NAKED FASHION – THE NEW SUSTAINABLE FASHION REVOLUTION
Introduction
Fashion is a tool, a media and for anyone who wants to change the world, this book is the place to start. Published by People Tree and New Internationalist, this book will inspire you to join the movement of consumers and creative professionals that are using their purchasing power and talents to change the face of fashion.
Highly visual, packed with producer profiles, interviews and contributions from the likes of Emma Watson, Livia Firth and Vivienne Westwood. ‘Showing fashion at its worst while providing upbeat solutions is a tough call but Safia Minney has achieved it with Naked Fashion.’
This book, produced by New Internationalist for People Tree, offers advice and tips on how to make a difference for those who have an active interest in where our clothes come from or want a career in fashion and the media.
“Received wisdom is often quite dim. As an example, we are told constantly that today’s mainstream fashion industry is all we might desire and all we should expect. It isn’t. As made clear through some of the stirring eye-witness accounts of life as a garment worker on the Global Assembly Line in these pages – such as Liz Jones’ account of a visit to Dhaka – there are some startling holes in the claims of the world’s biggest fashion brands that they offer unparalleled opportunity for both consumers and developing world workers.
The strength of this book is that every page turns the conventional view of the fashion landscape upside down, gives it a good shake and (charmingly) disposes of the offending idea in the nearest trash can. Instead, we are offered just about the most inspiring models (of business, shopping, working – and even actual alternative models in the form of Summer Rayne Oakes) imaginable. And this is genuinely liberating.We should hardly be surprised because People Tree, the brand created by Safia Minney, has no truck with the pervading fashion business model which involves inadvertently or purposely chewing up environmental resources and capitalizing on the world’s most vulnerable and dispensable workers.
People Tree and Safia Minney bring you this book. Their approach is unashamedly producer-centric and with a long-term view of the planet and its citizens.
Fashion designers and creatives from many fields, including photographers, illustrators and filmmakers, talk about what they are doing differently to change the fashion and media industry from within. With features on up-cycling, how to change the high street and an ethical brand directory, the book supplies inspiration for how to achieve style with substance.
This is one of few books to analyse fair trade, ethical fashion and entrepreneurship, written by one of the most respected women in the industry. It’s a highly visual publication, featuring studio shots, street pics and illustrations. Many of the contributions come from celebrity supporters of fair trade and ethical fashion and the book is supported by a number of internationally recognized designers, photographers and bloggers.
Published in: 2011
ISBN: 978-1-780260-41-9
All of which means that when you embrace this sort of fashion and creativity you do more than design, write about or buy a vest-top or pair of jeans. You support communities, protect indigenous textile weavers and designers, help realize Millennium Development Goals such as getting girls into education and bolster ecological resilience. As the actor Emma Watson explains, Fair Trade fashion brings genuine and measurable results to some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.
Not surprisingly, up-and-coming designers, writers, commentators, stylists, textile producers and graphic designers, illustrators, artists, – you name it! – are all attracted. They want their professional lives to have resonance and purpose. They recognise that fashion is an important tool and they see the examples of design companies such as Terra Plana or From Somewhere who do things differently. As people working to raise the profile of fashion that matches ethics to aesthetics, we meet these potential change-makers all the time. Sometimes we’re inundated with questions! Now we can gently usher them towards Naked Fashion as an indispensable primer.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Fashion Revolution is now under way!“
Livia Firth and Lucy Siegle
What Caryn Franklin, style guru, presenter, writer and campaigner, says about Naked Fashion…
‘Insightful, inspiring… a book I will be recommending to all students of fashion.’
Book Launch
