A step towards ethical fashion
cloth
Internet
cultural values
traceability
social change
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process is adapted to the criteria of the Fair Wear Foundation.13 This Foundation was set up to guarantee fair and decent conditions for workers in the textile industry. It also encourages consumers not to wash their trousers for six months in an attempt to raise awareness regarding the huge quantity of water and energy we use when washing our clothes. On the other hand, as part of their «repair, reuse, reduce» campaign, they offer discounts to clients that bring along their old jeans so that Nudies can repair them. This concerns pedagogic proposals, initiatives that are based on the proposal that it is necessary to create culture, a key practice regarding our relationship with the clothes we buy. New communication technologies: ethical fashion, watchful consumers and social networks. The appearance of the Internet has represented a qualitative and quantitative change regarding the possibility of obtaining information. The Network allows individuals to communicate and access other sources of information and compare the messages received via conventional formats. Thanks to this, there has been an emergence of the so-called «vigilant consumer» that does not trust business practices and seeks information regarding the basis of consumer events as a necessary step towards the ability to consume ethically. Just as there is no responsibility without awareness, ethics do not exist without supervision. There are other businesses that have benefitted from the emergence of the Internet. In the context of ethical fashion, they are able, thanks to the traceability tools that allow the origin of the product to be tracked and the production process be monitored, it offers a resource that allows the consumer to check the environmental and social footprints behind the products offered by these businesses. There are already tools in existence such as slavery footprint14, a cell phone application that allows the consumer track how many workers in semi-slavery have been involved in the manufacture of the products bought. We also come across businesses such as the I owe you Project15 in India that offers garments with a history of ethical production. Through
a code that is shown on the labels, it is possible to trace the origin of the cloth, see the face and know the history of the Indian craftsman that manufactured the material with their own hands. The project is based on the manufacture of cloth by small Indian weavers working under fair trade conditions. As there is a scant amount of cloth available, only one person is able to prepare it by hand and the garments have a limited and semiexclusive character. The project is inspired by Gandhi’s peaceful revolution that aims to fight against labor exploitation in the textile industry. Gandhi wove his own clothes in a symbolic act against the textile industry of the British Empire. Today, twenty million families live from hand-weaving and the “I Owe You Project” aims to help them, which is what really counts. As we can see «cultural creatives have to invent and reinvent the basic formats so they can live the way they want to»16. Internet is the medium for all this, representing a new social forum, a space where public debate is generated around which, internauts, businesses and social and cultural organizations share synergies, express and give form to new cultural values; in this case, to a culture that surrounds ethical fashion. What we are seeing is a cultural movement found on the Internet, as a communications structure, a public space in which to develop and shape a social network. The sociologist Manuel Castell talks of the use that mass self-communication networks have17 in social movements when communicating their protest messages online and of creating a critical culture surrounding them. The outcome is an emerging culture whose aim is to reprogram the hegemonic culture and promote social change by introducing the ethical factor into our production and consumer behavior. Among these different initiatives, platforms such as Ecouterre18 and ecofashionworld19 stand out as two of the most well-known and influential webs in the field of fashion and ethical and ecological design. Streetsiknow20 is one of the blogs offering the biggest selection of links relating to vegan fashion and ethical consumption.