be collective action to move the industry forward. It’s been great to dissect the multi-stakeholder model this year and fully understand what it means to form a coalition of partners to drive change in an industry.
I can’t believe that the first year of graduate school is already done, and I only have one more to go. Just wanted to share with you all what I’ll be working on over the summer and into next year so you’ll know what’s coming down the pipeline.
This summer I’m taking a research break to focus on fun creative projects. I’ll be working on my #SummerMending project, repurposing clothing and fixing pieces that have seen better days. I’m beyond excited to get back to working with my hands, and letting my imagination wander. I’ll also be catching up on some sustainable and ethical fashion reading and will post some book reviews as I go.
Next semester I’ll be switching gears a bit to focus on social impact through the lens of ethical compliance programs, entrepreneurship and impact investing. Looking forward to continue learning and widening my scope of how to drive change in the fashion industry. I’ll share more about these projects as I get closer, stay tuned.
Fashion Revolution Week Project Recap – Theories of change in the fashion industry
And that’s a wrap, it’s the last day of Fashion Revolution Week 2018. I loved volunteering as NYU’s student ambassador and learning about the many initiatives going on around campus to bring about change in the fashion industry. Zoning in on this specific field of human rights issues in the fashion industry in such a big school like NYU, it is easy to feel like the only one fighting for the cause. It was comforting to see that there were others like me around the university eager to make a difference. Throughout this week I talked to students and administrators from various schools and organizations on campus who all had different approaches to driving change in the industry. Below is a list of the articles:
Policymaking: A way forward from advocacy
Grassroots Organizing: Student led initiatives
Multi-stakeholder Initiatives: The business case for human rights
Design Thinking: Changing approaches to creating fashion
Social Entrepreneurship: Disrupting the fashion industry
Although Fashion Revolution Week is over, there is still so much we can do and I hope that this week has fueled you to see the many ways to get involved in the movement. I also encourage everyone to sign the Fashion Revolution Manifesto and show your support for a better industry.
This week has challenged me to really think about how I can personally drive change in the industry and what I’d like to do better this year. Through my blog, I have been focused on raising awareness about how the industry operates and how to address these issues from a consumer standpoint. Since going back to graduate school I have learned more about the policymaking process and hope to be more involved in this space, stay tuned on developments here. Additionally, I can’t wait for the new opportunity to work with Loocid Global and use apparel manufacturing as a vehicle for economic development (I wrote about this in the Social Entrepreneurship feature). What are your goals for becoming a better fashion revolutionary this year?
Social Entrepreneurship: Disrupting the fashion industry
For the last feature in this Fashion Revolution Week series, I’m focusing on social entrepreneurship in the fashion industry. It’s been great to see many businesses popping up disrupting the industry and providing sustainable and ethical clothing consumers are demanding. As a consumer, I am thrilled to have more choices and it is refreshing not to have to worry about where my clothes were made. As more entrepreneurs are entering the market with their products, it brings more awareness to the realities of the environmental and human rights issues along the supply chain and ultimately pushes big apparel brands to follow suit.
NYU naturally fosters an entrepreneur community and creates countless opportunities for people from diverse backgrounds to connect. In an environment where people are pursuing their passions, pushing boundaries and challenging their preconceived notions of what is possible. It is a breeding ground for creative thinkers to come together and make projects, organizations, and businesses come to life.
There’s no better example of this than how Lian Wairimu Kariuki and I connected through our Politics of International Development course this semester. Both of us are MPA students at NYU Wagner specializing in International Policy and Management. We realized our mutual interest in ethical fashion when we found ourselves advocating for using handicraft and sewing skills to help empower people in developing communities during a class discussion. Lian – a budding social entrepreneur interested in starting a social apparel factory in Kenya, and me – an ethical fashion advocate wanting to make a positive impact along the apparel supply chain. Lian asked me to help establish and grow her new business, Loocid Global, and I excitedly agreed.
Originally from Kenya, Lian has always been passionate about making a difference in her country. Growing up it was everyday life to walk outside and see poverty, especially among the youth. After high school, she took a two year gap year and started her own nonprofit, Adopted Dreams which provided business and entrepreneurship training to youth in Kenyan slums. Simultaneously, Adopted Dreams partnered with Uzima Center an organization that teaches youth useful skills like welding and seamstressing, allowing them to make money for themselves and motivate them to start their own businesses. Around 80% of the youth involved in the program are now employed or run their own businesses.
