Eligija Rukšytė – Pike & Hurricane

Fast Fashion Industry

Eligija Rukšytė — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 19:16:31 +0000

The “glory” of fashion

Sometimes a big sign that says “SALE” in capital letters blinds us from thinking about what lies beneath the process of making and promoting clothes from big well-known companies that we wear every day.

Well planned marketing strategies

The clothing industry is one where everyone around the world participates every day- whether you wear clothes, buy them, work in a clothing store, a factory which produces them or even as a designer. It has been this way for many years but recently this production went from simply making and selling clothes for everyday wear to a dangerous and manipulating one. This is where the term of Fast Fashion comes along. Worldwide companies, that create inexpensive clothes modified from high end designers, have created an illusion for the average person to have a need to buy new clothes more often than needed.

Big brands went from introducing new clothing items every season to bringing new collections every two weeks. Their marketing campaigns trick us into thinking that we need to have those new clothes in order to fit into society. Commercials broadcast empowering, confident personalities with clothes from certain brands in order to paint the picture that with these clothes you could be the person from the advertisement. Through this, companies play with consumers’ emotions. Everyone is seeking happiness and, according to their model, you can achieve it by simply buying a new T-shirt.

The “affordable prices” that fast fashion endorses make regular consumers believe that they are able to buy more and even enjoy an elite status. But the truth is that it makes people spend excessively and the ones with all the profit are the owners of the companies.

All in order to make profit

The paradox of buying clothes in order to feel better, confident in existing society is that, in reality, the people who make these clothes are not happy at all. A large part of fast fashion clothing is made in low-income countries. A person might often see that majority of garments from brands like ZARA, H&M, Mango, Benetton state on the back of the item that they are made in countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, India. Why do well-known clothing companies produce clothes in countries in which their market is a lot smaller compared to USA or Europe? Wouldn’t it be easier to make them in places where these clothes are actually sold?

Well, the answer to that is simple. For them it is cheaper to outsource production to other countries around the world instead of producing them in the country they are sold. Since low-income countries have low minimum wages, there are unclear collective, labour, child, maternity rights. This serves as an ideal environment for garment production in the textile industry.

Modern slavery

In Bangladesh, eighty percent of clothing factory workers are young women who get paid from 20 to 50 cents per hour. Not only that, some employees get yelled at, or if they are complaining, even beaten. Let’s not forget to mention that employees work in bad condition buildings which often have poor ventilation systems that cause people to inhale chemicals and work in excessive heat. They breathe serious toxins which are used in order to make or die a clothing item.

In addition to already working minimum 10 hours per day, high temperatures make workers more tired and weak. In Cambodia – a country which massively produces garments for fast fashion companies – there are no temperature limits settled that factories have to follow. There have been many reports of people, mostly women, fainting. In this modern textile industry people are exploited as they are treated as slaves. A well known example of poor working conditions is when Rana Plaza, an eight-story commercial building contained clothing factories collapsed in 2013. This incident is considered to be one of the deadliest in the fashion industry. It took away 1134 lives and got approximately 2500 people injured. All of this happened because the building was in critical condition, but no one bothered to do anything about it. Survivors of this tragedy say that they had informed their supervisors about the cracks in the walls several times. In this case production seemed more important than human lives.

Whose fault is this?

Overall, the reality is that this is how fast fashion brands manage to supply new clothes fast and at an affordable price. A study done in 2014 shows that approximately from 60 to 75 million people work in the textile, clothing and footwear sector industry. It is safe to assume that this number is even bigger today. In order to gain the most profit with the lowest cost, companies do not invest into adequate working conditions. On one hand, it could be said that it is good that clothing factories give jobs and opportunities for people to earn money in low-income countries. However, the environment and the salary these workers are receiving is not acceptable. The only reason why governments are not stepping in is because companies relocate production sites to other countries if they make some drastic changes. However, society, by being ignorant and drawn into this circle of constantly buying new items contribute to the fast fashion industry. Even though being mass consumerism is an outcome of well planned marketing campaigns, a person ultimately still has a choice on how he wants to spend his money. The question, then, arises whether we should we blame companies, the government or each one of us.

Let’s try to fix this mess!

