After being away for two years from London, I’ve been missing Fashion Week. I miss the hours in the backstage: everyone rushing around, the quick changes of dresses, the models sitting still while five hair and make-up artist work on them. I miss the feeling of excitement before a show, when the lights go down and you are in the pit waiting with your camera ready.
Suddenly, the music explodes, the lights blind you for a moment and the magic starts to happen.
Fashion show I’ve been wondering about the fashion industry in Belgium since I got here four months ago. The stories of the big the textile industry during the industrial revolution always appealed to me. But how is it now?
Arriving at the Fair Fashion Festival in Gent, I immediately went to the backstage of the upcoming fashion show. It was quiet. While some technicians were testing the lights and sound, the models were doing their hair and make up. Everything was relaxed and peaceful. A big contrast with what I am used to. People started to enter and the models were getting in their positions.
I didn’t feel the sparkle of the catwalk like I used to, but it still was quite a pleasant excitement.
Back to nature There were workshops on how to pimp your old clothes, how to make badges and how to weave with paper. The most impressive workshop was about ecological printing on fabrics using plants. With putting some leaves in between a fabric, pressing it and then putting the fabric in a bath with iron, you imprint the shapes of the leaves on the fabric.
The fabric can be washed with water and basic soap but not with modern chemicals, otherwise the imprint will disappear. This reminded me again about the real intent of the day.
What am I buying? Rabeya showed the audience how the rivers of Bangladesh are extremely polluted. The water isn’t even potable, the people have to fight for the water. One of the main causes of this pollution is the textile industry.
She asked: “would the solution be to stop the production of textiles?” She broke the silence herself by saying: “No, this isn’t the solution. In fact, the production of textiles is a tradition for Bangladesh and the only change we need is in the mentality of people. It’s necessary that everyone thinks about what it is they buy, how it’s being produced and in which conditions the people that produced it had to work.”
The Fair Fashion Festival shows how fashion needs to take a new position in the industry, and how we need new ways to think about our clothes and how we buy them.