WEBVTT

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-- such a broad spectrum of opinion here,

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and you know all about
things like quantum physics

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and tech, and stuff like that,
I'm not speaking to a normal crowd

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of fashionistas -- I don't know,
maybe some of you are fashionistas --

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but I talk to you and
I do fashion by numbers.

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I'm saying fashion by numbers,
not the numbers,

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which I think
is more grammatically correct.

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Now, I'm going to talk to you about
fashion by numbers,

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because I love fashion
and I love style,

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and I think there's lots
of really absorbing things

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about the industry and about the idea
of expressing ourselves through clothes,

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but there are also some issues,
which we will get to in a minute,

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and I think some of the numbers are just
gigantic and they're quite illuminating.

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So, the first statistic,
when I was doing a lot of research

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on the contemporary fashion industry,
was one that I had to estimate

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by putting together
lots of different research.

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And I figured out that there are
about 80 billion new garments

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that are created every year.

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Some of you, like me, might feel that
most of those end up in your wardrobe,

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it depends how avaricious
a buyer you are.

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Some people might feel
that they all end up

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in your laundry basket,
which I also feel,

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having to do my family's laundry.

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So, that's an estimated number
of new garments

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produced worldwide every year.

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Now the weird thing is
that we still end up

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with 2 million tonnes of textiles,
mainly apparel, in landfill every year.

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So, we're slinging them away
almost as quickly as we can buy them.

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Which points to a certain disposability,

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a certain throwaway culture,
in fashion.

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19 is the number of jeans
that I found in my own wardrobe,

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when I did an inventory of my wardrobe.

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And I would recommend to anybody
that you do an inventory of your wardrobe,

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because it's
really, really illuminating.

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even if you think that
you're not a fashion addict,

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you're not a fashion victim,

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you will be surprised at
how many duplicates you have.

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So, I have 19 pairs of jeans
and that's significant

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because -- not because 19
is my lucky number,

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but it is, that's not why I bought them --

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I didn't realize I had 19, because I
just kept consuming without realizing,

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and when I thought about it,
the environmental footprint

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of fashion is absolutely enormous.

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So, for example, it takes between
11,000 and 20,000 litres of water

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to produce enough cotton
for a single pair of jeans.

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And then I started to look at
the impact of fashion generally.

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Now, fashion is a full spectrum industry,

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and with the exception
of the food industry,

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and perhaps the energy industry,
it's hard to think of any other sector

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that owes quite as much
to the planet as fashion does.

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We're all a nation of fashion addicts,
that's how we've become,

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and that's been enabled really
over the last twenty years

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by a phenomenon known as fast fashion.

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Now, sometimes,
it's quite difficult to imagine

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how people got dressed 20 years ago,

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before fast fashion really kicked in,
but we know they did,

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but did they all just wear
the same pair of Dralon flares?

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How did they actually manage it?

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Because what we've done is
we've developed a whole new system

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of getting dressed,
which revolves around

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very, very quick microtrends
that can very quickly translate

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from the catwalk into our wardrobes
and onto the high street.

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And the UK is
one of the world leaders in this trend.

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We have some of the biggest retailers,
some of the biggest brands,

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and it has to be said,
that we interpret fast fashion

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quite successfully.

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So, we think about how fashion
actually presents itself.

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What it doesn't really do, is tell you

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how much it's changed
over the last 20 years.

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So, there will be people here
who've never known anything else.

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Lucky them, because
they're nice and young,

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but, there has been
a completely revolutionized system

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to the way apparel
is produced and sold.

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But we really don't get this idea
from the fashion weeks that we have.

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It presents a very traditional face.
So, we have the two seasons,

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we have autumn/winter
and spring/summer,

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and then these are when we trickle
things down from the catwalk into store,

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and they set the trend
of what we're going to be wearing.

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In actual fact, those seasons
have got as much in common

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with the contemporary fashion industry

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as Gregorian plainsong has with the
contemporary music industry.

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Absolutely nothing to do with it.

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What really happens
is that we're now looking at,

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rather than two or four seasons a year,
we're really looking at 52 seasons a year.

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Every week there are new styles,
there is new stock in shops,

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new stock online, and it's become
a very, very quick process.

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Some people would call it a churn.

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Now, when I look at the bright young hopes
of British fashion,

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and we see these brilliant designers
have got something.

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Up here we've got Alice Temperley,
we've got Jonathan Saunders,

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Roksanda Ilincic.

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So, these are great names,
great hopes for the future.

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And then we hear about the people

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who basically succeed
to the big luxury conglomerates

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and take over those brands.

