It's a good time to call the Industry out

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I was recently talking with a fellow fashion industry co-worker about design office horror stories and they had the idea to start a hashtag to get some awareness on the issues.

Reading through the horror stories shared here on Schmatte, and finding too many of them relatable I agree that our industry has got to change! A hashtag won’t solve everything but it can’t hurt to start bringing awareness to our plight, especially during this odd year when things are at a low, and people have more time to focus on important issues than ever before.

It’s wonderful that consumers are becoming more conscious about which brands treat their factory workers right, but imagine if consumers held brands accountable for how they treated their employees in their design offices and showrooms as well?

If you feel comfortable, please share some of your fashion industry horror stories online with the tag #UglySideOfFashion . They set up a twitter account to retweet any stories shared on that platform but please share on what ever platforms you prefer.

(If you share on social, just be mindful about using your real name or mentioning the company’s name. Don’t say anything that would prevent you from getting hired in the future.)

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I think it would be cool to also create it as an instagram account where people can post and share their stories anonymously. Some people might not want to publicly bitch about the companies they’ve worked at.

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That’s a good idea and true. My friend doesn’t want to manage an Insta account for it but if anyone else reading this is up to the task, the more people the better! We don’t mind if anyone else wants to take charge.

Also, since this is a generally anonymous forum, if anyone wants to DM me their anonymous stories here, I’ll pass them along to the UglySideofFashion twitter account holder to post.

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Twitter is good but for fashion I recommend an Insta or tik tok account. More likely to get picked up in the feeds and read. Especially with @diet_prada outing the bad guys.

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I have seen someone do this with the film industry and I thought it was very telling. Seems like it would be a good start to lead to change, especially a Tik Tok account. I was just talking with my friend about how because this is something that a lot of people want to do, especially young people it can and unfortunately has lead to exploitation in all fields of design.

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