“Break the cycle” campaign application An application will be launched as part of this campaign promoting information on campaign objectives, event updates, customisable profiles and an online apparel trading marketplace.
Application marketplace Break the Cycle’s marketplace is a platform for consumers to swap their apparels within the community. All they have to do is upload their apparels under “listings” and update what they’re looking for under “wishlist”. The marketplace is a great platform for fashion lovers alike to trade their wardrobe without breaking the bank or buying more apparels they have no need of. This platform will be a long-term initiative that hopes to create a more sustainable circular mindset of recycling apparels and reducing textile waste.
The marketplace is also extremely user-friendly, allowing for easy swapping by product types, range, brands and users. Hence, users will find it easier to navigate and find items that they are looking for. For user profile, users can state their size and style preference. Hence, users can find others within the community with a similar style that they are more likely to swap with. There is also a “my tickets” section which ties in with the swappable bazaar event and users can keep track of the type of clothing they can swap during the event.
Reflection I think this campaign application would be a great platform as compared to other online selling applications such as carousell that works on the idea of buying and selling. For online selling platforms, if sellers are unable to sell their apparels, they would most likely donate or dispose of it. On the other hand, by trading their apparels, they are able to lengthen the lifespan of each item of clothing and give it a new lease of life.
Hence, the application would be a great start towards a long-term solution for a sustainable fashion industry.
Objectives Break the cycle is a campaign launched as an initiative to promote a more sustainable business model, a platform that allows a longer lease of life for your apparels.
We believe that loved clothes last and we want to create a community that allows for an open exchange of apparels and ideas, to learn to fall in love with your wardrobe or someone else’s. Hence, the campaign hopes to create a circular mindset and culture of upcycling apparels and making conscious fashion decisions.
Campaign logo The campaign is titled “Break the cycle”, which is to encourage consumers to break away from the current unsustainable cycle of buying and disposing of fast fashion apparels. The logo was designed to resemble that of a recycling logo with a spin of the slogan, “reuse, repair, recycle”. This is to encourage a circular mindset of reusing clothing or buying second-hand clothes, repairing and mending existing apparels and to recycle old apparels responsibly.
Logo Exploration
Conscious Fashion Week It would be an annual event consisting of a bazaar held at selected tertiary institutions for students to swap their apparels within the local community as well as workshops held for students to learn more about making conscious fashion choices and ways of upcycling their apparels. This will be launched together with the campaign application which will be my second design artefact.
Target Audience My main target audience would be millennials who are the largest consumers of fast fashion. The swappable bazaar will first be held at tertiary institutions given the nature of this event, it would be more convenient if it was held within a community which allows for an easier exchange of apparels. Furthermore, students in tertiary institutions are one of the largest consumers of fast fashion given its affordability and availability. The event will later be launched to the wider community once more awareness is garnered.
Campaign promotion In order to garner more participation for this “swappable bazaar” event, tags with information detailing the event will be attached to clothing at popular retail places such as H&M–who already has a conscious fashion line–to promote the application as well as the event itself. Each tag would also come with a short description or “teaser” as to what the campaign is about.
THINK DIFFERENTLY.
To create a culture of change that currently thrives on an unsustainable system of buying and disposing of clothing. In order to do so, we must begin with ourselves, individual efforts on a collective scale. This starts with thinking differently about the way we buy and wear clothes, to be more mindful of the way we shop and the impacts of our actions. Where our sense of value is not defined by the latest trends, but by the stories behind our clothes so that it becomes an important piece of our wardrobe and is not easily replaceable or disposed of.
BUY LESS, CHOOSE WELL.
Our actions can change everything. We don’t need to boycott fast fashion brands, but we can demand better quality clothes that afford a better quality of life to the people who make them. Demand that each item we choose to buy and wear was made with dignity and made to last.
Reflections Through this assignment, I learned a lot more about organising information and hierarchy within texts. It is important to knock out certain information and this can be done through the use of text weight, size, colours, font choice, sequence etc. Also, it is difficult to visually represent information and to find that balance between visual appeal and communicating data. Takeaways from this assignment of organising and structuring information can definitely be applied to future projects. As a whole, I felt that I could have done more to establish clearer hierarchy but I am relatively satisfied with the final outcome and it is a huge improvement from the first draft.
