Black Friday ... where do we start? A day (or week apparently), where we are bombarded by flash sales, deals and discounts which in turn has lead to excessive panic buying. We believe it's important to take a step back and really think about the environmental and social effects of Black Friday.
The environmental impact is likely more obvious than social, as it is already well known that the fashion industry, particularly fast fashion, is polluting and exploitative as it is. This is only made worse by Black Friday. When it comes to the social impact, however, we feel this is often overlooked.
There are 60 - 80 million garment workers globally, 80% of whom are women. When it comes to producing products on a large scale, labour is often outsourced to nations where companies get away with underpaying their workers whilst not providing safe working conditions, trapping them in a cycle of poverty. This is an issue very close to our heart at culthread and this is also where The Circle NGO comes in. The Circle is a global women’s rights NGO founded by singer-songwriter and activist Annie Lennox in 2008.
Due to our beliefs both socially and environmentally, we have made the decision not to donate to The Circle using small contributions from Black Friday sales. Instead we have chosen to donate regularly, an option made possible using contributions from all of our sales throughout the year. By not reducing our prices on events like today, and having a great culthread community who understand our values, we are able to provide continued support those who truly need it.
As a female owned and managed brand, at culthread we believe in female empowerment and want to do our bit to rebalance past gender inequities by being a female centric brand, created for women by women. This is represented in our logo which is the Chinese symbol for woman, enclosed in a circle, the universal symbol of inclusion and timelessness.