TO DEFASHION

 

Friends, do you see de-Fashion as reduction

frustration, disappointment, no satisfaction

‘tightening a belt’ that already feels too tight?

For a feel good future, it just doesn’t seem right.

 

I beg of you to change your lens

to see beyond enticing brands

to the industry failing to meet your demands

hurting us all, then turning a blind eye

seducing, brainwashing, only to deny

hiding behind a succession of styles

contributing to waste for miles ….and miles

sacrificing us all when we buy in

to seasons, sales and ‘professional’ design

to hate our bodies, lose touch with our community

with our sheep and our flax and our creative capacity

offered freely by nature; erased with impunity.

 

The top of the curve is our lowest point.

 

Humanity flattened by the consumer role,

dress of the other eroded, to say naught of our soul.

The awful potential of the exponential.

For a fistful of money, dominance and control

civilizations implode and climates boil

trapped by debt millions sweat and toil.

Industrial Fashion: you are toxic

to all that walks swims flies and thinks.

Carbon sinks are of no avail

if your coloniality will prevail.

Fashion mirror in our dress

reflecting sadly who we have come to be

though kindliness is what we want to see:

regeneration, reparation, sustainability

a healthy world, not our current distress.

 

The top of the curve is our lowest point.

 

Dear friends, we are gathered here to de-Fashion

education and the entire system, to reweave

healing in our clothes, community in every stitch

repairing the tears of sacrifice, mending, re-using

microfibres of hope in our heart relearning

the art of universal fashion: to refuse exploitation

 

When we fail to give the other room we prepare our own doom.

Here, dear friends, in Berlin

we embrace all as family

and only thus reclaim our humanity.

 

The top of the curve is our lowest point

whence we embark on de-Fashion.

Let us here, now, be the point of inflection

marking the start of the Great Resuscitation.

(recited at the De-Fashioning Education Conference, Berlin 15 September)