T-shirts for just €2? That’s pretty sweet. After all, it’s hard to get a cup of coffee — let alone a t-shirt — for that price.
We love cheap clothing. But have you ever stopped to think at what cost?
This is the question that Fashion Revolution, a nonprofit organization, want people to ask.
As people got ready to buy their bargain t-shirts, however, the machine played a video of the plight of sweatshop laborers.
Overworked and grossly underpaid, these garment workers make cheap clothing possible in this consumer-driven world.
The machine then asked, do you still want to buy cheap?
With the knowledge of what cheap clothes truly mean, most people did NOT want to buy.
A video of the experiment was released on Fashion Revolution Day, April 24.
This day was also the second anniversary of the 2013 collapse of a building that housed a garment factory in Bangladesh, killing more than a thousand workers. They were producing clothes for renowned brands such as Walmart, Benetton, J.C. Penney, and many others, in very unsafe conditions.
“We’re not asking people to boycott their favourite stores, we need to change the fashion industry from within by asking the brands and retailers where we like to shop, ‘Who Made My Clothes?'” said Carry Somers, founder of Fashion Revolution.
“Consumers didn’t cause this problem, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be part of the solution. Brands and retailers may not be paying attention to what the people in their supply chain are saying, but they will most certainly be paying attention to what their customers are saying. We have incredible power as consumers to effect change. We just need to use it!”
You can do your part by visiting Fashion Revolution, and following their four-step instructions to making a real difference.