While running her nonprofit, she had one program that generated money for the organization, relieving some pressure to apply for funding elsewhere. The project involved women making eco-friendly shopping bags from kanga, a traditional Kenyan textile. Not only were the products providing revenue for the organization, they also empowered marginalized women in the community and gave them opportunities to earn a living. Lian was inspired by the positive social impacts of this program and sustainability of this type of a structure.
Starting the MPA program she wanted to learn more about social entrepreneurship and the social impacts it could have back home in Kenya. Seeing the success of the shopping bag program, and having connections with the garment manufacturing industry in Kenya, Lian plans to start her own ethical clothing manufacturer, Loocid Global. The facility would provide fair wages, health insurance, and programs for their workers to further their business and leadership skills. Although the company is still formulating and taking shape, Lian would like to use her time at NYU to take advantage of the resources available to get her business off the ground.
Benefits of having resources on campus like the Leslie eLab, professors and classmates to learn from, as well as the flexibility to build a business, make it an ideal environment to be an entrepreneur. Lian has already spoken with professors about her idea and has gotten valuable feedback and support that will help her get started. Partnering with classmates that have the skillset and background to fill the gaps has been instrumental to move forward as well. The MPA program has also given her the tools to run a financially stable organization that also drives economic development and leverages policies in the area.
The Leslie eLab is a great resource to help guide students through their entrepreneurship journey. Their funding and competitions provide opportunities for students to launch their businesses and develop their ideas. With competitions like the Changemaker Challenge, D-Prize Social Venture Competition, and Green Grants, there are several avenues for social entrepreneurs to realize their vision of social impact.
The NYU entrepreneurial spirit has already led to a few successful socially conscious fashion businesses, including Thando’s and Sukoon Active, and I look forward to seeing many more. Since the main driver of the fast fashion movement is our consumer culture, it seems only natural to fight this mindset by introducing better business models and products to choose from. Instead of an industry that exploits people in developing countries, through disruptive social entrepreneurship, we can shift to creating models that empower the people who make our clothes.
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To follow our journey with Loocid Global you can follow us on Instagram @loocid_global
Design Thinking: Changing approaches to creating fashion
The overconsumption model of fashion has driven designers to mass producing clothing at an alarming rate, eliminating processes for innovative thinking and human connection that are essential for successful sustainable design. The challenge of shifting the industry by way of design means breaking the cycle of create-make-waste and finding alternative pathways to provide consumers what they need, and maybe even assessing if the product needs to be made in the first place. Taking away the fashion element of a garment, clothing is a basic need for all human beings. How can we rethink the systems of design and creation to provide this basic need in a sustainable way, while also introducing elements of fashion and giving people the joy of being creative and expressing themselves? And further, what exactly are the tenets of sustainable design and the ways in which designers can support this movement?
To answer these questions, I turned to the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study, which is a creative hub for understanding multifaceted disciplines such as sustainable fashion design. I spoke with Sally Yërin Oh, a graduate student at Gallatin, about her recent collection that debuted in the Gallatin Arts Festival, 100% This 1000% That, and her intention is to “utilize the intersection of art, design, activism, and entrepreneurship to create positive social change.”
Sally got her BFA in Apparel Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, after which she came to New York City to pursue a career in the fashion industry. While working for numerous fashion labels and notable designers, however, she was hit with the reality of the inner workings of the industry. The exploitation of unpaid interns and the Chinese immigrant labor behind the New York City garment industry, to name a few. These experiences made her step away from fashion and return to graduate school to look at ways to instill positive social change through design. Her recent showcase is the culmination of these efforts.
The show, held on April 12th, was inspired by cultural ties to food and deconstructing ideas of the design process. Growing up as a first-generation immigrant in Texas, Sally wanted to explore identities of culture that she faced in her bicultural upbringing. Using art as a medium, her goal was to break down boundaries and make these topics of culture more accessible and easily digestible to the audience. She was particularly interested in the way eating with someone and inviting them to your dinner table is an expression of trust and an act of intimately sharing your culture with someone else.
Sally saw Gallatin Arts Festival as an opportunity to spotlight femme and gender-nonconforming Asian Americans when choosing her model-performers. She carefully assembled her team of strictly East Asian Americans for 100% This 1000% That to stay true to her concept. These creatives include, Video and Sound Designer and Curatorial Assistant: Matte Chi, Performers: Indra Budiman, Sammy Kim, Cherry Kim, Bailey Skye, Michelle Phanh, Xin Xin Zhang, and Minzhi Liu. Her full show statement is also included below.