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And these are big, big names,
going out there

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into this multi-billion pound sector

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and representing British style.
But often I think,

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'Will they be OK?'
Because, actually, it's not just

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fast fashion or high street fashion
that's become super fast,

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but also the luxury industry.

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This is the way
that we really, really shop;

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we shop in a mob, we shop in bulk
and we buy very cheap.

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Now, one of the things
I really like to do

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is to hang around outside shops,
maybe not as crowded as this,

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and actually go through people's bags,
with their consent,

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as they come out -- I do ask first --
and it's amazing

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how many people buy in bulk
and buy duplicates these days.

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And one of my favourite observations,

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although it does not say
particularly good things,

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is that a colleague of mine was watching
outside Primark one day,

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or just kind of loitering nearby,

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and a girl came out
with four of these bags.

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Now, it could have happened
in lots of different stores,

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but Primark use these paper bags,
and it was raining,

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it was really, really raining,
the bag got completely soaked,

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while she was waiting for a bus,
or whatever, and it fell apart.

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And she just left these clothes,
these brand new clothes,

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she just left them on the pavement
and walked off.

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Now, my contention is that if we produce,
if we design for landfill,

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if we produce clothes that are
effectively disposable,

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we will all start to treat them
like litter.

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Now, I'm not saying that this also
happens for luxury goods,

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because I think if you're spending
a grand on a handbag,

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you're probably going to be
a little bit more careful,

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but the same cycle and the same churn

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is starting to happen
throughout the fashion landscape.

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So, effectively,
these designers that we saw,

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those shiny-faced, hopeful, big prospects
of British fashion

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and all round the world in fact,
actually are in a similar churn.

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So, they're not just doing 
the autumn/winter, the spring/summer,

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they're also having to work
on pre-fall/fall collections,

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resort-wear, yacht-wear,

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getting on a yacht, getting off a yacht,
post-yacht, pre-yacht,

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who are all these people
that they are designing for?

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Who has all these yachts?

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(Laughter)

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So, let's just unravel fast fashion
just a little bit.

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So, there are some very good points
about fast fashion by the way.

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First of all, it breeds life into
a rather stagnant British high street.

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Those of you who are
old enough to remember

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will remember there was
a certain lack of choice,

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a certain sort of look
that the high street had,

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maybe 20-25 years ago, which wasn't
that appealing, wasn't that aspirational.

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So, the high street brands
have really democratized style,

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you're able to get hold of it.

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I remember moving to London
and coming back to the North West,

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and people used to come up to me and say,
'Oh, did you get that in London?'

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I mean that doesn't happen now,
it happens in the reverse.

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You know, that's how democratize
style has become.

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So, 814 million garments a year,

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this is also an estimate, are produced
by Zara/Inditex, the Spanish brand.

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That's a lot of clothes.

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And they have 45,000 designs,
so their designers

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are constantly coming up with trends,
every single year.

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Not all of those will get into store,
but a large proportion of them will,

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which shows you where this engine
is coming from, all these micro-trends.

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When Zara started in the UK,
nobody understood it,

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because you'd go in there,
and the consumer would say,

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'Well, this is nice,
maybe a little bit expensive.'

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And then they'll say,
'I'll think about it, I'll come back.'

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They'll come back
and it wouldn't be there,

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because shops these days don't re-stock,
they don't need to,

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because they've moved
on to the next trend.

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If you blink, you miss it.

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Number 3 -- I'm still doing
the fashion in numbers thing.

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This is the position of Amancio Ortega
who owns Zara,

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on the international rich list.
He's the 3rd richest man in the world.

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There's a lot of money
in this fast fashion business.

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Here's Philip Green, maybe this is where
all the resort yacht wear is going to,

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because he has a yacht.

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And this is the little picture
of a village, somewhere in England,

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a whole village, that has been bought
by Stefan Persson,

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who is the CEO of H&M.

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So, that gives you some idea of the riches
that we're talking about.

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I mention that, not because it's illegal
to make money, because it's not,

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but just to show you
a little bit of disparity,

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because who is the real engine
of this fashion churn, this fashion cycle?

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It happens in Bangladesh.

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It happens in other countries too,
but Bangladesh, 80% of the GDP

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is constituted by
the ready-made garment industry,

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and that's the equivalent of $20 billion.

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So, when we talk
about problems there,

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it is not feasible for companies to cut
and run, because, as you can see,

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that economy is dependent on this trade.

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Now, I put this in, because there was
a recent power list of fashion,

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and I counted 4 muses in the top 30.

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Now, I'm not really sure
what a muse does,

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but there were four muses and there was
no mention of the people

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that actually make the clothes,

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which I thought was
really, really interesting,

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and I think this really shines a light
on a problem in the whole industry.

