When you pivot in the right direction, good things can happen

Recent happenings have shown me that when you move towards a bigger purpose, life can take your mission a little further than you anticipated…

With a few of my recent articles on topics like how we can mitigate the impacts of climate change on women and banning secondhand clothing, I’ve been pivoting into my background in international development. I still love my work in style and sustainable fashion. The deeper I go, the more I see intersections between the social and environmental issues of sustainable fashion and issues of international development. Widening the scope of our conversations towards development means broadening horizons that will hopefully bring more holistic solutions to issues.  

What I’ve learned from this new experience is that when you take steps in the right direction, life can throw opportunities at you that put your goals on steroids. So it’s essential to keep seeking growth and new ways to bring positive change in the world. Because you might meet others that carry the same volition. And this might be how we can all make things better. By following the internal compass that leads us to a greater purpose, then joining forces and growing communities aimed at changing the status quo.

Now this does not mean you’ll stop seeing my stylish outfits (like this one). Style as far as I can tell will always be part of my wheelhouse.

STYLING

I’m wearing another colourful preloved ensemble but this time I put on PANTS! My wardrobe is all skirts and dresses, so pants are a rarity! Styled them with a random, cute, t-shirt I found in an op shop which I guess is a tourist souvenir from Hua Hin Province in Thailand. In the previous photo I topped the look with a blue vintage Shanghai China silk ‘Peony’ coat.  

Outfit sourced from:

Blue Vintage Shanghai Silk Peony Coat – Hand-me-down

Arty Pants - Suitcase Rummage Vintage & Preloved Market

Colourful T-shirt – Salvos Stores Op Shop

♥ Nina Gbor

Climate change has the biggest impact on women but how can we fix it?

Image credit: Information Age

For both palpable and less obvious reasons, women are crucial to the survival and thriving of our species on multiple levels. From past millennia to date, women have been a perpetual force in upholding family units and communities. And a force that contributes significantly to powering economies. In fact, if we’re serious about creating positive change on a global scale, we need to empower many more women. Yet, of the billions of people in the world living below the poverty line, 70% are women. Based on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is evident that people who economically and socially are most vulnerable and marginalised experience the greatest impacts when it comes to climate change. Women fall into this demographic. If we continue to allow this to happen, climatic catastrophes will prove even more fatal for humanity. Therefore, avoiding further climate breakdown by protecting women and the environment is imminent.

Climate change bears its brunt mostly on the bottom 2 billion people on the planet. Even though the poorer half of the world’s population generates just 10% of emissions, the Global South suffers at least 75% of the costs of climate change. Wealthy countries in the Global North by far have always been the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. According to the Director of Feedback, Carina Millstone, “citizens living in the countries with the lowest per capita consumption of resources consume two tons of materials per person per year for their food and shelter; while those living in countries with the highest per capita consumption use 60 tons of materials per capita per year.”

Women in the Global South are disproportionately impacted more than any other demographic. For instance, UN figures indicate that women make up for 80% of people displaced by climate change. Tasks such as household chores, family care giving, fetching water and gathering energy sources like charcoal and firewood for heating and cooking, and of course agriculture make women more vulnerable when disaster strikes. Disasters such as flooding, droughts, deforestation, coastal storms, extreme and unpredictable weather patterns, soil erosion, etc displace women usually through life or death circumstances.

Image credit: Nandhu Kumar

When it comes to the susceptibility of women in the Global South, social, cultural and economic factors such as differential roles, lack of credit and poor infrastructure are also to blame. Access to decision-making, tech, training and extension services that would enhance their capacity to adapt to climate change are insufficient or non-existent. Moreover, as a result of continuous impacts of inequality, colonialism and racism, women from the Global South and women of colour in some regions experience an even heavier burden when it comes to climate change. And finally, women in the world have less access to agricultural land.  The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) stated that around two-thirds of the female workforce in the Global South is involved in agricultural work. However, they own less than 10% of the land despite leading the world's food production by 50 - 80%. Before we explore ways of fixing these issues, let’s have a more holistic, in-depth look at some of the specificities around climate disasters that impact women:

Extreme rain and droughts - With rising temperatures, there has been and there will continue to be more floods in some areas and droughts in others. Flooding drowns food crops and droughts dry them up. This leads to food scarcity which is the precursor to other issues such as poverty through livelihoods being destroyed, malnutrition and starvation.

