How do you make people care about the effect of their purchases on the planet? "Start small," says international fashion photographer Charney Magri. She refers to Catwalk to Creation: Part 2 - the second of Magri’s and director Ramzi Moutran docuseries that challenge the belief that susaintable making fashion is a utopian dream.
“We wanted to make them relatively short so they are easy to watch and don’t demand too much of your time," explains Magri. Produced by Do Epic Good, the sustainability arm of advertising agency Do Epic Sh*t, each film is no longer than 20 minutes and follows the reverse journey of transparent sustainable fashion. The second part, for example, includes footage of fashion production factory Lenzing in Austria working with next-gen solution materials and a number of interviews with high profile industry insiders such as Fashion Revolution’s Co-Founder and Creative Director Orsola De Castro, British Fashion Council’s CEO, Caroline Rush CBE, and the founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Dame Ellen MacArthur. "It’s designed to communicate its message in a short period of time, so you can watch it on the tube or train. Ultimately, we want to get into people’s living rooms, to make people ask questions. The more people watch these films and the more they share them - the more curiosity and awareness we raise about the topic," says Magri.
The content is aimed as much at fashion insiders as it is at the public.”No individual is responsible more than the other. Legislators, brands and consumers are equally responsible and we all have to work together to create change,’ says Magri. “Legislators and companies need to use their position of power to educate people and lead the change, while people vote with their wallets, so we need the public to demand for more sustainable products,” says Magri.
For consumers this means making sure that what they’re buying is something that is good quality and something that they really love, rather than an impulse purchase. For designers, it’s ensuring that they create products that last a lifetime, not a season. “Supply and demand needs to change for sustainable clothing to become more accessible,” explains Magri. “And then designers have to be aware of what they’re doing. You have to understand what is available. That’s when you get to know the suppliers really really well. That’s the first barrier to overcome.”
Conversations told through campaign films such as Catwalk to Creation, can help make big shifts within the industry and ensure tragedies of this sort can be prevented, as well as bringing to light the many ways in which the fashion industry can be made more sustainable for both its workers and our planet. “Given almost 63% of textiles are synthetics – meaning oil and plastics – and 83% of our waters contain plastic microfibers with a 1/3 of this is said to come from the fashion industry, the only way we are going to solve issues such as this is by raising awareness, encouraging people to be more curious and ask more questions,” says Magri.
Having received overwhelming success from the industry and the public, Do Epic Good is already working on the third part of the series. Watch this space!
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