Apr 12, 2022
In this episode of The Discomfort Practice I get the chance to sit and talk to someone I’ve admired for a long time. Aja Barber is a well-known and respected stylist, author and activist who focuses on telling the truth about the human and environmental devastation caused by the fast fashion industry.
We talk about the stark facts of fast fashion:
- 80% of garment workers in the world, the majority of whom are not paid a living wage. Unionization is crushed and they are vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse, simply to produce the tee shirt we casually pick up in a shop and buy with delight because it’s ‘cheap.’
- 10% of greenhouse gas emissions (which contribute to the rapid acceleration of climate change and the irrevocable loss of natural resources) is caused by the fashion industry.
- We live in an age where paying workers a fair wage has become a marketing tool – something brands celebrate about themselves – because it’s so uncommon they feel justified in using that as positioning. When it’s actually basically admitting that exploitation is so embedded in our systems of production and consumption – of fashion and everything else – that it’s actually worth noting when someone pays the workers at the end of their supply chain anything but wages that keep them in poverty.
- Many brands produce 50 fashion lines a year – that’s nearly one a week – and marketing and the culture around us has programmed us to buy buy buy, simply to feed their business model. So that dress you buy to wear once is making billionaires richer while keeping the poor poor.
Aja and I talk about many of the great points in her recent book, Consumed: the need for collective change, colonialism, climate change and consumerism. Aja urges listeners to think about the human behind the label and choose not to buy any new clothes for one week – or even longer. To break a habit of consumption that is literally consuming our planet and propagating human misery.
So pull up a chair, settle in and let’s get uncomfortable together!
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Find Aja Barber @ajabarber
Order Aja's Book via her website or anywhere you like to order books: https://www.ajabarber.com