Style-Conscious

With rapidly changing trends and an ever-increasing number of garments in our wardrobes, environmental problems and poor working conditions follow. Style-conscious is an exhibition that sheds light on the problems of today’s swift consumption of clothing, while at the same time providing inspiration for and tools to influence and change.

We buy more and more clothes. Over the past ten years, the textile consumption of the Swedish people has increased by 40 percent. Almost all of our clothing is made in low-wage countries, where those who grow the cotton and sew the clothes often live and work in poor conditions. In addition, the production of a single t-shirt may require a kilogram of chemicals, and 6,000 litres of water.

In this exhibition, concrete examples are shown of how many kilograms of textiles the people of Borås buy in an hour, and what it may look, sound and feel like in a textile factory in South Asia. You learn more about chemicals, water consumption and what exactly is meant by terms such as ‘minimum wage’ and ‘living wage’.

The exhibition also provides concrete and inspiring advice for more sustainable fashion consumption, with the goal of learning to separate different textile materials and their properties. How do you wash correctly, how can we as consumers have an impact and what sustainable alternatives are there? Knowledge is power, and the alternatives are often much more fun than buying new products!

Style-conscious is a project that is run by The Swedish Consumers’ Association with the aim of encouraging a more fun, smarter and more sustainable mode of fashion consumption. The travelling exhibition Style-conscious tours Sweden between 2014 and 2016. In the places it visits, workshops, seminars and challenges are held.