Showing posts with label fair trade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fair trade. Show all posts

Saturday, October 1, 2011

5x5 Clothing: No Exploitation, All Party

RARA
5x5 Clothing


5x5 Clothing does not steal babies, pillage and/or pilfer, or exploit garment workers. 


We employ seamstresses working out of their own homes for fair wages.


Not to down on anyone's party or be a neg-vibe naysayer, but the modern garment industry, especially in Asia, is a hellish choice for mostly poor women trying to survive and support their families. 


Here is a picture of skulls from the killing fields in Cambodia, a genocide instituted by the maniacal Pol Pot in the 1970s.  Afterwards, Cambodia went through decades of strife and reform, eventually stabilizing and becoming one of the centres of the modern garment manufacturing industry.  


Even though the International Labour Organization has said that its routine checks of Cambodian garment factories ensure the rights of these workers, recent mass sickness at H&M factories in the country have left many skeptical.  


Road in Cambodia leading to the garment factories


Here in Thailand, hundreds of thousands of people from Burma flood into Thailand looking for work opportunities that simply don't exist in their country that has been fucked up by successive generations of military junta, including economic mismanagement and a war waged against the ethnic minority peoples.  
Where do they end up? In the garment factories on the border, working 11 hour days for 2$, locked up, with their ID confiscated by factory owners, modern-day slavery.  


Big name fashion labels, such as Tommy Hilfiger, have been caught using these factories under false company names, only to shut down operations and open up at other nearby plants.


My friend has been involved in investigating these factories; factories are locked up from public view, looking more like jails than factories, security guards keeping people out, and often, also keeping workers in.  


Grooooooooan, right? Ok Ok, you've heard it before, so have I.


So let's talk about something nice: 


5x5 Clothing is big on limited runs that enable us to use home-based seamstresses and give them fair wages that are exponentially more than they'd earn in a factory, and even more than they'd earn as a typical home-based seamstress.  All clothes are cut and sewed by hand, using end of the roll and vintage fabrics.  


Now that is something good!  Party in your 5x5!


p.s for more info on the modern garment industry read this 

Thursday, March 3, 2011

5x5: Who Made Your Clothes?

RA RA

Globalized economy.  WTO. Free Trade Agreements.  This is our world system.

Maybe 50 years ago, your clothes would have been manufactured in your country, but now, more often than not, all aspects of your daily babe-piece have come from all reaches of our tiny globe.

Ok, this is a reality.  But lost in the web of transnational corps and world trade bodies are the real people.

Who made your clothes?  

You probably have absolutely no idea.  And sad but true, the country with the poorest human rights protection wins the manufacturing contract.  Don't think conditions akin to slave labour are a thing of the past!

So 5x5, wtf are you gonna do about it?

Introducing (drum roll pls!)...... Pi Tan!!  Real Seamstress Extraordinare!

Quiet, with an at-times biting sense of humour, Pi Tan supports her family with her small seamstress business.  

She's now an expert on fit for foreigners (we have ass n' titties!) but still likes to point at my crotch and ask me if I'm sure it's not going to fall out of my really short shorts (!)

So who made your clothes?

PI TAN!!!  

55x is big on real people and small exclusive runs for you!