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So, there's 101 processes
to making a garment.

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Just 6 to 8 of those are done
in factories like the ones in Bangladesh.

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And these are basically
what the cut, make and trim army do.

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And by conservative estimate,
there's 3 million, mainly young women,

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who work in this cut, make and trim army,

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and these are the core part
of the supply chain,

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when they're actually
putting the piece together.

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These are vast factories,
vast, vast production lines.

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Now, 48.5 seconds is the time
that it's estimated it should take

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one of the people on this production stage
to actually sew a seam.

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It's relentless, relentless work.
This is a quote from Ali Hewson,

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who set up the EDUN brand,
'We carry the story of the people

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who make our clothes around with us.'

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And we do,
but we don't acknowledge it,

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which is why I showed
that picture of the muse

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and I point to that power list.

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These are the unseen, the hidden people
in the supply chain.

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5,600 -- that's the number
of garment factories

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that Bangladesh has,
mainly centred around Dhaka.

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At last count,
when this report came out,

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there were less than 200 inspectors --

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I think that should be fewer,
but I'm just being pedantic.

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Now, in 1911 we have the biggest tragedy
in the garment sector to date.

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And that was the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire;

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and that was
in New York's garment district.

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146 people died in 18 minutes,
and this was the worst disaster

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that we'd ever seen in this sector.

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And that prompted,
not a revolution,

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but a lot of picketing,
a big labour movement,

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and it's still acknowledged.

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Every year on the anniversary,

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people will go and acknowledge,
the trade unions will acknowledge,

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that that disaster happened.

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And what really struck me was
that we never acknowledge.

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There were lots and lots of factory deaths
and fire deaths and stampedes

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in factories, lots of fatalities,
that were happening in the supply chain.

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Probably one or two a month
that we learn about through our era,

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and we never really said
anything about it.

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But this number, we can't really
make it go away, and we can't ignore.

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This is 1,133 -- which is the number
of people who died on the 24th April

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at Rana Plaza.

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Rana Plaza basically collapsed like
a house of cards.

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There were 2,000 people working in it,
it was a mixed-use complex,

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but, it was the garment workers that died,

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because the garment workers were
the only workers that were sent back in,

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and unfortunately that is a common story,
the garment workers are always in there.

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These images are probably not unfamiliar,
because they were broadcast

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around the world, and, for the first time,
we had news agencies

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actually interviewing
these garment workers,

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and actually getting their testimonies.

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The difference was that
they were actually under rubble.

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So, they're the statistics, well,
the bold statistics,

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2,500 injured, 700 children left,

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and the Rana Plaza battle
for compensation continues.

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But it did make a stink. Who makes
our clothes? Where do they come from?

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It's not the only thing
in the supply chain.

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This is just about
Uzbekistan's cotton industry;

00:14:17.940 --> 00:14:22.545
1.5 million children, who are alleged
to be involved in the harvest.

00:14:22.545 --> 00:14:24.334
And this happens every year.

00:14:24.334 --> 00:14:26.891
They're sent out into the fields
around September time,

00:14:26.891 --> 00:14:32.940
and they will pick the harvest, which is
then sold in the international market.

00:14:32.940 --> 00:14:35.742
And this is Gulnara,
this is the dictator's daughter,

00:14:35.742 --> 00:14:38.294
and I put this in,
because this is her at fashion week

00:14:38.294 --> 00:14:39.705
showing her own collection.

00:14:39.705 --> 00:14:41.771
So, you see this terrible dichotomy,

00:14:41.771 --> 00:14:47.104
of how we're hiding this kind
of slave labour in the fashion industry.

00:14:47.104 --> 00:14:50.041
Can we do it better?
Yes, we can.

00:14:50.041 --> 00:14:53.320
Now, I think
the whole sustainable style movement

00:14:53.320 --> 00:14:57.444
has been slightly typified, and held back,
because people fear tie-dye.

00:14:57.444 --> 00:14:59.403
They fear that we're going to have to wear

00:14:59.403 --> 00:15:02.155
this kind of
knit-your-own tofu hat aesthetic,

00:15:02.155 --> 00:15:04.179
and they're really, really not up for it.

00:15:04.179 --> 00:15:06.707
So, what I did was get together
with some friends,

00:15:06.707 --> 00:15:09.801
and we launched something,
we didn't call it granola chic,

00:15:09.801 --> 00:15:12.725
we called it the Green Carpet Challenge.

00:15:12.725 --> 00:15:15.654
Now, we're just trying
to play around with some ideas.