Food scarcity – Girls and women have a greater susceptibility to malnutrition and vector-borne diseases which are made more prevalent by climate change. And they’re more likely than boys to get less food during times of food scarcity. These food shortages cause communities to go to war over shrinking food resources.

Image credit: Guardian.co.uk

Life security – Women face heightened safety risks during times of war, conflict and disasters with issues like domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and other human rights violations. With limited access to information and limited movement outside their homes, women are 14 times more likely than men to die during disasters, according to reports by the African Development Bank.

Lack of socioeconomic power - Women in the Global North are also affected by climate change. With less socioeconomic power, women overall experience more poverty than men. It, therefore, becomes harder for them to recover from disasters that have affected jobs, infrastructure and housing. An example is Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA in 2005. The city had a high level of poverty amongst its African American residents. They were most affected by the hurricane flooding. Scientists predict that as sea levels rise from climate change, low-lying cities like New Orleans are at risk of flooding.

Education – Women are more likely than men to end formal education early in multiple regions. In Africa, female illiteracy rates were over 55% in 2000, compared to 41% for men. This means they are far less likely to get into leadership positions where they can influence climate mitigation policies.  On this matter, environmental scientist Diana Liverman said, "Women are often not involved in the decisions made about the responses to climate change, so the money ends up going to the men rather than the women.” Because women are likely to do more work to secure household livelihoods during extreme weather circumstances, they have less time to access training and education, develop skills or earn income.

Image credit: Yogendra Singh

Disaster survival – An Oxfam report stated that in the wake of the 2004 tsunami, the men who survived the disaster outnumbered women by almost 3:1 in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India. It was reported that women spent more time trying to save their children, which delayed their efforts to escape the tsunami. They were also less likely to know how to swim than men. The 2004 tsunami was not a climate change disaster, however, due to the rise in sea levels from climate change and the loss of coastal ecosystems, tsunamis are expected to intensify. This, however, serves as an example of how expectations on women to provide family care also has uneven effects during times of disaster.

Life expectancy – A study of natural disasters spanning 20 years found that catastrophic events lowered the life expectancy of women more than men. In countries where women had higher socio-economic power, fewer women, in general, were killed and fewer women were killed at a young age.

Water shortage – When climate changes cause water bodies to shrink, it impacts the lives of those who are dependent on it. In Central Africa for example, 90% of Lake Chad in West Africa has encroached. Millions of people across five nations use Lake Chad as their water source. As the lake shrinks, women have to walk much further to get water for their families.

Image credit: UN IHE Delft Institute for Water Education

Internal displacement and refugees – Many women are forced into displacement from their homes or forced to become cross-border refugees as a result of climate change factors such as rising sea levels in West Africa and drying river basins in Southern and Eastern Africa. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC), adolescent girls and women are refugees at the highest risk of being trafficked for sexual slavery while in transit to a foreign land and of experiencing gender-based violence while in the refugee camps. Women risk assault at the camps when they venture out of the protected environment in search of water and firewood.  

Social vulnerability - Social vulnerability can come from lower wages, financial insecurity and inequality. In East Africa and Pakistan for example, drought and flooding have impacted farming, respectively. Men have a higher chance of relocating for higher wages than women. Women typically are unable to migrate due to family care-taking commitments.

How can we fix the disproportionate impacts from climate change?

