We marked #FashionRevolutionWeek this year with a Focus roundtable discussion dedicated to exploring the active citizen and how they’re helping to shape the future of fashion.
Touching on diversity and inclusion, through sustainability and beyond, our goal was to think about what will drive great advocacy in this space. Thank you to the four amazing women who joined us.
Hear our founders @rachel_arthur and @rosannafalconer dive deeper on the topic on IG Live on Monday, April 26. In the meantime, some of the key themes from our discussion:
ON THE ECHO CHAMBER
Let’s not forget, we’re in an echo chamber. While the work being done is certainly driving greater uptake among citizens and ensuring a more vibrant activist community, we’ve not yet reached the tipping point for mass awareness of this need. It’s idealist to believe otherwise, which means we all have a lot of work to do. Greater advocacy is crucial for the change the industry requires.
ON THE LEARNING JOURNEY
Citizen activism today is facing a challenge in the digital silencing and cancel culture that’s increasingly prevalent online. There is no room for consumers to be on a journey due to the way they are villainised for not knowing enough. We can’t hope to get them on board as advocates if we don’t change this landscape. We need to introduce ‘call in’ culture, whereby people are educated with empathy, our guests suggested.
ON RESPONSIBLE EDUCATORS
On the theme of education, there’s a responsibility for brands and influencers, as arbiters of taste and primary vehicles for the communication of fashion, to not only be transparent in where they are on the journey themselves, but to guide others along the way. We are not yet seeing this at scale and is where the work should start. The power these stakeholders have to change behaviours places them as leaders in this space.
FashMash Focus is sponsored by Klaviyo.