Fashion Against Xenophobia

The high street chain Jigsaw filled shop windows and billboards with posters emblazoned with “♥ immigration”. The retailer says: “Without immigration, we’d be selling potato sacks,” adding that “fear, isolation, and intolerance will hold us back”.

Peter Ruis, chief executive of Jigsaw, which has a workforce drawn from 45 countries, said: “Why has the word immigrant been demonised, when it simply means coming to live in another country? People who work for us are leaving every day. Some have had abuse in the street, either because of how they look or because of their accent.”

Lorna Hall, at trend forecaster WGSN, says: “Artists and creative people are reacting to the fact that some of the rights and ideas that we have taken for granted are coming under threat."

Delhi-born designer Ashish, whose grandparents fled Pakistan during partition, tried to tackle the issue last year after feeling that he was “not welcome” in the UK, despite having lived here most of his adult life. In protest, he took to the stage at his London fashion week show wearing a T-shirt with the word “immigrant” across the front. “There is a wave of racism and xenophobia sweeping the world, even more so now after the US election,” the designer said at the time. “If I can use my work to voice my dissent, that is my way of speaking up.”

During the same fashion week event, the American designer Prabal Gurung sent his models down the runway in T-shirts stamped with political slogans that included “The future is female” and “I am an immigrant.”

 The actress Kathreen Khavari attended the premiere of Big Little Lies, the HBO series that swept the Emmys, wearing a T-shirt dress printed with “my Iranian immigrant mother teaches your kids how to read”.

“These kinds of campaigns can raise awareness and make people have more positive attitudes towards immigration,” said Charles Seger, who co-author of recent study by academics at the University of East Anglia found that, while prejudice towards EU immigrants was a powerful predictor of support for Brexit, positive contact with immigrants led to increased support for Remain. “We know from psychology that very subtle cues can shape people’s attitudes even if they are not aware of it. People become more accepting … if they see immigration in a positive, non-threatening context...Small things can have big consequences further down the line.”

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/oct/14/fashion-world-immigration-migrant-workers

EUGENE DEBS