The simple answer is to end all activities that perpetuate climate change. As I’ll explain later, Indigenous women and communities in the Global South have centuries worth of ecological knowledge on mitigating some aspects of climate damage and implementing environmental restoration. In an equal spirit of partnership and cooperation, perhaps we can combine this traditional, organic and resourceful knowledge with modern technology for broader application to prevent, solve or restore some of the environmental damage. In any case, here are several more suggestions:

1. Imminent zero emission targets

Immediate action is required to protect women made vulnerable by climate change. Emphasis should be placed on protecting people and planet today, not protecting the future. The greatest concern should be for the people that rely on natural resources, the environment and climate every day to survive. Several of the biggest global zero-emission targets by corporations and nations are set to happen by 2050 but vulnerable people do not have 10, 20 or 30 years to wait. Therefore, global zero-emission targets need to accelerate towards present day, not 2030.

We’re currently overshooting the planet’s resources by 60% each year with regards to production and the earth’s ability to absorb and replenish resources that we consume. Our excessive overconsumption is driven by a few rich countries. The 2030 target has a higher chance of succeeding if we start with the 20 biggest greenhouse gas emitter companies in the world, especially with the participation of the US, China and India.

2. Propagate traditional knowledge and wisdom

Despite vulnerability, women should not only be seen as climate change victims. They have proven to be resourceful agents of adaptation and disaster mitigation. Historically, indigenous women and women from the Global South have an organic knowledge of the ecosystem that empowers them to feed their families and uphold communities in the face of disaster and dwindling resources. International geographer, Hindou Ourmarou Ibrahim says Indigenous women have the knowledge of adapting and restoring the forests after a disaster because indigenous people all over the world are very directly dependent on natural resources for food, medicine, education and of course survival. This way of survival has become extremely difficult for indigenous societies in the wake of widespread ecological changes in their environments resulting from climate change.

Indigenous people see themselves as part of the ecosystem with an unparalleled knowledge of the environment developed over centuries where they have depended directly on the forests for dwelling, food, education, medicine, safety, etc. This relationship has advanced their skills in things like preventing and restoring rain rainforests after burning. grandmother in Pacific will know where to get crops after the hurricane to feed her family. In Chad, nomads when they move with cattle, they know how to restore the ecosystem. When it comes to sustainable business practices, the knowledge of indigenous people is a valuable resource and indigenous people are a valuable partner that can protect environment, business.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Sassan Saatchi

 3. Representation

Every societal challenge we face will be better addressed if women and girls participate equally in both diagnosing and treating the problems. Women are best placed to devise responses that are effective and advance their own rights.

The UN has emphasised the need for a gender-sensitive approach to climate issues. And the 2015 Paris Agreement has specific provision for the inclusion and empowerment of women. Despite this, there is only a 30% representation of women in the average global and national climate negotiating bodies. A research study by the Proceeding of National Academy of Sciences found that only 20% of the scientists that authored the IPCC report were female identifying. It concluded that “the scientific community benefits from incorporating scientists from all genders, including women from the Global South. Therefore, intersectionality across multiple and diverse barriers such as race, nationality, disciplinary affliction and language are crucial to progress.

Image credit: Marc Cooriolesi

4. Policy and decision-making

Policies must be designed to include outcomes that improve the living conditions of women most affected by climate change. On the matter, Former President Jimmy Carter and Karin D. Ryan said, “… women are far too often excluded from decision making at all levels of environmental policy making.” “We have to think bigger, act quicker, and include everyone.” People in leadership positions need to actively do more to ensure girls and women are in leadership positions under equitable circumstances and with gender-responsive outcomes under the climate movement.

Women of the Global South, being the most impacted must also have full participation in top-level decision-making.  The priorities and needs of women must be reflected in planning, development and funding. Fundamental gender issues should be an intrinsic part of policy formation, for instance, equal access to credit resources, training services, tech and education. 

Women should also be part of the decision-making process at national and local levels when it comes to resource allocation for climate change initiatives, gender-sensitive investments in projects for mitigation, sustainable development, capacity-building, technology and adaptation.

In Fiji for example, at the community level, groups constituting and lead by women have enhanced the resilience of market vendors against floods, drought and cyclones.