A fact sheet summarising the impacts of fast fashion on the environment and workers in the apparel industry
Solutions for reducing the consumption of fast fashion
The solution A business model of the future should aim to foster a deeper and longer lasting connection to fewer and better clothes– sustainable, valuable relationship
Editing your wardrobe
1) Reevaluate entire wardrobe and rediscover forgotten items or identify repeated purchases
2) Scrutinise clothing into “yes” and “no” piles, and start to declutter your wardrobe
3) Tackle the “no” pile and decide on ways to give your clothes new life– repair, restyle, redesign or disposal
4) Reorganize “yes” pile into the closet – trousers, tops, bottoms etc. to inspire new previously unimagined outfit combinations
5) Document it– make lists, labels or take photos to keep track of your wardrobe
Avoid buying new clothes
1) Buying vintage clothing
2) Thrift shopping
3) Swap clothes with a friend
4) Loan/Rent clothes for any occasion– Clothing rental services
Think before you shop ( SHOPPING BAGS)
1) Quality over Quantity– quality clothing lasts longer and becomes a long-term investment piece “buy cheap buy twice”
2) Will you really wear it? – if you won’t get at least 30 wears out of it, don’t bring it home
3) There’s always an alternative– borrow, loan or look deeper into your closet
4) Learn how to love them– learn to take care of your clothes better
UNDERSTANDING THE TAGS
REUSE, REPAIR, RECYCLE
CIRCULAR FASHION
Circular Design – keeping materials in circulation where recovery or future use is anticipated and enabled
Circular Resources– designed with recovery in mind
Circular material flows– anything that escapes the industrial cycle should aim to do no harm but to be an active nutrient in the system as a whole
Circularsystems– eradicate waste altogether
don’t BUT IT unless you LOVE IT, and if you love it, you should MEND IT and if you don’t want it, find a responsible way of DISPOSING of IT
Draft 1 Receipt concept of laying out information
Feedback:
Too wordy
Wardrobe graphic took up too much space, hence not enough space for other information
More graphics can be used to illustrate data
The weight of typefaces can be switched up to create more hierarchy within the information
The orientation of infographic can be switched to landscape so that there is more space to place information
Draft 2
Feedback:
Landscape layout works better
Crumpled receipt adds visual noise
Still lacks some hierarchy amongst the information
Play around with colours
Background still looks a little flat
Hence, I decided to go with a flat lay of a receipt to create more dimension and reduce visual noise.
1. What are some of the current issues confronting our world today? Amongst them, what is of interest and a cause of concern to you?
1. Sexual assaults/ harassment
For every 1000 rapes, estimated that only 310 are reported ( just under 1/3) Rape is the most under reported crime Only a fraction (57) lead to arrest Only a fraction of the arrest lead to prosecution (11)
A fraction of the prosecuted lead to incarceration (6) For sexual harassment in the workplace, the least common respond was to report it and only 30% of those harassed speak up – 70% remain silent 75% of employees who spoke out against workplace mistreatment faced some form of retaliation
Fear is the number 1 reason (20%) These stats only reflect those experiences of straight white women and not women of colour, gays, men, trans etc.
According to a 2015 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 47% of transgender people report being sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, both in and out of the workplace.
In the U.S. packaging takes up the largest percentage of waste
Single use items make up another 10% of U.S. discards
Mindless consumption
29% of green house gas consumption comes from the way we make, consume and dispose of stuff
Takes a lot of energy and resources to produce single use items, more resources needed to be extracted to replace it
Reduce & Reuse > Recycle – Waste Minimisation
Eg. Take out condiments ( chilli or ketchup packets ), serve condiments in bulk to reduce waste
1 bulk ketchup dispenser – 359 packets of ketchup
1 bulk sugar at the coffee shop – 120 packets
Stop overpackaging –don’t offer the plastic bag until someone asks for it
1 million plastic bottles are bought / minute
No. of bottled water consumption per capita has quadrupled from 1987- 2014
What is being done to mitigate this problem?
Reduce
Seamless & Grubhub, the food delivery apps are offering an option to skip the utensils and napkins ( in 2013, they reported having saved over 1 million utensils and napkins )
Reuse
Reusable takeout containers
1/3 of meals served are to go meals = 350,000 single-use containers
checkout the container with your food and return them at the counter after consumption
GO Box, a reusable option for take out food
In UC Irvine, water bottle filling stations have popped up, making it easier to refill – avoid 3 million plastic bottle / year , disposable water bottle sale dropped 30%
UC Irvine, diverting 80% of waste from landfill to recycling and composting facilities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qx2WFpNTPs
3. Inclusivity of make up brands
The beauty industry neglected women of colour
The makeup industry’s frustrating cycle of struggle and progress for women of colour
“ African-American women spend $7.5 billion annually on beauty products, but shell out 80 percent more money on cosmetics and twice as much on skin care products than the general market.”
Why do most companies not have the same inclusivity or the success to go with it?
Fenty Beauty is not the first company to have such extensive foundation shades – but what made it stand out from the rest?
Make up forever
Loreal
Cover Girl
Revlon
Maybelline
Main stream makeup brands were limited to a handful of options , many of them fall short in providing the correct shade
Makeup artists say that there is no extra difficulty in understanding deeper skin tones
Deeper shades with the right undertone is difficult to find – why? considering how the difference between a lighter and darker shade is just the ratio of pigment
Not just limited to foundations but blush, eyeshadow etc. and deeper skin tones require more pigment
Only 18% of American Chemical Society (ACS) were people of colour
In 2013, black, hispanic and asian women made up only 16.3% of workers in the personal care products industry
There has been efforts made in mainstream beauty industry to be more inclusive, but why is it taking them so long?
