Fashion and Sustainability: Fashion Revolution Week
April 2018 marks the 5th year of the deadly collapse of Rana Plaza. A massive garment factory in Bangladesh that shocked the world over with its appalling working conditions. Fashion Revolution is a global movement rooted in demanding transparency for the garment industry around labour conditions, fair wages and environmental impact.
Kelly Drennan, founder of Fashion Takes Action, and its creative director and longest collaborator, Sarah Jay, discuss the broad strokes of fashion and sustainability.
Sarah Jay brings over fifteen years of experience in all areas of fashion media. Her styling work has been published internationally in Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue.com, FASHION, ELLE Canada, InStyle. Television credits include Canada’s Next Top Model, Eat Yourself Sexy, Look-A-Like and Project Runway Canada. Celebrity clients include Fergie, Adam Levine, Penelope Cruz and Justin Bieber.
In 2007 Sarah began working with Fashion Takes Action, Canada’s only apparel non-profit focused on sustainability, working with industry and consumers to shift behaviour toward more positive social and environmental impacts. As creative director and active board member, Sarah produces all of FTA’s fashion and runway events.
Sarah’s first full-length feature film is currently in production with White Pine Pictures, and will address the harms of unregulated toxins in personal care products.
Following her passion for product safety, labelling efficacy and animal rights, Sarah recently lead the largest market study to date on the use of shark squalene in cosmetics which will be featured in the late Rob Stewart’s upcoming film, Sharkwater Extinction.
As an extension of this work, Sarah has founded All Earthlings, a consulting firm aimed at illuminating and eliminating undisclosed animal ingredients in supply chains.
Learn more about Sarah Jay.
Photo credit George Pimentel.
Kelly Drennan founded Fashion Takes Action (FTA) eleven years ago out of her desire to create a better, more sustainable future for her two daughters. She is also responsible for producing the World Ethical Apparel Roundtable (WEAR) which began in 2014, developing FTA’s youth education program My Clothes My World and Design Forward – Canada’s Sustainable Fashion Awards. Kelly is a sought after consultant for fashion designers and brands who want to embrace CSR and sustainability.
Kelly’s knowledge and passion for sustainable fashion is evident the minute you meet her. She has given hundreds of presentations to industry, academics and consumers in the hopes to raise awareness for responsible consumption and production, and for human rights in the fashion industry. Through this, she has earned respect from global leaders, industry colleagues, and the media, as a sustainable fashion go-to expert.
She has most recently been recognized as a Canadian environmental leader with the esteemed Clean 50 Award for her work in Education & Awareness, and is the first recipient of this award for the fashion industry.
Learn more about Fashion Take Action
Taken from the April 2013 collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh. With a death toll of over 1300 people it is not just the greatest disaster in the history of the fashion industry, but the deadliest structural failure in modern history. More than half the victims were women, often with their children in nursery facilities within the factory.
