For almost a century, the buying and selling of clothing has been illegal throughout World 1. Recognising the crucial social role of fashion and building on the success of the nineteenth-century rational dress movement, the charismatic leaders of the international Decommodify Dress campaign successfully argued that clothes, like organs of the human body, should be unsullied by commerce.
Ever since, domestic making and repair have been commonplace, supported by extensive textile education. Those who are unwilling or unable to make for themselves must rely on bartering, gifts (including the ultimate jackpot – an entire inherited wardrobe) or the inevitable black market.
What if …
making, mending, gifting and bartering were normal, mainstream fashion activities, rather than buying new clothes?
Issue targeted:
consumer capitalism driving ever-faster consumption, with the volume of garments sold rapidly increasing
Inspiration:
transposing the legal and moral context surrounding the donation of blood and human organs (in Britain) to the sphere of fashion
This World was contributed by Amy Twigger Holroyd (located in Nottingham, UK) using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the author and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.
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