The Clothes We Wear - CAL launches fashion film at major Leeds event

This Thursday, Climate Action Leeds will press play on a film which neatly draws connections between clothes, our choices, and a theory for a good life which doesn't damage the planet.

The script for The Clothes We Wear was written by CAL's Doughnut Economics Lead, Jenni Brooks, while it was was designed and produced by Jon Dorsett.

The first screening will take place at 1.50 pm on Thursday at Leeds Beckett University's TKE Building. It will run as part of International Circular Fashion Week, an event organised by award-winning Leeds-based designer and activist Andrea Benahmed Djilali.

You can find full details of the week, and links to grab tickets, here. Students go free and there are pay-as-you-feel tickets available, too.

This film was produced as part of Climate Action Leeds’ ongoing motivation to relate global justice issues to individual and collective action.

Thanks to Peg Alexander, Paul Chatterton, Stella Darby, Rob Greenland, Yosola Olajoye, Sue Rainton, Martina Ricci, Josefin Wanner, and Goodness Whitehead for their contributions.

Please see below for loads of thought-provoking information on fashion, fairness, and the future of the planet.

Information and campaigns about the clothing industry - general

Fashion Revolution is an organisation campaigning for a clean, safe, fair, transparent, and accountable fashion industry, and for a global fashion industry that conserves and restores the environment and values people over growth and profit. They produce an annual report reviewing and ranking hundreds of the world’s largest fashion brands and retailers according to the information they disclose about the social and environmental policies, practices, and impacts in their operations and supply chain.

Better Cotton is a leading sustainability initiative for cotton, with a mission to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment.

Action Aid is an international organisation that works with women and girls living in poverty and campaigns on women’s rights in the labour market.

Greenpeace is a leading global campaigning organisation that has conducted research investigations into fashion, textiles, and their human and environmental impacts, e.g.

Fashion greenwash: how companies are hiding the true environmental costs of fast fashion - Greenpeace UK  How fast fashion fuels climate change, pollution and violence - Greenpeace UK

Sustainable fashion: how to build an ethical wardrobe - Greenpeace UK

Oxfam has carried out research into the impact of the textile industry 

Oxfam GB | New Shocking Facts about the Impact of Fast Fashion on our Climate

Sustainable and Circular Practices Report | Leeds Institute of Textiles and Colour (LITAC) This report from the Leeds Institute of Textiles and Colour examines approaches to sustainability and circularity in the UK fashion and textile industry. It explores how UK companies are developing sustainable and circular practices, including their response to regulatory change associated with green growth. These findings will help inform national strategy on circularity and sustainability in fashion, textiles and technology.

Buy less stuff - RGS 39 Ways to Save the Planet is a BBC Radio 4 radio series developed in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society and broadcast in 2021. It showcases 39 ideas to relieve the stress that climate change is placing on the Earth. This episode tackles clothing.

Clean Clothes Campaign is a network of over 200 organisations across 45+ countries. It connects actors across the garment and sportswear industry, linking home-based worker organisations, grassroots unions, women's organisations and trade unions, to labour rights and feminist organisations, CSOs and activists in both garment-producing and consumer market countries.

Information about what’s happening in Leeds

We know there's so much happening in Leeds and this is just a snapshot - get in touch to tell us about your clothing or fashion project! hello@climateactionleeds.org.uk

Zero Waste Leeds is a local movement to make Leeds a zero-waste city by 2030. Projects include school uniform exchange, sports kit and clothing exchange, and a winter coats appeal. 

Trad Collective is a sustainable clothing and lifestyle shop on Vicar Lane selling pre-loved, upcycled, and ethically made items as well as offering tailoring, mending, and alterations services and workshops.

Leeds Fashion Futures: Regenerating fashion from place - The RSA was a Royal Society project that worked with Zero Waste Leeds and local citizens, authorities, civil society and businesses to explore how Leeds, a city with a deep history of pioneering innovations in fashion and textiles, could continue this pattern and be a leading force for change towards a more regenerative future for clothing.

There are many local groups that can help to repair and repurpose clothes, or with learning skills. Local community centres are a good starting point. Clothing Rebellion in Gipton is a great example.

Leeds Community Clothes Exchange is a not-for-profit unincorporated association run by volunteers. It is a community project encouraging the exchange of clothes and accessories to develop community spirit, reduce consumption, and raise awareness of unethical consumer habits.

Clothes Swap - Horsforth Climate Action Horsforth Climate Action holds a regular clothes swap - check out their website to find details of upcoming events.

Sustainable Fashion BA | University of Leeds University of Leeds offers a degree course to explore the cultural, social and industrial factors which shape the fashion sector now, and what sustainability in fashion can mean in the future. Through a multidisciplinary approach to teaching, students explore the complex system that is fashion to identify the environmental and social challenges fashion faces from the perspective of consumers, workers, business, and the planet.

The Sustainable Threads research project explores the complexity of sustainability and fashion from the perspective of the workers who make the clothes we wear. These clothes create intimate connections between consumers and the 400 million workers in the fashion industry’s global supply chains. This project aims to illuminate these connections and to cross the geographical and cultural divide between textile workers in India and UK consumers, to facilitate debates and discussions about what sustainable fashion means for UK consumers and for workers in the supply chain.

Leeds Craftivists are a community of creatives passionate about changing the world for the better. They believe that if we’re hoping to build a kinder, more gentle world, then our actions must be kind and gentle too.

Information about Doughnut Economics and the Leeds Doughnut

Doughnut Economics is an idea developed by Kate Raworth and set out in her book of 2017. 

The Doughnut Economics Action Lab provides open access tools, materials and support for people around the world transforming the ideas into action.  

Leeds Doughnut | Towards a safe and thriving Leeds Climate Action Leeds and the Leeds Doughnut Coalition work with the Doughnut Economics framing to help Leeds become a zero carbon, nature friendly, socially just city. This work includes a report assessing the city against a range of global and local, environmental and social dimensions.

Here's an example of a local Leeds event about doughnut economics and clothing. 

Here's Kate Raworth discussing Doughnut Economics on the popular podcast The Rest is Politics