5. Access to education & tech

In 1856, at a time when the work of female scientists were neither acknowledged nor respected, Eunice Foote managed to become the first scientist to lay the foundation of what we know as the greenhouse gas effect, by highlighting the connection between excessive carbon dioxide and increased atmospheric temperatures. The story of Eunice Foote is a symbolic reminder that many intelligent girls and women just need education and opportunities to enable their capability to contribute to creative solutions that will end the crisis. By ignoring the need to educate women and girls in the Global South, we may have lost countless solutions to the crisis that we will never know of. And we will continue to miss out on potential solutions if we do not take action on this matter. This need to invest in education for this demographic is an urgent matter.

Image credit: Girls Not Brides

Clean energy technologies should be devised and implemented in consultation with local women to reduce harmful emissions whilst aiding their economic productivity and security. Provision should be made for rural communities that don’t have electric power to gain access to affordable renewable solar micro grid energy. This is way more cost effective than coal plants. Access to tech and services can help farmers end food insecurity in their communities. In some instances, tech can potentially broaden the application of the indigenous, ecological climate initiatives.

6. Socioeconomic factors

40% of the poorest households in the world are headed by women. The idea that ending climate change has to undermine the living standards and ambitions of the world’s poorest people is a fallacy. As climate change and poverty are interwoven, we should aspire to have practical solutions to both issues simultaneously by refocusing on the living standards of women in the Global South. According to economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel, there's about 700 billion dollars in debt floating around the global South that needs to be cancelled.

Unsustainable sovereign debt restricts many developing countries from providing adequate support in climate crises. These governments are forced to divert funding from social services to maintain debt repayments to their international creditors. Widespread debt cancellation across the South is needed to get rid of unpayable debts that basically chain global South nations to their creditors instead of directing resources towards environmental restoration and disaster mitigation to save lives and livelihoods. Widespread application of this effort will require the influence and cooperation within the IMF, the World Bank, the Paris Club and the G20.

On a different note, initiatives and bodies that fund climate projects should make efforts to work around social, cultural and economic obstacles that prevent women from receiving such opportunities. A good example of gender-sensitive approach to operations and policies is the Green Climate Fund’s gender policy.  

7. Economic degrowth, decoupling and redistribution

Currently we’re overshooting our planet’s biocapacity by about 60% each year with regards to the earth’s ability to absorb our waste and replenish resources. Excessive overconsumption and the constant pursuit of material economic growth by nations hoping to increase their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is mostly responsible for this. This overshoot is of course accelerating environmental degradation, obliterating biodiversity and furthering climate change which is in turn affecting women.

Perhaps we can stop measuring our economic success by GDP because it doesn’t take ecological damage into account. For instance, the loss or damage to biodiversity, land, trees and other resources. Nor does GDP include domestic contributions largely done by women. If it did, perhaps poverty levels for would be reduced and women might be in better financial positions.  

What if GDP calculations included environmental preservation factors and levels of poverty eradication as a measure for economic success. An option on this pathway might be to look at models for degrowth and decoupling. Economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel talks about ditching our addiction to GDP growth through absolute decoupling of GDP from material use.

Degrowth means a planned economic shift from ecological overshoot to significant reduction in resource use in the Global North economies. The idea to reduce and maintain global resource use at sustainable levels. This post capitalist model means less focus on material growth. With regards to decoupling, economies that can detach environmental degradation while sustaining economic growth and minimising the amount of resources such as fossil fuels and water are described as decoupled. The focus is on growing the economy without the corresponding environmental pressure. It can also be explained as the "equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level" (Schneider et al., 2010). Models like these would diminish the pillaging of natural resources and hence, the negative environmental domino effect on women.

Another solution could be to evolve past capitalism and eradicate poverty simply by redistributing existing yields of economy from the wealthy nations, institutions, or individuals to the poor. We wouldn’t need to plunder the earth for more resources for economic growth to do this. Yet still, it would bridge the poverty divide and give women a fairer chance at thriving in climate damage circumstances and disasters.

