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Now, during sales, the shoes that you encaprichaste a few months have discount, you can purchase an extra clothes at half price and it is difficult not to fall into the temptation to buy these pants so cheap even though you know you never will become your favorites. The products abaratados passed from the stores to our lockers during the sales period are a very small part of the 100,000 million garments that are produced each year in the world, an overwhelming figure that owes its origin to the expansion of the fast fashion or ultra-fast fashion. It is the model that has turned the fashion industry in the second most polluting on the planet after oil and for which Gema Gómez, an expert in sustainable fashion, provides alternatives.
Taking into account the resources that were needed to get the materials that make up the clothes, the labor of making and the environmental cost of the transport to get them to the stores, the price tags do not heed to the logic and each time there are more people that suffer the same reflection: if the clothes is so cheap, there must be some error in the chain and the price mark label we have to add the cost to the environment. As a result, a new consciousness seems to wake up slowly between the professionals of the sector to which the Gem is always ready to advise: “fashion will be sustainable, or will not be,” he says.
Gema Gómez, working in his office. We are 5
According to the expert, the model still reigning “causes a rate of fuel very quickly in the stores. There is a kind of anxiety of purchase”, which is further accentuated with the percentages that make the prices decreasing. Today, just spend two weeks from the design of the garment until it appears in stores, some brands launch 20 collections a year, and there are shops online that come to offer a thousand new different products every month. According to Gem, in addition to the surpluses of the past collections, we also find garments created specifically for sale during the sales. Many of those that are not sold will be destroyed without releasing.
just in Spain, each year we throw away the equivalent weight of 45,000 cars medium in clothing and the most we forget to ask ourselves who made our clothing and under what working conditions but, from your point of view, “this model is starting to give legs”. In recent years, many consumers have changed their habits, worry about why you fit what they need and taking into account sustainability at all levels, but much remains to be done to transform the industry: “it has Already been recognised; we now turn to give a twist and get to work. Enough of words. It is time for a real regeneration.”
For Gem, the key is not to confuse efficiency with true sustainability: “it Is true that the large textile companies are starting to worry by the use of fewer chemicals, fewer materials, and even fewer people. But that does not mean to be more sustainable, but to be more efficient. To achieve sustainability it is necessary to have a regeneration opting for a few materials and a production of proximity and putting the focus on providing solutions to the negative impact that has already been generated on the planet”. Your goal is not to have more clients, but more and more fans of the fashion done at a slow fire.
A directory of brands responsible
His advice for the rebates is to always have in mind the durability and functionality of each garment, pay attention to the tissues and to remember that “we vote with our money. Every purchase is also a political act”. She wears a jacket in whose label we would not find the words Made in Bangladesh or polyester, and your style calls for the timeless elegance. In addition to marketing natural fabrics through its brand B2Fabric, Gem is the founder of Slow Fashion Next, the platform from which it provides training to instill the values of sustainability in the fashion and promotes a directory of over 120 brands responsible with the planet. Firmly believes that an alternative model is possible and necessary: “Slow Fashion offers that do not need as much. What matters is what the company is addressing through its value chain, and we call it so because it is a chain in which everyone wins”.
Gem, with 23 years, when he visited Paris at the root of wanting to devote himself to fashion. File Gema Gomez
On his desk there is a book more worn than the rest and underscore ad nauseum: it is Economics donut, the british Kate Raworth, whose focus is located in the central hole on which turns the circular economy, representing the shortages of basic goods that many people suffer and for which coverage should become the priority. Between the pages of this book Gem and found the road map with which to give a twist to the fashion and contribute to fix the broken economy. “What on the planet is finite or infinite?”, asks in him, knowing that the answer does not fit with the current model. “The planet is finite, then we have to create things that are well within the limits of the planet (…) I would like to see an industry that takes care of us, caring for our children, who takes care of the workers. We are in the XXI century and it is not necessary to have both. You can create companies much more reasonable, more sensible, more distributive, that generate benefits for all.”
