A Challenge to Βe Met: Reaching Out

For this part of our venture into the fast vs. ethical fashion malarkey we were asked to connect with our audience, to take interviews, to ask them their own feelings involving the topic, see what held them back, what spurred them on, and possibly, answer any questions that arose through this experience. We thought it would be particularly interesting to reach out to a few ethical shop owners, to see what made them start, and even get a quick how-to guide to starting your own second-hand business.

For this part of our research, we decided to focus on our main target group, which meant young people. We asked the opinions of young adults, working and not, as well as teenagers.

A particularly bothersome phenomenon arose from the awareness that started to spread around ethical shopping. This phenomenon regards resellers, people who tend to re-sell garments that cost them virtually nothing for maybe ten times the price of purchase, thus milking charity shops off their best clothes and leaving the underprivileged with a devastatingly limited range to choose from, with particular shortage in children’s clothes. Aside of the practical issue, this kind of behaviour undermines the core values of second-hand shopping, meaning ethical and cheap.

A quick venture into the buyers’ set priorities served in revealing interesting facts involving consumer behaviour. Our teammate, Hara, let our interviewees loose and encouraged them to act intuitively. Using miro’s post-it and sticker function, she let the subjects set their priorities involving fashion and what they were most concerned about when it came to conscious purchases. Both subjects seemed to be mindful of workers’ rights and the environmental factor when it came to the clothes they chose to wear.

While most of our subjects came from the ethical shopping field, we also wanted to hear -and possibly dispel- the concerns of consumers that chose to support fast fashion. Our interviewee seemed to sympathise with the ideology of ethical fashion and agreed with most points raised. However, she was concerned by the price range involving slow fashion, the availability and the convenience that is usually provided by fast fashion shops.

All in all, we wanted to persuade our audience to speak about their own feelings involving the topic, so we could create our own juxtaposition of thoughts and opinions. We ended up with a vast range of subjects and responses that constituted our presentation’s makeup, from supporters to non-supporters, Greek folk and international students, because ethical fashion should be a universal topic of conversation, with universal and simultaneously individual concerns and solutions.

The rest of the team: Hara Papadatou, Glykeria Mirka Savvaidi
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