♥ Nina Gbor

References:

1. https://www.wecaninternational.org/why-women

2. https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/august-2016/women-grapple-harsh-weather

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51u4JECraLQ

4. https://www.brookings.edu/research/girls-education-in-climate-strategies/

5. https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/womenin-shadow-climate-change

6. https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/03/08/power-structures-gender-make-women-vulnerable-climate-change/

7. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2060

8. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43294221#:~:text=Women%20are%20more%20likely%20than,when%20flooding%20and%20drought%20occur.

9. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/HRAndClimateChange/Pages/GenderResponsiveClimateAction.aspx

10. https://time.com/5739622/women-girls-climate-action/

11. https://www.dw.com/en/climate-induced-sea-level-rise-to-worsen-tsunami-impacts/a-45730449

12. http://thesustainabilityagenda.com/episode-56-interview-dr-jason-hickel-author-divide/

13. file:///C:/Users/ninag/Downloads/9719.pdf

14. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-11-26/climate-change-worse-women/11735842

15. https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/oxfam-international-tsunami-evaluation-summary_3.pdf

16. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-economic-degrowth-ethical-imperative

17. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652610000259

Banning secondhand clothes by the Global South; a blessing or a curse for local fashion industry?

Photo courtesy Lauren Fleischmann.

I’m beginning to wander if the Global South is the new landfill for Western countries. Do you ever think about what happens to your clothes when you’re done with them? And when you donate to thrift stores, do you think about where your clothes will eventually end up after they’ve been re-used? I probably wouldn’t, however, walking into a thrift store at age 15 in an African country was the eureka moment that forever changed my life and how I perceived secondhand (preloved) clothing.     

Photo courtesy Prudence Earl

Thrift stores and fashion waste

Fast fashion is often poorly made, low quality, mass-produced clothes made from synthetic textiles. They are a major pollutant and can often end up in landfill not too long after manufacture. Fast fashion overconsumption is the primary reason why fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world. Because they are not always sellable, charity thrift stores are forced to dispose of them, which can have a devastating impact on their budgets.  Australian charitable recycling organisations are spending approximately $13 million per year sending unusable donations to landfill. The other option is to send them to emerging countries in places like Asia and Africa. The British charity shop, Oxfam, declared that a minimum of 70% of secondhand garments donated to them ends up in Africa. 

Secondhand clothing from the Global North to the Global South

For decades, countries in the Global North such as Australia, the U.S., the U.K. have been sending unwanted secondhand clothes to countries in the Global South. Most of these clothes are the leftovers that op shops (thrift stores) cannot sell. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2016 – 17 for instance revealed that Australian exports 93,502,966 kilos of “worn clothing and other work textiles articles”. Direct exports from charities accounted for two thirds of this figure.

Photo courtesy M. Yusuf / Voice of America

My personal experience

One of my first and most memorable thrift store experiences was in Nigeria at age 15. Like other preloved stores in Africa, they too received secondhand clothes from Western countries.  It was the day my career in sustainable fashion began. I loved finding vintage and contemporary fashion treasures and relished the opportunity to play dress up with an eclectic range of garments at thrift stores. However, a sense of unease gradually began to stir within me because of a couple of things I observed. These imported, affordable clothes were stifling the growth of the local fashion industry. Secondly, there was so much stock that it was visibly polluting the environment. At the end of their life cycle, these clothes would end up in mountains of trash near residential areas, along with other household trash. Landfills were rarely an option in these communities.

Banning secondhand clothing

In 2015, East Africa imported $151 million worth of apparel, mainly from the U.S. and Europe. Countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda have been phasing out secondhand apparel with the intent of an eventual total ban. They believe secondhand clothing undermines their dignity and the development of nascent textile industries in their nations. Despite being major cotton producers, a significant portion of the population within countries such as Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Mali depend on secondhand clothes. African countries have been exporting raw materials and less often, finished products.  According to the McKinsey Consultancy, within a decade, East Africa could have the capability to export garments (as finished products) worth up to $3 billion annually.

