Threading Change & Oxfam Canada are proud to host the inaugural Fair Fashion Festival in Toronto  – an epic interdisciplinary affair where you will meet industry leaders and experts in the sustainable fashion space and learn about the industry’s social and environmental hidden costs affecting both people and planet. The afternoon will be packed with educational workshops, interactive activities, engaging panels, and community building events while the evening will be a bustling networking party with a local DJ lineup.

You can expect to leave the event feeling empowered to lead sustainable fashion lifestyles, and be clothing changemakers. The different components will raise awareness on the social, environmental, and political dimensions of the fashion industry, immersing you into all three levels of Threading Change’s tri-impact model: education, innovation, and consultation and Oxfam Canada’s What She Makes Campaign calling for Canadian Fashion brands to pay a living wage to the women that make our clothes.

Join Threading Change and Oxfam in this free, eye opening experience, as we unravel the hidden costs of the fashion industry. Immerse yourself in our clothing Swap + Clothing Audit series, Stitch for Change challenge, learn how to mend your clothes, engage with our panel discussion, connect with our museum of Changemakers, learn with our workshops, and debrief with our networking afterparty!

🌎 FAIR FASHION FESTIVAL COMPONENTS

Clothing Swap + Clothing Audit:

• Participate in a sustainable fashion initiative by swapping clothes and gaining insights into conscious consumption through a clothing audit. Attendees are asked to bring 1-10 items each to swap. You will be given a ticket for every item you bring in. However many items you bring, that’s how many you can take. Please note: No socks, swimsuits, and underwear at the swap. Jewellery can be swapped if it has been cleaned.
• Swimsuits and bras can be swapped if they have never been worn, ideally with the tag still attached.The clothing swap will be throughout the entire event from 1-6pm.

Stitch for Change Challenge

• Join us for the Stitch for Change Challenge at the Fair Fashion Festival! This unique one-minute sewing challenge invites consumers like you and me to experience the stark contrast between the lives and compensation of Cambodian garment workers and fashion brand CEOs. Within just 60 seconds, participants will be tasked with sewing 10 t-shirt hems, mirroring the intense workload that the women who make our clothes endure daily for poverty wages.
• This thought-provoking activity aims to engage and encourage participants to reflect on the realities faced by garment workers and to rally for greater transparency and fair wages throughout the fashion industry’s supply chain. Stay tuned to find out which brand the What She Makes campaign will be targeting next. Join us and stitch for change!

Museum of Changemakers:

• Explore leading organizations, brands, advocacy groups, fashion designers, activists and not-for-profit organizations involved in promoting a fossil-fuel free and human centered fashion future! Engage with booths to learn about the different social and environmental dimensions of the industry and how their impactful work addresses these challenges.

Vendors:

• Explore booths from various sustainable community organizations and vendors selling their products committed to sustainability, human rights and circular economy practices.

Mending Workshop:

• Attend a hands-on workshop to learn essential mending skills, promoting the longevity of your garments and reducing textile waste. Learn to customize the clothes that you pick up at the swap and stitch your initials.

Threading Change Community Quilt:

• Join us for a relaxing, all-day experience where you can immerse yourself in the world of slow fashion. Escape the noise and unwind as you express your thoughts on a piece of scrap fabric, then sew it onto our ongoing collective Solutions Quilt.

In-Person Panels:

• The two 30-minute panels will be hosted by Threading Change and Oxfam Canada

• Engage in thought-provoking discussions on garment worker rights and the importance of transparent supply chains in a panel with Oxfam, and unravel the political and environmental dimensions of the fashion industry with Threading Change

🧵 WORKSHOPS

Write for Rights Workshop: Penning Change hosted by Oxfam

As part of the What Se Makes Campaign, join us at the Fair Fashion Festival for the Write for Rights Workshop: Penning Change, led by our dedicated ally (to be announced). This engaging session will highlight the importance and power of letter writing as a potent tool of activism. Learn about the logistics of impactful letter writing and why your words matter. Participants will be prompted to put pen to paper, creating letters of solidarity and action to support a special target to be announced closer to the festival date. Come and discover how a simple letter can spark significant change and join us in a collective act of advocacy.

Textile Transformation with Threading Change: Shaping Textile Waste Solutions with ECCC 

Join us for an impactful 10-minute sprint workshop,  as we delve into Environment Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC) recent consultation document addressing the deficiencies in textile and apparel waste recycling systems in Canada. Together, we will explore the gaps in current fashion and textile frameworks and brainstorm meaningful insights and suggestions on ECCC’s proposed solutions. This workshop aims to pave the way for the government to implement tangible and effective measures. We will engage with participants to consult and provide feedback to the key elements within the proposed framework for addressing the waste from the textile and apparel industry.

Check out the schedule below for the workshop timings!

🧵 WHAT TO EXPECT:

LEARNING IN THE DAY, MINGLING IN THE NIGHT!

Our daytime programming will be centred on education-based and community impact programming. From 1 pm to 6 pm we will be engaging in our clothing swap, mending workshop, museum of changemakers, panel discussions, Threading Change Quilt Making, and hosting vendors. Our evening program from 7 pm to 9 pm is dedicated to debriefing from a packed day of learning. We will be networking with other industry professionals, mingling with new friends, and sipping on some non alcoholic and alcoholic beverages while enjoying the tunes from a local DJ lineup!

FREE FOOD:

There will be free catered food available to all registered attendees. Bevy has a cafe available throughout the day that can accommodate any sweet treat needs or caffeine addictions (paid).

PRICES:

It’s free! Yes, you heard that right, we will not be charging you to learn more about the fashion industry. However, we will be accepting donations of any size to support garment workers in Cambodia who work long and tireless hours to make the clothes that we wear everyday.

🌎 LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

We respectfully acknowledge that this event is taking place on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.

Tkaronto (Toronto) is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. Toronto itself is a word that originates from the Mohawk word “Tkaronto,” meaning “the place in the water where the trees are standing,”.

Today, the meeting place of so-called Toronto is still home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and host this event in this territory.

About Threading Change:

The 6F’s: a Feminist, Fossil-Fuel Free Fashion Future.

Threading Change is a youth-led, justice-oriented global organization created to address the systemic injustices and inequities that persist in the global fashion industry today.

We address the fashion industry holistically, which includes everything from the way we communicate sustainable fashion to how to invite global communities affected by the industry at the table. Fashion can be a hugely wasteful industry, using excessive resources like water and textiles and over-producing clothes through trends.

About Oxfam Canada:

Oxfam Canada is an affiliate of the international Oxfam Confederation networked in 87 countries as part of a global movement for change.

Our mission is to build lasting solutions to poverty and injustice, focusing on improving lives and promoting the rights of women and girls.

We work directly with communities, partners and women’s rights organizations to challenge the systems perpetuating inequality and keeping people poor.

Our flagship, What She Makes campaign, advocates for Canadian fashion brands to pay a living wage to the women that make our clothes

Together we seek to influence those in power to ensure that women trapped in poverty have a say in the critical decisions that affect them, their families and entire communities.

Because ending global poverty begins with women’s rights.