This week is Fashion Revolution Week and we’re feeling a bit like “well duh every week is Fashion Revolution Week at TWOOBS”, but being the 10 year anniversary of Rana Plaza it feels particularly important to acknowledge. 

You sometimes hear people say “I remember exactly where I was when I heard {insert worldwide tragedy here}” – referring to something that shook them. They might end their sentence with “that Trump won the 2016 US presidential election”, or something even heavier like “that Bennifer 1.0 broke up”.  But if you work in the fashion industry that sentence is most likely to end in “that Rana Plaza collapsed”.

I (Jess) was at uni when I heard. It was my second year studying Fashion Merchandising. I remember walking into class and chatting to my friends as our teacher pulled up news articles and photos of what had just happened on the projector.  She explained the situation: a garment factory in Bangladesh had just collapsed and hundreds of people (later confirmed over 1,100) were likely dead.

Our classroom fell silent. And a movement calling for fair wages and better working conditions for those making our clothes (and shoes) was born.

Cut to 2020 and we’re sitting in our respective houses in lockdown numero uno waiting for our sourdough to bake, discussing the possibility of pivoting TWOOBS to being a completely sustainably focused brand.

“But if the brand cares about sustainability, doesn’t it also need to focus on an ethical supply chain?”.

A quick google search to all the well-known “sustainable” fashion brands showed us that that’s absolutely not the case – actually most brands that talk about sustainability still have little to no focus on an ethical supply chain.

We knew we wanted to be different. It didn’t make sense to us that we could care about the earth but not the people living on it. To us, these two things go hand in hand – or foot in TWOOB.

So if you’re a consumer who wants to know what questions to ask your favourite brands, or a brand who just doesn’t quite know where to begin, here’s a little insight into the kinds of things we often enquire about, ponder or debate at TWOOBS.

• Are employees of the factory paid a living wage? The minimum wage in these countries is often super low so a living wage looks at the amount a person needs to maintain a normal standard of living. 
• Is health insurance offered to them?
• Are they able to come and go freely? A very knowledgeable friend (@Holly, we’re lookin at you) once explained to us that in some cases workers aren’t able to come and go from factories as they please. Very much not okay. 
• Is the price that we’ve agreed upon fair for everybody? For us, this takes into account the factory, our brand and our community.
• In what other ways could we be including our factory in our mission? We love sharing our campaign pics, feedback from customers and info around our values to really get them excited about what we’re all creating together. 

The fashion industry has come a long way in the last ten years, and it’s clear we still have a long way to go. We’d love to see more brands turning Fashion Revolution Week into Fashion Revolution Year, bringing important conversations about our supply chains to the forefront all year round.  

Jess and Stef x