Thought for The Day

Last month I was asked to do a Thought For The Day for BBC Radio Humberside. It was a great experience and I hope that those of you that were up at 6.45am on that Friday morning enjoyed it. It was broadcast on November 2nd. For rights reasons I cannot publish the recording but wanted to share the thought with you.

My name is Amisha Ghadiali and I am the Author of The Future We Choose and a Sustainable Fashion Consultant.

We often take where our clothes come from for granted. More and more we are loosing the real story behind what we wear and focusing our excitement on the opportunity of finding a bargain. But at what cost does this come?

Clothes are an important part of our daily life. Yet the global industry that employs one sixth of the world’s population is riddled with issues such as fast fashion, toxic chemical use, forced labour and excessive waste. We have the opportunity to positively affect millions of people’s lives and to protect our environment by how we shop and what we wear.

When buying something new, we can demand that the item was made in good conditions where the workers were treated right. We can make choices about the fabrics that you wear, supporting local materials for example like British Wool, or searching for cotton that is organic, which means grown without harmful pesticides or fair-trade which means the farmers received a fair price for their crop.

Ask the shop or designer what is not on the label such as what it is made from, where it was made and who by. This way you learn about the story of your clothes and if the designer or brand hasn’t thought about it, you are helping change the industry by reminding them to do so.

If you know that your clothes have been made in an ethical and sustainable way, then when somebody compliments you on what you are wearing, you can say ‘Thank You’ with pride knowing that you are contributing to a necessary shift in the way we think about what we wear.