When it came to the design process for the collection, she decided to take a unique approach. Sally was inspired by designers like Rei Kawabubo who use objects and unconventional patternmaking to convey their aesthetic. Sally explains that if you’re paying attention to the fashion trends, it is easy to design a conventionally beautiful garment. It’s a lot harder to think outside of the box and find new ways to create an innovative design. For this reason, she made objects inspired by the collection, like dumplings, and then found a way to combine them together in a garment. By first creating objects and then finding ways to fit them together, this allowed for more expressive freedom and unique pieces for her collection.
This method is the basis of sustainable design thinking, finding new models to create clothing. Instead of going to the fabric store and picking out the colors that speak to you or the fabric that fits into your vision for the line, sustainable designers might start with the material and then make a concept out of that. For example, at the new Eileen Fisher Tiny Factory, they are tasked with designing new garments out of what they’ve collected back from their customers. What happens when designers are given worn or stained garments and asked to create something new? This Tiny Factory is an interesting experiment to see designers will respond when they are forced to think about the full lifecycle of a garment, to think of it as a piece that may come back to them in the future to be reworked into a new product.
Sally highlighted the sustainability of a quality made garment during our conversation, touting brands like Levi’s that create products that last through multiple generations and inspire consumers to mend and repurpose them. Hopeful for the future, she is inspired by the ways in which NYU has challenged her ideas on how she approaches the design process. While studying Political Art Theory at Steinhardt to better understand the social impact of art, she challenged herself to make representative, innovative work. After Gallatin, she hopes to start her own business, but insists that it never be a mass market operation and everyone involved would need to be paid fairly.
Even with all of this excitement though, there are some areas Sally pointed out where there are critical pieces keeping designers from fully embracing sustainable design practices. Firstly, education both at the design school level and having tools for designers to make better sourcing and technical design choices. Secondly, designers will have to change their mindset. If you’re starting with a design concept and then trying to apply sustainable choices to that, it can be frustrating as a designer to realize that they can’t use the materials or dyes that they’d like to use to accomplish their creative vision. Instead, sustainable design is about constraints. You’re starting with a problem that you want to solve, not necessarily a creative vision.
It’s inspiring to see a new generation of designers rise up who are focusing on solving these problems and are bringing the art form back to fashion design as well as creating new models for what design looks like. It will be great to see the impact on the industry as a whole as this movement continues to grow.
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Show Statement
100% This 1000% That
Sally 오 Yërin 예 Oh 린 was born in Seoul in palindromic 1991 with dual citizenship during her parents’ Christmas vacation who resided in Texas, where she was raised. Did you catch that? Me neither. Scrub me down with an exfoliating hydro towel, mom, I missed a spot. Scrub me, scrub my yellow skin, scrub it clean. After twenty-two years of choosing to swim in a sea of white hegemony, I realized Korean culture is beautiful. Seeking roots, I retraced my steps back to my “homeland” only to find “my home land” didn’t exist. The Korea I know is through my mother’s native tongue and the Korean food she cooks for us on Texas soil. I can neither claim heritage to Korea as an American nor can I pledge allegiance to America as a Korean, but they’re both mine. I stand on uneven ground, grounded. Hear me speak with a mouthful of dumplings, from here.
Multi-stakeholder Initiatives: The business case for human rights
As an activist for human rights along the fashion supply chain, it is easy to label corporations, governments and factory owners as “the bad guys”. They are the ones perpetuating unfair labor practices, right? In many ways, yes, but it’s too simple to stop asking questions there. Digging deeper into the situations causing them to exploit people, and understanding exactly how these powerful players are able to skirt systems put in place to protect workers is at the crux of solving this issue. Addressing these oversights and bringing everyone to the table to find pathways for mutually beneficial change is crucial to building better businesses that are able to navigate the apparel supply chain in a way that incorporates human rights at every level.
At NYU Stern, the Center for Business and Human Rights is working on research to tackle exactly these issues in the garment industry in Bangladesh. Stern established the Center for Business and Human Rights in 2013, the first of its kind. Forming right after the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, the center decided to take a close look at how the government and brands address this tragic loss of life in the sector. After their first report, they identified a major issue causing human rights violations to be transparency in the Bangladeshi supply chain. To shine a light on the breadth of the garment industry and how different factories operated, they created an interactive mapping tool to track all the factories in the country. Their latest report, Five Years After Rana Plaza: The Way Forward – released just this month, assesses this critical juncture in the Bangladeshi garment industry where the Accord (mainly comprised of European brands) and the Alliance (mainly comprised of American brands) are gearing up to transfer their responsibilities to the government and outlines recommendations for moving forward.
