COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement have acted as a catalyst for us to hit the reset button with FashMash. It’s long overdue. We’ve been running our community and networking events for over eight years, but we’ve never stopped in that time to address what it is we’re actually about, and importantly who we have excluded in the process.
So we’ve spent the past three months talking to our community and most importantly, to those beyond it, about how FashMash must develop. Where once we were about uniting the worlds of just fashion and technology, today we’ve identified what brings us together at the most fundamental level is a desire to drive change.
Being a FashMash member today then, shouldn’t be about seniority or experience in the industry, but about a mindset. A mindset to shape the future of the industry, comprised of intrapreneurs, innovators, proactive leaders and leaders-to-be.
It’s a simple shift, but it’s an important one. FashMash has always been about bringing people together. All people. So gone now is any sense of elitism we may have been presenting. It’s important our community is representative of the incredible talent found in the black community, in broader minorities, in younger generations and more. Change will only happen this way.
We will shortly be introducing a variety of new programmes and initiatives to enable this, focused on professional and personal development. First and foremost we are opening up our membership application process. Do please check out our member benefits and new criteria. We’d love to welcome many of you to apply to become part of our full community.
Thank you for your continued support of FashMash. It’s been an exciting eight years. Here’s to the next!
Rachel and Rosanna