SLOW FASHION.
At a recent event, I was introduced to someone by a well-wisher saying, metaphor racha is all about "slow fashion". I stood there grinning awkwardly as I had no understanding of slow and fashion.
After recovering, I wikipediaed the term which said, slow fashion has to do with products made of good quality, champions clean environment, and fairness to both consumers and producers.
But shouldn't that be The NORMAL way of working? what is so SLOW about it? Is the word SLOW opposite to of FAST all the time? Can we 'normalize' the positive work ethics?
I wonder, does any farmer grows his cotton slowly and intentionally? If I choose to travel by train instead of flying, am I a slow traveler? and so on...
While the word 'slow' is read as lazing, loitering, boring, lagging in many aspects of our life, but when it comes to fashion 'slow' is admirable, commendable, ethical, honorable and whatnot.
When most of the design houses have to churn out 2 dozen looks per season and 4 collections a year for the runway [read - spring, summer, autumn, winter, prêt, lounge, festive, resort, cruise, pre-fall, and etc] which part of the work is slow? Especially when the business growth is equated to fast=cheap=efficient. Does slow-fashion brands want to sell their produce slowly?
But, I might have a vague understanding of what fast-fashion is.
It's about this CEO, a hamster at work, who has studied kinematics science and understands the 'speed' very well, wherein the intentions of tinkering the machines and arm-twisting human laborers to get most of the work done in the least amount of time and money, having blinkers on ecological issues, and then up-selling the cheap products with a false narrative to the gullible consumer to 'accelerate' the growth of his/her company at a pre-determined 'velocity'.
And the rest of us are not 'slow' but 'normal'.
The ones who make products to last long, pause to understand, devote time in grasping the culture, collaborate with craftspeople and exchange knowledge with them in a non-dominant way, bring dignity and living wages to reality, respect human efficiency and acknowledge growth sufficiency...do not have a name. We are considered as 'concepts' because being attentive to our normal-self in a fast-paced life is an alien concept.
So, metaphor racha is neither fast nor slow. We work at a pace which is our craftsperson's efficient best in an effective way.