Although we are five years out from the Rana Plaza disaster and some improvements have been made, the industry is still on the verge of a major disaster in the Bangladeshi garment sector due to the drastic inequalities between factories that have emerged. Instead of lifting up the industry as a whole, the Accord and the Alliance groomed select factories to raise their standards for foreign export, while other factories lagged behind and even decreased in standards as they produced for countries with more lenient standards, the Bangladeshi domestic market or even served as subcontractors for these larger sanctioned factories. In effect, they managed to create a bifurcation between factories and further engrained subcontracted work as a necessary component to meeting foreign brand’s demands.
After reading the report and talking with April Gu, the Associate Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights, I learned how the center is advocating for steps forward that will help to raise accountability with the Bangladeshi government, create a shared responsibility over worker’s rights and funding for remediation, and provide more transparency throughout the web of factories operating in the country. Stressing the importance of mitigating risk across the sector, brands don’t want to invest so much money to remediate factories just to have their garments show up in a subcontracted factory with major fire or structural problems and cause a media frenzy. The next steps for the center are to start forming a task force and build the timeline for their Shared Responsibility model.
This is not the first organization to preach the necessity of shared responsibility and accountability across all parties involved, but their neutral stance and ability to bring different stakeholders together helps them accomplish this better than other advocacy groups. When given a platform to come together and collaborate on important social and environmental issues in a non-competitive space, brands are able to learn from each other and discover ways in which they can collectively change the industry for the better. Since the center is housed in a business school and is approaching the problem from that mindset, they are able to bridge the gap between workers rights and business strategy.
Beyond their research and advocacy work, the staff at the Center for Business and Human Rights also teach courses at NYU Stern in the Business and Society Program, embedding this into the core business curriculum. A speaker series is also put on for all NYU students to explore careers in Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Innovation to encourage them to follow career paths in these fields.
I’m happy to see programs like this emerging within a business context and hope to see more. One of the recommendations from the center for the way forward for Bangladesh is to shift the way in which brands purchase from suppliers. They are encouraging companies to consider including a social component into the cost of good. Having worked in the industry managing production and negotiating pricing with factories, I am acutely aware of how ingrained this mindset of driving down the price of the garment at all costs and the pressures brands feel from consumers to keep their pricing low. The idea of disrupting the industry in this way, and being able to change the way in which fashion businesses interact with their suppliers through education would certainly be revolutionary. I hope to start seeing this shift as more business students are taught to address issues of human rights and ethics along the supply chain.
Multi-stakeholder partnerships were my reason for returning to graduate school, how are they formed, how do different members work together, how are the goals decided upon when everyone has a different approach? Last semester I studied Race to the Top‘s structure in Vietnam and their perspective of setting standard auditing systems throughout the country and also collectively raising money for creating a sustainable garment sector. The Center for Business and Human Right’s approach in Bangladesh focuses more on stamping out subcontracted work and raising the industry as a whole, as well as a system for collective funding. These initiatives are in their nascency and it is too early to measure the positive impact they’ll have in the industry, but it’s great to see the big players taking the first step and start to work together on these pressing human rights issues.
Grassroots Organizing: Student led initiatives
Playing off of the last post, this one will be zeroing in on building a grassroots coalition and army of supporters to move your cause forward. I’ll explore this through the efforts of an NYU student group eager to learn about and solve the issues of the sustainable fashion industry.
Wanting to learn more about student groups on campus passionate about sustainable fashion, I jumped on a Facebook invite I saw to Earth Matter’s clothing swap last week. Earth Matters is an undergraduate led environmental student club at NYU and thought I’d go check it out their event to see how students were talking about issues of sustainable fashion and what they were doing to fight back. Once I arrived at the event and put down the pieces I brought to contribute, I looked around the big conference room, people were casually pursuing the clothing, trying on pieces and chatting with friends. The selection was largely fast fashion but that’s to be expected in a college clothing swap. It was encouraging to know that these pieces would stay out of a landfill and the students were shifting their mindset about how to consume fashion.
Although there seem to be some champions in colleges around the US, undergraduates are a difficult group to turn onto the sustainable fashion mindset. Having small budgets and wanting to stay on trend usually drives their clothing consumption habits, not curating a one of a kind style or buying pieces that will last. I spoke to Liv Chai, an executive board member of Earth Matters passionate about sustainable fashion, to get her perspective on how NYU students feel about these issues and what students can do to make a difference (pictured in the middle below promoting the Earth Matters Clothing Swap).
