Zerofee. Good Thinking:

Besides their pres­ence on the high­streets of Lon­don and Brighton, TRAID extend their mis­sion to edu­cate on the sub­jects of world poverty and the envi­ron­ment to sec­ondary schools. The ses­sions, deliv­ered in per­son by TRAID, have proven very pop­u­lar and help to get young peo­ple to think about the impact of their fash­ion and recy­cling choices on the world at large. How­ever, with over 3200 sec­ondary schools in the UK, it’s impos­si­ble for TRAID to attend every class­room. To meet the demand for their lessons and activ­i­ties, we’ve helped them cre­ate ‘Behind the Seams’, an edu­ca­tion pack which pro­vides the infor­ma­tion and struc­ture to enable teach­ers to deliver the same insights and mes­sages of sustainability.

The pack, pro­duced almost entirely with recy­cled and/or sustainably-sourced mate­ri­als (right down to the Cel­logreen, a com­postable gloss, silk and matt lam­i­nate) and fea­tures, amongst other things consciousness-raising posters, les­son plans, DVD and a cur­rent TRAIDremade col­lec­tion – a great way of demon­strat­ing that recy­cled, envi­ron­men­tally friendly fash­ion can be con­tem­po­rary and as beau­ti­fully shot and pre­sented as any other.

Hope­fully, the mate­ri­als and lessons they sup­port will make young peo­ple think about their role in the fash­ion indus­try, either as a direct par­tic­i­pant or – almost unavoid­ably – as a con­sumer. One of the posters fea­tures a boy sim­i­lar to the young peo­ple they’re intended for, except he was ‘bought’ for £80 and sews cheap gar­ments for the west in con­di­tions that make the aver­age school look mag­nif­i­cent. Hope­fully, the deliv­ery of mes­sages like this will move even the most reluc­tant stu­dent to be grate­ful for an oppor­tu­nity to be in class today.