in Addition to Slow Fashion Next, Gema Gómez coordinates along with Alejandra de Cabanyes the movement Fashion Revolution in Spain, by serving as a link between professionals of the sector who persecute us the dream of a peaceful revolution: “we Love fashion but we don’t want our clothes to exploit people, or destroy our planet,” delivers his manifesto. The global movement of which he is an ambassador arose following the collapse in 2013 of the Rana Plaza, the building that housed five textile factories in Bangladesh and ended the life of 1,134 people. The disaster exposed to the public light the hidden face of fashion and the world met with astonishment the true face of the clothing low cost. But, by that time, Gem was already aware of the harmful gear of fast fashion: he had been part of the same.
A sustainable future
it Was during travel to Asia as employed in a large textile company when he began to sense that something was not going well. Some companions advised “not to visit certain factories because they had seen children working” and in the transfers was “rivers full of foam” blacked up with the colors of the season a few weeks later predominarían in the windows. The reports of Greenpeace ended up confirming his suspicions: “that’s when I begin to really understand the sector in which I am,” recalls Gem. “I had nothing to do with me, nor with my values and I didn’t want to be a part of that.”
Gem in the headquarters of his company of ‘slow fashion’. We are 5
climate Change, labour exploitation, calls cities the cancer and even the disappearance of bees; the creator of Slow Fashion Next lists with specific data the effects of fast fashion. However, she never stopped loving fashion and, despite the figures as daggers, is not against to buy clothes, or much less. It is precisely his deep passion for fashion which gave him the impetus to recover his essence: “fashion is a cultural and social expression that has to represent who we are as a culture and as a society. And if we are a shirt of plastic, I don’t want to be that. I prefer to be anything else.”
Each time there are more professionals, demonstrating their creativity and talent, offering innovative alternatives to the fast fashion and this is the path on which Gem look.It is clear that the future of the new generations will be sustainable and as an example, before we said goodbye, he notes with enthusiasm the movement against climate change Fridays for Future driven by the young activist Greta Thunberg. Gem reminds us that “the power today, much more than vote, is in the business models that we support with our purchase. That is what really changes things.” The slow fashion is fashion, and reflection on our consumption is more urgent than ever.
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00:00
it is Annually produced 100,000 million garments in the world. As an alternative to fast fashion, Gema Gómez created Slow Fashion Next. Provide training in sustainable fashion and a directory of 120 marks responsible.
MORE INFORMATION
The world at your feet: the young, blind man who designs shoes, A team against inequality: the football that you have always dreamed of Juan Mata
00:19
I have memories of a very little girl to play with dolls and to dress, to be making skirts in addition to skirts as very large.
00:30
a 23-year-old wanted to do something that was creative but at the same time could be a profession, and fashion is covered a little bit those two things. And I decided to go to Paris.
00:42
I loved design, I loved that world of creativity, drawings, colours… To me what it was I was passionate about. But, of course, when we started to travel more to the factories, I began to discover what was behind it, is that I could not be there.
01: 02
There are working children, a child does not have to be working. And, for example, you see a river and a river full of foam. In the factory they bring you the food and you say: “my god, my God, if this fish comes from the river, what I’m eating may not be very good.”
01:18
These companies were of a very high-handed, I horrified at the way in which they dealt. We can’t function as well. To me, that I excelled, had nothing to do with me or my values.
01:31
I Decided to contribute my granite of sand and so I created Slow Fashion Next, with the clear goal of forming in a sustainable fashion for the whole industry, for the industry.
01:44
The current model, the model of fast fashion is called, is based on infinite growth. The planet is finite, then we have to create things that are well within the limits of the planet.
01:56
To produce 250 grams of a t-shirt are needed for 2,700 liters of water, which is what more or less drinks a person in three years; a madness. And above, know that for me to put 15 of these t-shirts there is a girl without education, exploited the other side of the world, and that your life is going to be that, I’m not interested.
02:19
fashion is an expression, in the end, cultural and social, and it has to represent who we are as a culture and as a society. I think that the clothes have to be beautiful on the outside and inside.
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