As this topic is slowly becoming a discussable issue, new movements, NGOs and private companies are eager to improve the whole clothing industry. Livia Firth is a founder of EcoAge– a consultancy firm that advises clothing brands how to run their businesses in a sustainable way. She is an activist herself who criticizes fast fashion industry as she hopes for justice. In her speeches she blames fast fashion companies stating that if there was no fast fashion, humanity would not have to face environmental issues and people who work in this industry would not be treated as slaves but with the same respect as everyone else. As companies are operating in a capitalist system, their main goal is to make profit and to be compatible among others and they reach their goal through cheap labor.

With people like Livia Firth and NGOs who openly speak about problems arising from extreme consumer capitalism, there is hope that radical consumerism and exploitation of people could be stopped.

by Eligija Ruksyte

Photo Credits

Banksy black friday, John Jones (CC BY-ND 2.0)

L, ZARA (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Trades Union Congress, Rana Plaza disaster anniversary action on Oxford Street (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

2013-07-09 05.26.46, NYU Stern BHR (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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Such a big world and still not enough space to live?

Eligija Rukšytė — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 15:09:26 +0000

‘By 2050 more than two-thirds of the world’s population is projected to be living in urban areas.’- say the United Nations ( UN). They claim that it becomes harder for cities to adapt to growing density and to provide people with living facilities.

Building communities

If you take a look at history, people started living in groups in one place 12 thousand years ago and since then, the number of people living in one area only grew. Desire to live in a sedentistic culture came as people from nomadic pastoralism began growing their own crops and animal husbandry. Several years later some villages turned into towns and bigger cities, some of which eventually became metropolises through increasing industrialisation.

Towards the end of the 17th-Century large manufacturing companies started to appear which required a large work force. That caused people, who wanted to earn money, to move to the cities with their families. To live in urbanized areas also meant quick access to services which were not accessible for people who lived outside the city. Today people move to urbanized areas for similar reasons, industries are still growing, more opportunities can be reached, and most, if not all daily needs are provided for within walking distance.

Apartment in metropolitan area may seem like a privilege

Today, the world’s population is exponentially growing. Not only are there already 7.6 billion people on earth, future predictions state that by 2050 there will be 9.8 billion inhabitants.. The Global Cities Institute at the University of Toronto projects that by then 8 cities in the world will have more than 30 million people living in them. The densest cities are in India, as 3 of the 8 predicted largest cities by population are Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. With that being said, metropolises are struggling to find living space for their excessively, fast growing population. Due to lack of space and high demand, people start living in small apartments with rents still being incredibly high. For example, Hong Kong – one of the most populated cities in the world- is having a hard time coping with this problem. With a population of nearly 7,5 million, it is also one of the most expensive. In other words, even a small apartment is too expensive for most people.

As a result the concept of ‘caged dogs’ appeared. People started to live in cages stacked one next to another in an old building. For this 6 feet long and about 2,5-3 feet wide ‘apartment’ they still have to pay HK$1,500 a year and the government cannot figure out a different solution, as they argue that it is difficult to find more land around the city area which would be appropriate to build living spaces. And this is just one example of many densely populated cities in the world.

Innovative housing approaches

Lack of living space in urban areas is a fast growing problem which gathers municipalities, architects, and private investors to find new ways of housing. One of the options is capsule homes which are gaining popularity in China and Japan. A first example of capsule apartment arrangements called Nakagin Capsule Tower was built in Shimbashi, Tokyo in just 30 days. It is a complete building made out of 140 capsules and each one of them was used as a tiny apartment, office, or a storage space. Today, only a few people live there, but the building constructed in 1972 spread the idea that it is possible to have micro-apartments which look like capsules and now it seems like a realistic future.

Since some urban cities do not have appropriate land to build new apartments, another idea to create housing spaces is to build underground cities. In Beijing, approximately one million people already live underground. However, to live in basements or former bomb shelters is illegal since originally they were not designed for living. Technically it is possible to build living spaces underground since Finland already did that by creating a possible shelter city underneath the city of Helsinki. It is suitable for living, has all necessary facilities, even shopping malls, and a swimming pool.

Growing population in already overpopulated cities is a severe problem which calls for action from the municipality. New housing solutions should be innovative, complex and satisfy the needs of a modern city citizen. If urbanized areas would adapt the idea of building living areas underground, suitable for people’s everyday life, this could help solve housing problems that the biggest cities in the world face today.

by Eligija Rukšytė

Photo Credits

Nakagin Capsule Tower, Dick Thomas Johnson, CC BY 2.0

Crawd, James Cridland, CC BY 2.0

Mumbai Chawls, Adam Cohn, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Information Overload

Eligija Rukšytė — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 15:58:21 +0000

Lying and misinterpretation. These are the things you think of first when you hear the concept of misinformation. However, if you take a different approach it could be said that misinformation does not come from being dishonest, but rather from an excessive amount of information.

