Social Experiment: Why No One Will Buy This €2 T-Shirt
Even in Euros, a t-shirt in the price range of only two monetary units sounds like a pretty damn good deal.
So why is no one opting to buy a perfectly wearable shirt that is being sold for the equivalent of $2.23 American? The wonderful group at Fashion Revolution has set out on a mission to answer the question “who made my clothes?” To do this, the group placed a bright turquoise vending machine in the Berlin public square Alexanderplatz which prominently advertised the sale of brand new t-shirts, in all sizes, for only €2.
The one catch: prior to completing the purchase, each prospective buyer had to watch a brief but powerful video that showed them who was behind the creation of the shirt they were about to buy. Check it out: There is so much that we as end consumers do not know about what we purchase. Whether it be because the truth is kept hidden from us, or the truth is something we’d rather not think about, we continue to purchase things with no regard for who or what they could be impacting. What Fashion Revolution’s social experiment depicted is the power in complete transparency, something that ultimately prevented 8 of the 10 groups that interacted with the machine from purchasing the shirt. It’s statistics like this that further motivate me and other alternative media workers to continue to shed light on as many issues as possible, knowing the power of information.
The truth may be hard to swallow, but ignorance only keeps it in place and we all have the ability to play an important part in changing the world. As part of their initiative, Fashion Revolution is encouraging all of us to reach out to our favourite clothing stores and manufacturers to ask “who made my clothes?” Using #whomademyclothes you can make your voice heard across all social media platforms, hopefully encouraging more brands to be completely transparent – a transparency that ultimately could not only help us make more informed decisions but also encourage certain brands to change their current method of production. For more information be sure to check out Fashion Revolution’s Facebook page, and also feel free to donate to their efforts to help build a better future for everyone in the global fashion supply chain.
.
Read the full article at the original website
