Remake: A Catalyst for Fashioning Change

Over the past six years, I have been a climate activist and human rights advocate in the sustainable fashion industry through my volunteer work with the organization Remake. Remake is a sustainable fashion advocacy, labor rights, and human rights organization that regularly stands up for garment workers by calling out greedy corporations on social media. Remake was founded in 2015 by Ayesha Barenblat as an advocacy nonprofit that focused on fair pay and climate justice in the fashion industry.

The first international organization that I know of to highlight issues in the fashion industry was Fashion Revolution. Fashion Revolution was started by two sustainable designers, Orsola de Castro and Carry Somers, after the Rana Plaza factory fire and collapse on April 24th, 2013, which killed 1134 people. The factory that we speak of is the Tazreen Fashions Factory in Bangladesh. As a fan of Fashion Revolution USA, I would discuss the issues in the fashion industry using the hashtag #WhoMadeMyClothes every year on April 24th, starting in 2014, bringing awareness to the lives of those lost, humanizing the hands that make our clothing. 

In June 2015, I held a series of micro-events that were part of a week I had dubbed Impact Fashion Week. In 2016, a year later, Fashion Revolution USA began promoting Fashion Revolution Week. Thereafter, I went back to school and continued promoting the hashtag #WhoMadeMyClothes, unsure of what else I could do.

By 2019, the COVID pandemic hit, and I learned about and applied to be an ambassador with Remake. Remake campaigns were very strategic in who we were calling on to help the situation. One of our annual campaigns is called the #NoNewClothes campaign, a 90-day campaign which encourages pledgers to buy no new clothing (excluding delicates like pajamas and undergarments), and to wear clothes they already own, or clothes that are secondhand. It promotes the fact that humans already have 6x as many wardrobes on the planet as there are people. So we don’t really need new clothing made from virgin materials; we need people to wear what already exists. 

For many, this may be a hard pill to swallow. Clothing companies are still selling clothes that aren’t made of sustainable, natural, biodegradable materials, and people aren’t being taught to repair their garments, which ultimately adds to the amount of trashed fashion that goes into landfills. Back in 2015, the amount of textile waste in landfills was 4-5%. Now the amount is more like 10%.

New York was the first to introduce a Fashion Sustainability and Social Sustainability Act (simply dubbed the Fashion Act), which is the one that would hold the biggest brands in fashion accountable for their role in climate change. 

Because of Remake, several laws have been changed to improve the status of labor rights for garment workers here and abroad. Our other main campaign was the #PayUp campaign. We used this hashtag in our social media posts because several corporate fast fashion brands stopped paying their garment workers during COVID, but continued selling their products and benefiting from the sales. 

How could that happen? Well, the large fast fashion corporations would simply conduct business as usual. But by putting in orders, they would receive garments a little later than expected due to the delays in the postal system during the initial havoc wreaked by the coronavirus, and they just decided not to pay their workers at all. They still sold the garments to consumers and, in doing so, committed wage theft.

Here in the USA, some brands in California had been paying unfair wages to their garment workers, oftentimes paying by the piece/the article of clothing. This is called “piece rate pay,” which often means that sub-minimum wages were paid to contractors. According to The Garment Worker Center, garment workers paid by the piece (piece rate) often earn below minimum wage, frequently averaging only $5–$6 per hour in US factories, though some reports indicate earnings as low as $1.58 an hour.

So basically, some of these big brands have been scandalous. But because of the efforts of Remake ambassadors putting pressure on the fast fashion brands here, we've had a breakthrough. The bill SB62, introduced by Senator Gillibrand, also known as the FABRIC Act, was passed as a law, increasing garment worker wages to the minimum wage. Now brands that come out of California can be sued and probably fined for abusing the law and, in turn, hurting women. It becomes a women's rights issue because most garment workers are women, and they have had enough!

Remake ambassadors also helped get corporate fashion companies to sign the Accord, a document that outlines the safety measures required of buildings where garment workers in Bangladesh work. Bangladesh is a global fashion manufacturing hub. Many big corporations pay women and some men who work in these factories to sew their clothing. Because the Accord was signed by all the participating corporations, it is now an example of safety standards in factories that the world can follow. Pakistan recently signed the International Accord as well. 

I do this type of ecofeminist advocacy because it is jarring to know the truth about who made my clothes. Remake Ambassadors are very diverse and very widespread; it is a global organization. And we are looking for more people to take up the helm and sail this ship by telling their personal stories and experiences in the fashion industry!

What I truly hope and pray for is that fast fashion is coming to an end. In America, more laws are coming to fruition that are meant to help models, as well as hair and makeup artists, stylists, influencers, and other behind-the-scenes creatives in the industry get paid. This act is called the Fashion Workers Act, created by the Model Alliance. As a sustainable fashion and lifestyle influencer, I identify with this act as well. 

The reason why so many areas of the fashion industry are being questioned right now is that fashion has long since been a multi-trillion-dollar industry in the United States, but it is also a source of poor treatment of workers, AND the 2nd-most polluting industry in the world after fossil fuels. What's more, the ability to regulate these laws becomes difficult because so many corporate fashion brands are multinational. What we are instituting in this country may not be held up in the country where all the manufacturing work is done. That's why the Americas Act is also providing funding for companies willing to bring their overseas manufacturing back to American soil and the Western hemisphere in general.

I, for one, think it’s really great that so much in the industry is changing. I started reading a book called “The Day the World Stops Shopping” by J. B. Mackinnon. The Remake Ambassadors book club read this and interviewed the author earlier in our Slack days. Now, I am excited to note that because of these changes in the industry, I feel localism and swapping may become even bigger than they were before.

As of February 2026, the organization Remake sent out an email declaring that it would be coming to a close in May 2026. I have so many great memories hanging out with Remake changemaking ambassadors, and I have no intention of forgetting them. If you want to learn more about the research Remake did into the sustainability of the fashion industry, check out The Fashion Sustainability Reports, which can be found here on the website.

This has been an Impact Luxury Exclusive.

Ciao for now!

Lia Totty