About three months ago we decided, as a very small relatively new company, to invest in beautiful ethically made face coverings/masks created from sustainable fabrics – to raise money for the campaigning charity Labour Behind the Label. This charity does such amazing work supporting garment workers rights in the UK and around the world. We were sickened by the Boohoo scandal, which the charity helped expose, and later on, the reports of female garment workers turning to prostitution in Myanmar to feed their children. It is beyond comprehension that exploitation is so extreme to produce clothing for the more well off.
On the same day that the masks were made, shipped and photographed for the website – the announcement came that gave us all hope of a vaccine for Covid. Our lives could go back to normal again. We would feel safer in the world.
But perhaps we need to re-imagine a better future?
The writer Arundhati Roy has written the most powerful essay in the Financial Times on April 2nd. She concludes with the following words:
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it”
It may be many months before many of us receive the vaccine and it is doubtful whether many of the world’s population will ever receive it.
So please wear our Conscious Apparel masks with pride and give them to others as gifts, to raise awareness that when it comes to fashion – we truly need to envision and fight for a better future.