Media Expansion

A few decades ago the main sources of information were written papers, radio and television, but over the years, the concept of news has expanded. Now they involve new media creating content and new meanings. Not only is there traditional literacy, but digital too. All information that is present can be digital at any time. People are becoming more involved in creating literacy, which can be a source of information for others.

Since the earlier days when the printing press was the dominant medium, only those who had access to it had the power of the written word, but now most people can spread their ideas freely. Today, organizations, politicians and other important people have social media accounts which gives citizens an opportunity to ask them questions directly, and to complain or share their concerns. Through this new open space of discussion, more opinions are put out without restriction or fact check. Moreover, with visual language being involved even more information is being provided. An infographic from WebDAM states that posts with added gifs, pictures, videos or even emojis get higher engagement than text-only posts. Overall, with the speed of life that society is functioning in nowadays, everyone is a participant of this information culture.

The whole concept of using different methods to communicate and share ideas on the internet has its own definition called netspeak. Cambridge Dictionary describes netspeak as “the words, abbreviations, etc. that people use when communicating on the internet”. With the help of new media technologies, there are more and more people who create literate content on social media, blogs, chats, comments, and articles every day.

How do we select useful information?

All the information we consume comes from various sources and in different forms and with even more comments and ideas attached to them. Back in 1990, Professors Michael McKenna and Richard Robinson introduced a concept of Content Literacy, which means the ‘ability to use reading and writing for the acquisition of new content in a given discipline’. This skill allows to provide material for the world daily. A study done by Dr. Martin Hilbert and his team at the University of Southern California shows that now, with 24-hour television, internet, and mobile phones, we receive five times more information every day than in 1986. Due to this, people could get easily misled. The only way not to get caught up with this information madness is to be knowledgeable about it.

Paul Gilster, the author of the book “Digital Literacy”, has said in an interview that digital literacy must be more than the ability to use digital sources effectively; it is a special kind of mindset or thinking. Literacy affected by new media could have multiple meanings behind it. Now that literacy also involves visual aspects, there are endless possibilities to understand text. People can interpret content transferred through technologies (TV, films, magazines, newspapers, games, internet, mobile phones, etc.) however they want to.

It can be hard to keep up with all information if we do not choose to analyze what we read. Political parties or high profile politicians usually use the help of professional writers to make their official statements, while some make ordinary post on social media. That way, after you read it or hear it, you might think the way it was purposely intended for you to think. Thus, it is really important to identify what information people can be relying on, otherwise choices could be influenced by the authorities. Over the years, the same concept of content literacy has changed and Professor Barbara Moss describes it as ‘Content area literacy is a cognitive and social practice involving the ability and desire to read, comprehend, critique and write about multiple forms of print ’. Therefore, content literacy is the ability to create information, but also a knowledge of how to find different meanings, intentions behind it which is a way to select useful material and not to get caught up with too much information.

Digital natives and digital immigrants

This digital era, which brings us a massive amount of information daily, is not new for everyone. Digital natives, or people who were born in an age of technology, are already closely familiar with new media and digital literacy. They are already able to use different media channels, create content, understand meanings behind different text and has skills on writing in digital world. However, there are digital immigrants to whom all these new ways of viewing content was brought up as they were older, which means they are still adapting, learning to have essential skills in order to create the right content or select useful information. Since more people are born in the technology world, the generation gap between these groups is decreasing.

Since new ways of receiving information are created every day, for new generations, it could still become difficult to stay updated. As a result, there is a possibility to have a big generation gap which prevents technologies from developing and that would stop new media and literacy from processing, because new mediums would not be created. In a case like this, misinformation could develop another concept which comes from the generation gap.

Mastering the (Mis)Information Overload

Information and the audience who are reacting to it, are a powerful tool which can change opinions or even actions. This means that with this big amount of content that we receive daily it is essential to be digitally literate and to understand news your own way. In order to progress and to be more open to the world, we should not be trying to stop ourselves from receiving information but rather gain abilities to recognize different meanings and intentions behind it. Misinformation or information overload only happens when certain knowledge, skills are not applied.

By Eligija Rukšytė

Pictures

by Freepik

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