Protest news from London Fashion Week, followed by big book news from Spain

This week the Rana Plaza Solidarity Collective went to London Fashion Week to remind the industry that the wealth of billionaires is growing while garment workers go hungry.

Bezos sails around on his $500 million superyacht (and $75 million support boat) while Amazon workers at the Hulu factory in Cambodia plead for their stolen pandemic wages –collectively worth a million dollars - to be returned to them. Just from his yacht Bezos could afford to pay the Hulu workers 500x over.

Similarly, Amancio Ortega, owner of Zara, swans around on a superyacht worth $300 million, while workers at Zara factories in Turkey were recently fired for joining a union.

Then there is Bernard Arnault, owner of LVMH. Like Bezos, Arnault is expected to become a trillionaire within the next decade. Arnault’s superyacht is worth $150 million and yet the Arnault-owned Dior brand pulled out of a Romanian factory after there was an increase in the national minimum wage. And a Dior subsidiary was recently shut down in Italy after impoverished Chinese workers were found being forced to sleep in unsafe factories.

Abolish billionaires, pay living wages instead

The only reason these superyachts exist is because fashion billionaires deliberately squeeze every penny they can out of garment workers. Every dollar in the pocket of a Big Fashion billionaire is a dollar that has been stolen from a garment worker.

The dollars that buy superyachts have been stolen from families in Bangladesh who cannot afford to buy food due to their poverty wages.

They've been stolen from workers in Cambodia who cannot afford either pain medication or to take time off work.

They've been stolen from women in India who cannot report their sexually abusive supervisor because they'd be fired and have no savings to fall back on.

This is why we took a pod of Orcas to London Fashion Week because Orcas know a thing or two about flipping yachts – sinking these obscene symbols of greed and reclaiming their home as a billionaire-free zone.

The same should happen in fashion: A redistribution of wealth and power out of the hands of profit-driven shareholders and into the hands of the millions of people who make our clothes.

As well as exploiting garment workers, fashion billionaires also exploit the planet. Owning a superyacht is the most harmful thing an individual can do to our world. Little wonder that billionaires emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average person does in a lifetime.

The quickest way to slow fashion down is to tax extreme wealth. Pay Living Wages. And Abolish Billionaires.

Sink The Yachts, Raise The Wages!

While people starve, the top 10 fast fashion brands collectively raked in $13.9 billion in profits in 2024, enough to triple the annual wages of 4 million Bangladeshi garment workers. And yet 91 per cent of Bangladeshi workers struggle to afford food for their families.

Everyone working in fashion deserves dignity, safe workplaces and a living wage. We must end the injustice and inequality whereby garment workers go hungry specifically because billionaires deliberately squeeze every last penny of profit from factories just so they can purchase another luxury superyacht.

We cannot allow this inequality to continue.

This is a re-edited transcript of a speech prepared for Rana Plaza Solidarity Collective. With thanks to Mel Watt for valuable input.

Kim Ford really is a great photographer -

Manual anticapitalista de la moda

I am thrilled to say that The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion is out now in Spanish with Captain Swing. I'm told the book is selling well and there has been lots of press attention. When I say lots, I really mean it! Like people messaging me to say that I am on the front page of a newspaper in Spain, El Pais commissioning an illustration of my photo to accompany my interview... Big thanks to the publicists at Captain Swing, to the superb journalists, and to readers in Spain for being so interested in my book.

Tansy E. Hoskins: “Los oligarcas tienen gustos horribles. Hay mucha más creatividad en la calle”

Con el libro ‘Manual anticapitalista de la moda’ la autora británica desenreda un sector en el que los beneficios económicos cada vez importan más

Ediciones EL PAÍS S.L.Brenda Otero

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In solidarity, Tansy.