00:15:15.654 --> 00:15:19.027
I love this. This is a photograph 
by a seminal fashion photographer

00:15:19.027 --> 00:15:20.524
called Lillian Bassman.

00:15:20.524 --> 00:15:23.261
And she didn't mean anything
sustainable when she did it,

00:15:23.261 --> 00:15:26.043
but I love the idea of
more fashion mileage per dress.

00:15:26.043 --> 00:15:29.552
So, here's another figure I'd love you
to remember, which is 30.

00:15:29.552 --> 00:15:32.838
Don't buy anything unless
you can guarantee to yourself

00:15:32.838 --> 00:15:37.941
that you're going to wear it 30 times.
That's a really good marker.

00:15:37.941 --> 00:15:39.922
So, we started the Green Carpet Challenge,

00:15:39.922 --> 00:15:44.283
and we charged designers with
making us something sustainable.

00:15:44.283 --> 00:15:46.498
This is an Armani dress.

00:15:46.498 --> 00:15:51.319
And 40, that's the number of A-Listers
that we've sent down red carpets

00:15:51.319 --> 00:15:53.805
from the Oscars, to the Globes,
to the whatever

00:15:53.805 --> 00:15:55.667
all in these sustainable outfits.

00:15:55.667 --> 00:15:58.685
We wanted to prove
to the fashion industry, to the editors,

00:15:58.685 --> 00:16:00.859
to everybody watching,
that it could be done,

00:16:00.859 --> 00:16:04.544
and it could be desirable.

00:16:04.544 --> 00:16:08.428
There's more of them.

00:16:08.428 --> 00:16:10.402
And we wanted to work
in the supply chain,

00:16:10.402 --> 00:16:13.460
so, we started looking at things
like the leather chain.

00:16:13.460 --> 00:16:16.455
11 billion pairs of shoes
are made every year.

00:16:16.455 --> 00:16:19.439
60% of the leather goes to shoes.

00:16:19.439 --> 00:16:22.327
Now, when you see a shoe
and it says made in Italy,

00:16:22.327 --> 00:16:25.686
you think, 'OK, great.'
And then you ask the people in the shop,

00:16:25.686 --> 00:16:27.785
and they say,
'Yeah, the leather's Italian.'

00:16:27.785 --> 00:16:31.451
It can't be, because if it were, the whole
of Italy would be covered in cows.

00:16:31.451 --> 00:16:34.126
There'd be cows round the Trevi Fountain,
it can't be.

00:16:34.126 --> 00:16:36.724
No, they're often from Brazil or China,

00:16:36.724 --> 00:16:40.095
and in Brazil,
deforestation is being driven

00:16:40.095 --> 00:16:41.765
by the meat and leather industry.

00:16:41.765 --> 00:16:44.809
So, we wanted to make a market
for clean leather.

00:16:44.809 --> 00:16:48.885
Leather that we could prove
was zero deforestation.

00:16:48.885 --> 00:16:51.490
So, we went to Gucci,
who came up with this little bag,

00:16:51.490 --> 00:16:53.663
and I don't think
this looks sustainable at all.

00:16:53.663 --> 00:16:56.361
It's not made of hemp,
it's not very granola,

00:16:56.361 --> 00:16:58.438
it just looks like a bag.

00:17:00.099 --> 00:17:04.709
100+ companies have now signed
the Bangladesh Fire Safety Accord.

00:17:04.709 --> 00:17:07.886
Now, I'm not going to explain why,
because I'm running out of time,

00:17:07.886 --> 00:17:10.594
but it is, I think,
a very, very important marker,

00:17:10.594 --> 00:17:14.317
and I think, given time, it could make
a real, real difference.

00:17:14.317 --> 00:17:16.883
What I would urge you to do
is keep an eye,

00:17:16.883 --> 00:17:19.300
just keep abreast
of what's happening in fashion,

00:17:19.300 --> 00:17:24.866
and where you buy and who signed what;
it's really, really important.

00:17:24.866 --> 00:17:27.810
2p, add that onto a £6 T-shirt,

00:17:27.810 --> 00:17:31.766
that would double the wages
of a garment worker in Bangladesh.

00:17:31.766 --> 00:17:34.551
Now, I think that's a cost
that we can probably absorb.

00:17:34.551 --> 00:17:37.430
24th April, that's the other date
I want you to remember.

00:17:37.430 --> 00:17:40.992
24, remember that number,
it's the anniversary

00:17:40.992 --> 00:17:45.210
of Rana Plaza,
and it's Fashion Revolution Day.

00:17:45.215 --> 00:17:46.938
Thank you.

00:17:46.938 --> 00:17:50.334
(Applause)