With grandparents who worked as a tailor and seamstress, it’s natural for Soraya Wancour to feel an emotional connection to clothing in general. When the Belgian designer founded Estúdio AMA in Ghent in 2020, she wanted to create apparel that was not only beautiful but that people would feel proud to wear.
Soraya is one among a growing number of designers seeking to ensure that clothing is produced sustainably and without the use of forced labor, emphasizing people as well as profit. For Soraya, knowing how, where, and by whom her clothes are made—a transparent supply chain—is fundamental.
She recycles old fabrics or scraps to use in her designs and partners with local workshops that employ people with disabilities or those who may have difficulty finding employment. By working with local producers, Soraya tries to limit the extent to which her clothing may be tainted by forced labor and other unethical practices that plague the global clothing supply chain.
The market craves “sustainable goods that have a transparent value chain, products with a story attached,” Soraya told ShareAmerica, adding that people want products they can relate to “emotionally.”
Often, the fashion industry “does not value the people who make these clothes and does not value the people who wear the clothes,” she said.
A clear example of Soraya’s concerns can be found in the Xinjiang region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The region is a major producer of cotton. In a 2020 report, the U.S. Department of Labor* estimated that over 100,000 predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other religious and ethnic minorities may be working under forced conditions, producing textiles, yarns, skeins, gloves, and other items. Since 2017, the PRC has also detained over 1 million Uyghurs and other victims in internment camps.
The Coalition to End Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region estimates that the proportion of cotton clothing in the global market that is “tainted” by Uyghur forced labor is one in five*.
In the global market, cotton fibers and products can change hands multiple times, creating an “obscure supply chain,” said Patricia Jurewicz, founder and executive director of the Responsible Sourcing Network in Berkeley, California.
Governments and advocacy groups are taking steps to make supply chains more transparent. In 2021, the United States banned the import of all goods, including cotton products, traced back to Xinjiang. The U.S. Department of State encourages consumers to research the products they buy for links to forced labor or other exploitative labor practices and to inform companies of their concerns.
The European Union, France, and Germany have also enacted or proposed requirements for large companies to conduct due diligence assessments to protect human rights in their supply chains.
The Fashion Revolution* (Revolução da Moda, in free translation), a nonprofit organization based in London, launched the “Who Made My Fabric” campaign in 2021 aimed at highlighting human rights violations in supply chains rooted in China and other countries. The nonprofit ranks companies based on the amount of information they disclose about the origins of their products.
Carry Somers, founder of Fashion Revolution, says that companies are increasing their disclosures as public awareness of human rights violations grows. “Brands and retailers have a clear responsibility to analyze their supply chain in order to identify risks and impacts to human rights,” Fashion Revolution states on its website. “Mapping and disclosing their supply chains is an imperative first step in addressing these risks and impacts.”
Source: share.america.gov