Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Mile Živković
Good morning, everyone.
It's so great to be back at SMU.
Thirteen years ago,
I started my custom cruelty-free handbag company
right here in this building,
and since then, I've learned a lot about the fashion industry.
I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly side of fashion,
which is why I want to talk about ethical fashion today.
So, what is ethical fashion?
It is the production and the consumption of clothing and accessories
in a way that does not harm people, our planet, or animals in the process.
And I know that we all have different opinions on what is ethical,
but I hope that you will consider the issues
that I will be discussing today whenever you do purchase fashion.
Why does this matter?
It matters because we are all a part
of this $1.5 trillion global fashion industry,
and it has tremendous impact on people, our planet, and on animals.
So, we have to be conscientious of our consumption.
One of the biggest and most destructive trends is called "fast fashion,"
and I used to consume a lot of fast fashion when I was a student
because it's cheap, it's convenient,
and thousands of new styles are available every week.
It's also cheaply made,
so it falls apart after a couple of wears;
and also the style: it's out of style just after a few months.
And I didn't realize the impact of my consumption,
until I started learning about the manufacturing process
of clothing and accessories on a global scale.
And I learned that there is a cost to everything.
If I'm not paying for it, someone, somewhere, is,
and it's usually the workers.
Have you ever asked yourself, "How is this shirt $10, or $5?"
It's because of cheap labor.
Eighty percent of the garment workers are women and girls,
mostly in developing countries,
and they are paid less than a minimum wage.
And some of them aren't paid at all
because they're stuck in forced labor.
They also work in dangerous working conditions.
In 2013, Rana Plaza collapsed in Bangladesh,
killing more than 1,000 workers and injuring 2,000 more.
This was a fast-fashion factory that was unsuitable to work in.
There were huge cracks in the building,
but the owners forced the workers to continue to work
so that they could meet their deadlines.
This tragedy got the world's attention
and started a global fashion revolution,
demanding safer working conditions, better paying wages,
and transparency from brands,
and also a call for slow fashion.
Another dangerous working condition is in the leather tanneries.
The majority of them are in Bangladesh and India,
and most of the world's leather production uses a process called chromium tanning,
which uses more than 200 different types of chemicals,
and a lot of them are toxic,
like chromium, formaldehyde, cyanide, arsenic, lead.
All cause skin disease, lung disease, blindness,
mental health disorders, cancer, and even deaths,
to the workers and to the villagers who work near these tanneries.
How does fashion impact our world, our one and only planet?
Fashion manufacturing is an intensive process.
It requires a lot of people, a lot of resources,
like land, water, and energy.
To produce a T-shirt, it takes this entire process,
in manufacturing alone,
and it starts with growing the cotton.
The US is the number one producer of cotton,
and 40% of all the apparel produced in the world
is made of cotton.
Cotton is a water-intensive crop.
It takes 1,000 gallons of water to produce one cotton T-shirt.
Cotton is also pesticide-intensive.
It uses 24% of the global market for pesticides,
which makes fashion the second most polluting industry in the world,
after oil.
All those toxic chemicals, all that waste, go directly into water ways,
into land, into the soil, and into the air,
and in developing countries,
there's little to no regulations to protect the environment.
There's also a lot of consumer waste.
Americans alone throw away 13 million tons of textile waste a year,
according to the EPA.
So, all of that disposable fashion goes right into the landfill,
where it'll stay for many years.
So, imagine this on a global scale.
How does fashion impact animals?
Humans have been using animals for their skin,
their wool, their fur, their bones, their organs,
for clothing and accessories for over 500,000 years.
So, it is the oldest type of material.
But, in today's fashion industry,
animals are raised in factory farms,
in cramped, inhumane living conditions,
where they are treated as commodities, not as living beings,
where there's little to no regulations to protect them against animal abuse
and animals cruelties.
You may be surprised that dogs and cats are used for their skin overseas.
And it's not required to be labeled as such,
so they're sold as "leather".
And cow leather is not a byproduct of the meat industry.
It's a co-product of the meat industry,
because their skin can be more valuable than their meat.
Sheep and lambs are sheared for their wool,
which sounds just like a haircut, but it's not,
because when they're mass-produced,
they get injured, they get cut, and mutilated.
And there's a practice called "mulesing",
where pieces of skin from their rear end are cut off,
without painkillers,
to prevent fly infestations.
And angora is made from rabbits,
and they're used for their fur to make sweaters,
and their fur is ripped right off their body,
without any painkillers, while they're alive.
And the same happens to ducks and geese,
who are plucked alive for their down feathers.
So, how do we shop ethically?
It starts by looking at the label, looking at the brand,
seeing where it's made,
what it's made out of,
and asking ourselves, "Who made this?"
And hopefully, we'll know that it's made by happy workers,
workers who are paid fairly and who work in safe conditions.
You can shop ethically by supporting slow fashion,
by investing quality over quantity.
You can shop secondhand vintage;
buy sustainable materials, animal-free materials,
and support brands that care about people, our planet, and animals.
And technology is really moving fashion forward
with all these alternatives to animal fabrics:
synthetic leather that look and feel just like animal leather,
synthetic down, synthetic fur.
There's also lab-grown silk,
without using silk worms to create it.
So, as you can see,
fashion can be fabulous
without harming people, our planet, or animals in the process.
Designers like Stella McCartney are leading the way for ethical fashion,
and as a designer, and as a manufacturer,
I believe that it is my responsibility, my purpose,
to create ethical fashion.
And as consumers, we can all support ethical fashion.
We can help lift people out of poverty, out of danger,
stop the pollution, and stop the animal abuses,
because clothes aren't going to change the world;
the women who wear them will, and I hope that you will.
Thank you.
(Applause)