Beatrace Angut Lorika Oola

This moderated talk discusses fashion’s entanglements in multiple systems of exploitation, and addresses possible orientations to begin undoing these harms.

Our clothes wrap us into larger systems of power and oppression, but they can also be garments for liberation. From sourcing and manufacturing to exporting waste, our clothes are a product of land and labor. Their fabrication relies on an underpaid and undervalued workforce, usually in so-called “fashion sacrifice zones” in the Global South. There, primarily women face dangerous working conditions to sustain a chain of profit accumulation from which they will never benefit. Back in the Global North, clothes are worn for a brief period before moving into a global resale market entangled in “waste colonialism.”