Impact Fashion Coalition by IFW
Pitch
Impact Fashion Week (IFW) is creating incentives for designers to use sustainable materials & invest in labor rights initiatives.
Description
Summary
Impact Fashion Week (IFW) is creating incentives for designers to use sustainable materials & invest in labor rights initiatives.We are campaigning w/ emerging designers from frontline communities through IFW & reinvesting proceeds into grassroots eco-justice organizations.
There is a disconnect between the value proposition of reinvesting into sustainable communities. Sustainable economic development starts locally. Just like the #farmtotable movement for food, the #fieldtocloset movement for (fashion) design has an enormous effect on sustainable communities whether that means self-sufficiency of farmers, or women & families. If we invest in our friends and family, w/ a cooperative mindset, we can all succeed.
Solution:
We need a single campaign w/ direct-to-consumer engagement that non-profits, businesses, & individuals can invest in. Promoting the sourcing of local materials and local labor within the design industry is important to sustaining of local economies. People profit from investing in fair apparel. During Impact Fashion Week, we’ve had panel/roundtable discussions, interviews, and fashion shows/showcases.
Fashion Revolution Day asks the question, "Who made my clothes?" Local sourcing initiatives not only answer that question, but the dynamic conversation developed about environmental health & labor rights initiatives within the Impact Fashion Week model is what promotes a multi-stakeholder solution.
Short-term future is to develop an international Sustainable Design Coalition that supports, unites, and reinvests in eco-justice initiatives, and co-develops a multi-stakeholder web-app for sourcing and locally certifies labor, facilities, ethical materials (including but not limited to natural textile resources, recycled/pre-owned textiles).
What actions do you propose?
Community:
Our community transforms the region. We have connected members of the local Virginia Hemp Coalition, w/ national leaders of Fashion Revolution Day, the Greater Washington Chamber of Commerce and members of the international New Economy Coalition community network including Grand Aspirations and the EcoHermanas community.
We are the first Impact Fashion COMMUNITY to promote health in under-served communities. Our membership network is insurmountable in possibilities. With only one showcase, one of our designers reached national acclaim - enough to earn her incredibly fashionable, under-the-radar line to be promoted in New York Fashion Week's #PlusIsMore campaign.
Short-term future:
We need members and more fashion founders/impact investors!
We want to begin hosting Impact Fashion Week in different regions, launch an interdisciplinary campaign as well as co-create resources for locating and certifying local materials and labor. I am creating a temperature map of innovative fashion/climate/labor campaigns, sourcing services, makerspaces, & certifiable resources, so we need members to support a national campaign.
Long-Term future:
In order to develop the consumer-facing sourcing technology we need a sustainable design coalition that is multi-stakeholder.
Support MY Project because...
We are developing an entire coalition with real fundraising opportunities. We are not supporting/promoting just one project as the end-all-be-all of climate change reduction. Most projects require ongoing support, and we have piloted an event series as well as considered technological approaches to mitigating climate change that will provide ongoing residual income.
In order to move forward, I want MIT to
- Sponsor Impact Fashion Week at your school.
- Become a founding member of this Sustainable Design Coalition/Impact Fashion Coalition.
- Codevelop the DC Fashion Tech Lab (DCFTL) as a community network with our Impact Fashion working group.
- Support research of and mentoring of the creation of the best multi-stakeholder, consumer-facing technology for sourcing.
By taking these steps,
- Impact Fashion Week will become a regular model of open-ended discussion, cross-pollination of issues and solutions that includes fundraising events for actual real-world climate change causes.
- By starting a coalition, you will be committing to implementing results-oriented problem-solving.
- Sponsoring a local DMV-area tech/maker "lab" will enable the community to be more familiar with the opportunities at the intersection of technological innovation, fashion, and sustainability.
- If this consumer-facing sourcing technology is developed collaboratively, sustainable sourcing will be easily certifiable.
We also need more members to join/sponsor/partner with the coalition: Fashion Revolution Day, Ethical Writers Coalition, Ethical Fashion Forum, SustainableDesigners.com, Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace, Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, Open Source Fashion, universities & the entire New Economy Coalition.
By:
IFW
