Thread Harvest

Fast Fashion is polluting the world and keeping men, women and children in modern day slavery. The consumer is unaware of the damage the fashion industry is having on people and planet. A solution needed to be designed that addressed both the issues caused by the industry including the lack of global working standards and the consumer education gap whilst still providing clothing that was affordable and fashionable.

Change will only happen if both the brands and the consumer are informed of what ethical fashion can do. It will take a collective, aligned effort to create lasting change. We determined there were 8 characteristics of ethical fashion: Eco-Friendly, Organic, Upcycled, Employing the Marginalised, Fair Trade, Empowering Women, Living Wage and Cause Supporting. These characteristics became both our standards and our form of education, connecting consumer and brand to a common understanding of ethical fashion. Now consumers can actively take part in measuring the good they do through their purchasing experience without having to sacrifice style or budget.

Our Impact Badges allow us to measure the combined impact when a consumer purchases a product from a brand. For example, we have been able to keep 100 tyres out of landfill through the sales we have made to date of Indosole shoes. Without Indosole making the shoes, Thread Harvest selling the shoes and the customer purchasing the shoes, these tyres would have ended up in landfill. We have successfully developed metrics that allow us to monitor and report on the total impact - see supporting images for further details.

The Impact Badges go further than simply providing education to the consumer. Through our design process we also acknowledged that each shopper holds a unique world view, set of values and desired shopping experience. We empower the consumer to shop what matters to them by curating collections based on the Impact Badges, creating a more meaningful shopping experience, personalised to their specific values. Our next phase of design is to personalise the shopping experience further by providing real-time impact reporting based on the customer's purchases. This further engages the customer by making the impact they are having tangible and specific to their engagement with ethical fashion.