Liz Turner designer from the Mane Project. Image supplied.
Ethical fashion has had a huge rise in popularity recently and for good reasons, we’re now much more aware as consumers that how we shop and who we choose to shop with matters and all of it has an impact. It’s something that designer, Liz Turner, from ethical labels Arc & Bow and Bare Bones is passionate about and has created the Mane Project, ‘Made at no Expense’, a New Zealand owned and operated ethical fashion platform in response to. The aim of the online platform is to raise awareness about what it means to be an ethical designer and consumer in the modern world.
“Today, everyone is busy. Busy keeping up with workplace demands, spending time with family and maintaining some kind of balance between healthy eating and keeping active. We are, naturally, becoming increasingly time poor in all areas of our lives,” says Liz. She says our increasingly fast paced lifestyle has given rise to the global phenomenon known as fast fashion that is responsible for huge amounts of waste and environmental damage. “Fast fashion is terrifying. The rate in which high street labels are manufacturing their products to keep up with consumer wants, not needs, is incredibly damaging to the environment and the people who work ‘behind the scenes’. There is a huge question mark, globally, over the working conditions, rate of pay and provision of basic human rights of those working in the fashion industry, particularly as 90% of our clothes are now made overseas.”
With Mane Project, Liz aims to change people’s perceptions around making conscious consumer decisions, doing so by becoming a safe and trustworthy source of information and ethically manufactured products. Both Arc & Bow and Bare Bones will be housed on the online platform with each brand designed locally and manufactured through ethically certified factories in India, working only with GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified cotton.
“The Mane Project takes us on journey of discovery with our consumers to learn and in turn help educate others about the impacts of mass production and un-ethically manufactured goods on our people and our environment,” she adds. The platform will also explore the many issues arising from existing production practices and encourage consumers to change their shopping habits for good.
You can find Mane Project at their pop-up space until 29th December, 240 Broadway, Newmarket.
Images supplied.