The quandary of African countries

In opposition to the East African clothing ban, the Office of the United States Trade Representative in 2017 threatened to remove four East African countries in the list of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. It gives preferential trade benefits to African countries for the purpose of lifting trade and economic growth across sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the weight behind the American opposition was the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMRTA), a band of 40 used clothing exporters with 40,000 American jobs within it. SMRTA said that the clothing Americans threw away would end up in U.S. landfills and damage the environment in the U.S.

Authorities in African countries viewed the threat as an example of a Global North country bullying countries in the Global South that are trying to cultivate a more self-sufficient, thriving economy. Situations like this place emerging countries in a dilemma over balancing protectionism with the perils of damaging their diplomatic connections and relationship with the global economic network.   

In a country like Nigeria, even though the government has technically banned secondhand clothing, the rules are not thoroughly being enforced. The conundrum is that it has not yet established a foundation of infrastructure and facilities that will empower local businesses to compete with Western fast fashion, particularly secondhand imports.

Image courtesy Wong Maye-E, Associated Press, The New York Times.

Textile pollution

And then there’s the issue of pollution. Many textile recycling businesses and charities take pride in their zero-waste status by shipping all leftover clothing to developing countries. In some regards, this notion is akin to the SMRTA principle which believes African nations should accept their unwanted clothing to keep them out of American landfills and to protect the U.S. environment from damage.  All of these Western organisations seem to have no issues with sending over their ‘trash’ to pollute African environments and fill up African landfills (or lack thereof).

Toxic groundwater

Beyond just littering the environment and the trash dumps in emerging countries, synthetic textiles release toxic groundwater when it rains. They are not biodegradable. The buildup of chemicals that come out of these synthetics after years of rainfall produces toxic ground water that leaks into the soil, damaging its fertility and natural ecology.  

Moreover, when toxic ground water stays at the surface of the ground, it evaporates with the chemicals into rain clouds which becomes acid rain. Acid rain pours back down again and spreads over a much wider surface area, repeating the soil damage process.

Water is of course a life source used by people in the local communities for household and agricultural purposes. Toxic groundwater and acid rain flow into local water bodies and can be hazardous to people who depend on it. Acid rain also contributes to the extinction of specific species because it can cause health problems or death when ingested. It changes the pH levels of water bodies which impacts marine wildlife.   

Another landfill solution to the problem of oversupply

I’m not entirely recommending they should suddenly stop shipping secondhand clothes to Africa, Asia and other places. It’s just not environmentally sustainable for those countries to have synthetic textiles in their landfills and trash dumping areas. It’s polluting the environment in emerging countries who did not create the pollution problem in the first place. Yet they’re having to deal with the repercussions. At the end of the day, countries in the Global South have become another landfill for countries in the Global North. And this is not a solution to the problem of oversupply and overconsumption. Furthermore, it contributes to climate change.

Where jobs are concerned, it curbs the creation of new jobs in poorer countries of the South that are attempting to build a thriving manufacturing economy by establishing local fashion industries.

Photo courtesy Association for Free Research and International Cooperation.

What can be done

Less fast fashion equates to less waste. Addressing the issue at the root cause by minimising the oversupply and overconsumption of fast fashion will have a positive domino effect.  As a consumer, before you purchase any garment, think about how many times you’ll use it and how long you will keep the item. If it’s short term, then consider hiring, renting or borrowing instead.

Countries that do not need to import secondhand clothing can decide if and how they will move forward in developing their own textile and clothing manufacture industries. In the latter, governments will need to address issues such as the requirement for local manufacturers to have access to sufficient funding, raw material, energy and liveable wages. In addition, garments should be made from natural textiles that also cater to the entire range of consumer budgets.

