Being a Person of Colour in Sustainable Fashion

On representation in sustainable fashion and the power that can be found in difference …

Words: Emma Slade Edmondson

“When I was young my mother told me I had ‘women’s legs’. 

She told me not to worry that my legs were thicker and sturdier and full of muscle where my classmates were softly pink and waiflike, hairless and wispy. She said I had beautiful women’s legs -and that one day the other girls would hanker after all of the things I had, the things that in the now felt awkward and embarrassing. 

While I was at secondary school like most POC young girls that went to majority white schools in the mid - late 1990’s I imagine – I was incredibly visible and yet totally invisible. It seemed to me that I was always visible for the wrong reasons and never noticed when I wanted to be – never noticed by boys, never really quite cutting it in the popularity stakes. 

But one way to be visible as a teen was clothing. So I fell in love with wearing my mums’ old clothes. They were original, sometimes outlandish or risqué on my more grown up body. I am mixed race and as a result I fit into the clothes my mum wore in her 20’s in my teens… 

In some respects, things are no different today. I still operate in a space where I can be visible in some instances and where I can feel pretty invisible in other ways despite the fact I know what I have to say is just as important as what the next person wants to impasse.  

My name is Emma Slade Edmondson and I am a Creative Strategist and Consultant by day and a slow fashion and second-hand advocate by Instagram. I do a lot of work in the sustainable fashion space and I know what I do is meaningful (and not just because of the nature of it being linked to creating positive change around how we interact with people in the fashion production chain and our planet). I truly believe that seeing representations of yourself in educational and professional spaces is important and that is why I will always drive for my voice to be present. I want to be seen and heard  ….

 Thinking about growing up feeling insecure about being different reminds me that being present in your difference is important, not just for you- but for all the girls and women who feel different coming up behind you.

I recently went to watch a sustainable fashion panel and it was comprised of four middle class Caucasian women between the ages of 27 and 50. Not a brown sole in sight…It was difficult for me to take on board what they were saying (which felt in my opinion without informed consideration of wider economic and cultural contexts and difficulties). I suddenly felt overwhelmingly embarrassed that my sector can at times be so naïve, and that it can at times come across as elitist, sometimes privileged and frankly oblivious. 

And I get that people want to consume messages from people who look like them, to whom they can relate but that’s why it’s soo important to be a little more inclusive in terms of where we seek our information so we can soak up a rounded, layered view of world issues and their cultural depths and angles in an authentic way that grows us. 

My personal experience having been in this space for almost a decade is that often it can feel like a carousel of the same people, who look and talk the same and who already know a lot about sustainability, talking to each other about how to be sustainable. This always surprises me given that if we are thinking about the people who actually make our clothes – they are overwhelmingly women and more specifically women of colour.

What about the people who are culturally more in touch with those people who make our clothes and yet who don’t feel like ‘sustainability’ is for them because they see no representation in the people talking about it… 

When I look back at that insecurity from my youth it reminds me to take strength in that feeling of difference that can create insecurity, and to own it because being a minority with a voice is important. I want other girls to know that their difference can be a strength, an asset and a force to be reckoned with.

P.s I feel a little insecure about sharing this – but hey! That’s what we are here for right!”

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You can find Emma on Instagram at @EmSladeEdmondson or over on her website: emmasladeedmonson.com!