Narrow ideals of what constitutes beautiful
Even though there are a wide range of women who are willing to pay and the demand is there to see themselves represented, companies are not willing to cater to them in fears of damaging their brand and make their brand less glamorous, less beautiful if it is attached to darker skinned women
There are products for women of colour but beauty industries still focused a lot on skin lightening products
Cultural movements– Black is beautiful and the all out effort to install racial pride in black people have done much to neutralise and offset much of the damaging effects of oppression from being black
Black owned cosmetics – Fashion Fair , Black Opl, Iman, Nars, Bobbie Brown, Mac
Mac Vibe Tribe collection – Cultural Appropriation, culturally insensitive
Independent brands have stepped in to fill the mark – The Lip Bar, Cocotique, koyVoca ( rely heavily on social media to promote their brand)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5e4gwDGrNk
4. Overconsumption– Fast Fashion
Apparel industry is the second most polluting industry in the world
A trend for companies to outsource their production = demand for cheaper labour and material
80% drop in employment since 1990s
Huge consequences for the people making the clothing and the environment
Polyester a polluting plastic made from fossil fuel, now in over half of our clothing
Every single piece of polyester clothing that has been produced is still on our planet today
When we wash our clothing, thousands of microplastics go into our water systems
Fishes are consuming the microplastics and we are consuming the fish
Research done in California found that 1 in 4 fishes contain this microplastics
The greatest pollution are actually these micro plastics
Requires 8x the energy to produce polyester
Where is this clothing being made?
Environmental Impact
In China, 3/4 of energy supply are coming from coal
Most of our clothing are coming from the most pollutive form of energy
5x more carbon output than all of the airlines combined
Social Impact (Who are the ones making these apparels)
1 in 6 people in the world work in some part of the apparel industry
80% women, 98% of them are not receiving a living wage – locked in a channel of poverty
Shopping all the time but never having anything to wear
Transparency is when companies are willing to name the factories they are working with , no way for third parties – media, people to search whether what they claim is actually taking place
98% not receiving a living wage
Outsourcing is done to “shadow factories” to keep up with the low cost and high demands , they hv much lower living standards
do not show if its actually organic cotton, cotton is the 4th largest pesticide consuming crop
Second largest polluter of fresh water globally – most developing countries release their dye products directly into the local water supply
Solution (what can be done?)
majority of the resources focused on marketing and what can be sold to us, unlike technology it is really not designed for us at all– mass production
90% of brands do not actually know where their material is coming from
open door policy with our manufacturers and production domestically
Love what you buy, quality > quantity
Clothing as an investment piece in the long term
Consumers dictate the direction in which the apparel industry goes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r8V4QWwxf0
The True Cost
2. Why is the issue important? Who does it affect and how?
The term “fast fashion” refers to the speed at which clothes are consumed and disposed. On average, each American throws out 82 pounds of textiles each year. Large fashion companies such as Zara, H&M, Topshop and Forever21 release as many as 18 collections a year which results in consumers constantly renewing their wardrobes in accordance with the latest trends.
Inefficient production practices and the exploitation of workers in developing countries with capital-friendly labor laws allow these companies to produce clothing on a mass scale and sell them at extremely low prices. Many consumers are ignorant to the transnational flow of goods, exploitative labor conditions and environmentally corruptive production practices that result in the cheap prices we see on our clothing tags. Mass supply and affordability, combined with the incessant craving for novelty bred by consumer culture, has created a mindset of expendability when it comes to clothing that the planet is unable to sustain.
At the end of the day, fast fashion is bad for the environment, promotes labour exploitation, encourages a consumerist mindset of buying stuff we do not need and the only ones who benefit from this are corporate companies.
Main target audience would mainly be consumers in developed countries such as ourselves who are the most susceptible to marketing campaigns by the fast fashion industries and the driving force behind the growth of this industry.
Hopefully to raise awareness on the detrimental effects of overconsumption socially and environmentally, as well as lifestyle changes they can adopt to mitigate this problem. As consumers, we need to shift our habits toward investing in quality attire. We should buy clothing with the intent of wearing it for years to come and eliminate the desire to constantly renew the items in our closets. Each purchase must be backed by the consciousness of personal responsibility.
4. How has visual communication contributed to address the cause?
Celeste Tesoriero is the Sydney-based designer who has shot her AW’16 collection on location with every model wearing every garment inside-out.
“Sustainabilty doesn’t have to this big scary thing: it can be as simple as asking who made my clothes?” “You see this ripple effect: once people start asking simple questions, they soon start asking more complex ones, and they can make their own choices about what feels right for them and their morals with more knowledge.
Fashion Revolution believe in a fashion industry that values people, the environment, creativity and profit in equal measure.
“We want to unite people and organisations to work together towards radically changing the way our clothes are sourced, produced and consumed, so that our clothing is made in a safe, clean and fair way.
We believe that collaborating across the whole value chain — from farmer to consumer — is the only way to transform the industry.”
#lovedclotheslast explores the issue of waste and mass-consumption in the fashion industry, and hopes to inspire you to buy less, care more, and know how to make the clothes you love last for longer.
I think that the idea of a zine is a really smart way of tying it together with the cause – given its fresh take on a traditional fashion magazine. It is visually engaging with its infographics, illustrations, visuals, text, layout etc. It is bold, fresh and just screams “rebellious”. It is a great idea to create visual interest while providing the relevant information that makes the viewer want to pick up a copy to learn more about the cause.