To be fair, some of the secondhand recycling organisations send clothing to help impoverished communities that cannot afford clothing. This is certainly admirable and a highly appropriate way of re-purposing these clothes. However, what if we made this a short-term strategy whilst we applied our focus on developing sustainable long-term systems to ensure those communities became economically independent within a specific time frame? This way we can break these cycles of poverty, end dependency and uplift global communities.

♥ Nina Gbor

Instagram: @eco.styles

References:

1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-17/australian-op-shopping-waste-costs-millions-for-charities/10383490

2. https://afric.online/7730-second-hand-clothes-a-threat-to-african-textile/

3. https://www.nacro.org.au/data-on-australian-exports-of-used-clothing/

4. https://ecowarriorprincess.net/2020/02/second-hand-clothing-threat-africa-textile-industry-not-all-bad/

5. https://manrags.com.au/circular-economy/the-solution/greenhouse-gases/

6. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/world/africa/east-africa-rwanda-used-clothing.html

Developing your individual style like the legendary style icon and hero, Audrey Hepburn!

Audrey Hepburn in the 1957 classic film, Funny Face, wearing a red dress designed by Givenchy.

This week would have been the 91st birthday of the greatest style icon the world has ever known, Audrey Hepburn. Her elegant, graceful, timeless, captivating style is still revered to this day. Not only was she a screen legend in Hollywood’s Golden Age, she was also a hero. Her empathy, compassion and kindness made her travel the world to help children in the poorest countries get access to food, healthcare, clean water. Audrey Hepburn’s iconic status goes beyond just physical beauty and gorgeous dresses. Her philanthropy changed the lives of many children in the world.

Audrey Hepburn as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

She herself had faced starvation and undernourishment as a child in Holland in the 1940s during world war II. So, she knew what it was like. This made her determined to help as many children as possible. She was appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1988 and awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993. Audrey Hepburn also received the United States’ Presidential Medal of Freedom in December 1992.

Hollywood and style legacy

What made Audrey a true style icon was her individuality. She disrupted Hollywood in the 1950s, with a unique look, her own sense of style and torrents of gracefulness and kindness. This was at a time when women in Hollywood were mostly being cast as the sexy, blonde bombshell. In 1954 she won an Oscar for Best Actress with the film, Roman Holiday (1953). Many of her most iconic ensembles can be seen in her films like Sabrina (1954), Funny Face (1957) and of course, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). I did a photo shoot tribute to Audrey’s style in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Check it out here.

In my opinion, the fictional character, Carrie Bradshaw from the hit TV series Sex & The City (1998 - 2004), is the only relatively modern style icon that comes close to Audrey’s legendary status. Again, I believe this is because Carries’s style was very individualised i.e. styled to suit the character’s personality and lifestyle. Moreover, the show’s costume stylist, Patricia Field mixed vintage and modern pieces to create Carrie’s wardrobe. This is what made Carrie’’s style so timeless, unusual and unforgettable.

Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and The City, wearing a vintage style red dress with black polka dots, with a green underlay. Also wearing a black coat with white cuffs and a floral broach at the neck.

Individual style

In short, individual, person style that transcended trends and fashion eras is what made the style of these women so memorable and inspirational to this day. The key to becoming your own style icon, therefore, is to look within. It’s NOT fashion trends. Style should not be uniform across the board with everyone. There’s no beauty in imitation. When we’re following trends, we’re ignoring our own intuition on what’s best for us as individuals. And by accepting these false, external standards, we’re giving up too much of our freedom and individuality. You can become more grounded, intuitive and powerful from following your own individual style. So, forget what the trends are, forget what anyone is telling you should be wearing this season.

How to craft your individual style

1. Know yourself. Think about who you are, what you stand for and what makes you happy. What’s your purpose and mission in life? Let your style be determined by this formation.

2. Use a personal style formula. This is a formula I came up with a few years ago when I was teaching people how to transition to preloved shopping in markets, vintage stores, thrift stores and clothes swaps. Here’s the formula:

Your colour palette (colours that look good on you)

+

Your body shape (cuts and styles that work for your silhouette)

+

Your lifestyle / personality

=

Your Personal Style Formula!