We sat down to chat in the student center last week, where she explained her motivation for starting the sustainable fashion campaign with Earth Matters and why she thinks that her generation has a responsibility to step up and take action. Having grown up in an environmentally conscious household, she’s always cared about sustainability but it wasn’t until her first year in college that she came to realize that fashion is a major perpetrator of environmental issues. Wanting to do more, she approached Earth Matters to start up her own sustainable fashion campaign, organizing sustainable fashion shows, panel discussions, and clothing swaps.
Liv explained her motivation for starting the campaign with me – “I wanted to educate myself and start a proactive dialogue, especially as a part of fast fashion’s main consumer base…they don’t think that young people are conscious of what’s going on behind the scenes, but the young people are the ones fighting for these causes.” She explains that younger generations are stepping up and taking action where others are falling short. Take the Parkland shooting, for example, students are the ones who were able to start a movement and push for actual change in the government, policymakers were listening in a way that they hadn’t before. This has encouraged students like Liv to step up and take action on issues that they care about, knowing that their voices are powerful and can truly make a difference.
I asked Liv about how she can help influence her classmates and their consumer behavior to become more sustainable. She tells me that “it’s all about showing, not telling…showing them that there’s value in second-hand clothing and helping them realize the value of that.” She goes on to say that she’s learned a lot from Youtube and social media and has seen a trend for people to talk about becoming a more mindful consumer and including thrifted items in their lookbooks. It is clear that as we become an ever more connected world, online platforms and social media are key to shifting behavior and mindsets around how we shop.
Oftentimes sustainable fashion brands ignore younger generations who cannot afford their clothing, but I think this is a huge oversight. Like Liv mentioned above, her generation is the generation that will grow up to be leaders in sustainability. Furthermore, this is the demographic that fast fashion companies predominantly market to, and they are not offered many alternatives to the fast fashion model. By giving college students outlets to buy sustainable and ethical fashion, at a price they can afford, you can bring major disruption to the industry. Even if this means introducing updated consumption models like clothing swaps, upcycled clothing, or systems for renting more expensive sustainable brands, it is imperative that we don’t assume this generation doesn’t care because they are largely shopping at Forever 21 and H&M. They are shopping at these stores because we are failing to provide an alternative accessible model.
Now that I am back in school and surrounded by undergraduate students at NYU, I love to hear how excited they are about getting involved in sustainable fashion and what they can achieve. They are dreaming big, and I can’t help but feel hopeful for the future of the industry.
Fashion Revolution Week 2018 – Student Ambassador Project
Happy Fashion Revolution Week! As some of you may know, Fashion Revolution was started in reaction to the human suffering in Bangladesh caused by the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in 2013. What started as a social media effort to ask brands #whomademyclothes, has grown into a worldwide movement to raise awareness about how clothing is made and push for more transparency in the industry.
This year I am joining the revolution as a student ambassador for NYU and am excited for the opportunity to raise these issues in the NYU community as well as celebrate what our community is already doing to create a more sustainable and ethical apparel industry. During this week I am using my blog as a platform to look at different ways in which the NYU community is working to drive positive change in this industry, from policy-making and design thinking to corporate strategies and social entrepreneurship, I look forward to sharing what I’ve found.
I’ll be posting a feature post on these different theories of change from Tuesday to Saturday this week, keep an eye out for them in the In Depth section of my blog. For more information on Fashion Revolution Week and how to get involved, check out their website. I’m also including some great events happening this week in NYC below.
MON, April 23 @ 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm
FASHION REVOLUTION LAUNCH NIGHT: OPEN STUDIOS!
630 FLUSHING AVE, BROOKLYN, NY 11206
TUE, April 24 @ 4:30 pm – 8:00 pm
FASHION REVOLUTION WEEK: TRACING THE JOURNEY CONFERENCE
227 W 27th St, New York, NY 10001
WED, April 25 @ 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
DIY INDIGO BANDHANI SCARF DYEING
56 West 22nd Street, Floor 9, New York, 10010
WED, April 25 @ 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
BE SOCIAL CHANGE: NEW YORK SUSTAINABILITY CONNECTOR
424 W. 54th St, New York, 10019
THU, April 26 @ 6:30 pm
SUSTAINABLE FASHION: HOW BRAND STORYTELLING CAN HELP RESHAPE THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE FASHION
45 South 3RD Street, Brooklyn, NY 11249
FRI, April 28 @ 11:00 am – 5:00pm
5344 ST RT 414, Hector, NY 14841
SAT, April 28 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
16 Crosby Street, New York, NY 10013
SAT, April 28 @ 3:00 pm – 7:00 pm