A combination of these three elements will give your style authenticity, timelessness and individuality. Not to mention, iconic in your own right!

♥ Nina Gbor

The revolution of fashion and the shifting paradigms

Rana dress made by ethical label, Pure Pod. Australian-made with organic cotton and linen.

Now more than ever is the moment we can create a paradigm shift by putting our (collective) weight behind brands that have always operated with unwavering determination to treat workers with dignity and respect. Brands that operate with absolute consideration for how their manufacturing processes and lifecycle of their products impact the environment. This is not an easy feat, especially for small businesses. For these reasons, they deserve our utmost respect and patronage. To systemise ethical and sustainable businesses so that the standard for how we produce, consume and dispose clothing and textiles becomes the new normal, the mainstream.

Rana Plaza disaster in Dhaka District, Bangladesh on April 24, 2013. Stock image.

Fashion Revolution

April 20th – April 26th, 2020 marks this year’s Fashion Revolution week. On April 24th, 2013, Rana Plaza, a building in Bangladesh with a clothing manufacture factory collapsed and killed 1134 people and injured 2,500 people. This was the disaster that ignited the global Fashion Revolution movement. Its mission is to protect people and planet by taking a stance against social injustice and environmental damage done in the name of fashion. One of their most popular campaign hashtags on social media is #WhoMadeMyClothes. The aim is to incite apparel users all over the world to ask the brands who make their clothes for full transparency of their entire manufacture supply chain. This will ensure traceability and therefore influence liveable fair wages, healthier work conditions and better practices for the environment.

Time for change

This week in 2020 can be the year we fully revolutionise our global fashion culture. Here are some thoughts that will inspire you to join the movement towards making ethical and sustainable fashion the new normal:

1. Too expensive – there’s a myth that ethically-made clothes are too expensive. This is false. They often cost exactly what clothes are meant to cost. Fast fashion has given us the wrong idea that clothes can be cheap and disposable. The next time you want to purchase a t-shirt for $10, or a dress for $20, you best believe that the people that made that garment were paid next to nothing for their hard work. Paying a decent amount to an ethical brand means the people who make the garments are paid liveable wages. This is how we can help to flatten the global poverty curve.

2. Driving down costs – When enough people and policies support ethical manufacturing, it will drive down production costs in a way that still upholds the values of environment, liveable wages and good work conditions because it will become the norm, not the exception.

3. Variety, inclusion & diversity – The more we use our dollars to stand behind ethical brands, the easier it will become for labels to have size variety, more inclusion and diversity in the fashion industry.

How to Take Action

These organisations exist to change the status quo with actions that anyone can take to make this happen sooner and more efficiently.

• Fashion Revolution advocates for a global fashion industry that conserves and restores the environment and values people over growth and profit. Join the revolution here.

• Ethical Clothing Australia is an accreditation body that works with Australian businesses to ensure their Australian supply chains are legally compliant. Their list of ethical brands can be found here.

• Oxfam’s What She Makes campaign demands big clothing brands pay the women who make our clothes a living wage. They have several activities that you can do to ensure this happens on their site here.

Where to Shop

In addition to Pure Pod, some other ethical brands to check out are KitX, Remuse, Etiko, Humiform, Allora Capes and Stella McCartney. Here are links to specific categories:

Office / Workwear

Activewear

Underwear and lingerie

Shoes

More affordable fashion brands

STYLING

In this article I’m wearing a dress by the ethical label, Pure Pod. It is made in Australia using organic cotton and linen. I was going for an old Hollywood, vintage, glamorous look so I styled the dress with a black, wide brim hat. To enhance the Hollywood glamour look, I paired it with gold, sparkly stilettos.

Outfit sourced from:

Rana Dress – Pure Pod

Gold Stilettos – Canberra (preloved) Fashion Market

♥ Nina Gbor

Photography by Bryant Evans