Fair Fashion Festival: Toronto

Threading Change in Toronto in collaboration with Oxfam Canada - is proud to host our inaugural in Toronto - an epic interdisciplinary affair where you will meet industry leaders and experts in the sustainable fashion space and learn about the industry's social and environmental hidden costs. The afternoon will be packed with educational workshops, interactive activities, engaging panels, and community building events while the evening will be a bustling networking party with a local DJ lineup.

You can expect to leave the event feeling empowered to lead sustainable fashion lifestyles, and be clothing changemakers. The different components will raise awareness on the social, environmental, and political dimensions of the fashion industry, immersing you into all three levels of Threading Change's tri-impact model: education, innovation, and consultation.

Join Threading Change and Oxfam in this free, eye opening experience, as we unravel the hidden costs of the fashion industry. Immerse yourself in our clothing Swap + Clothing Audit series, learn how to mend your clothes, engage with our panel discussion, connect with our museum of Changemakers, learn with our workshops, and debrief with us at our networking afterparty!

? FAIR FASHION FESTIVAL COMPONENTS

Clothing Swap + Clothing Audit:

• Participate in a sustainable fashion initiative by swapping clothes and gaining insights into conscious consumption through a clothing audit. Attendees are asked to bring 1-10 items each to swap. You will be given a ticket for every item you bring in. However many items you bring, that's how many you can take. Please note: No socks, swimsuits, and underwear at the swap. Jewelry can be swapped if it has been cleaned.
• Swimsuits and bras can be swapped if they have never been worn, ideally with the tag still attached.The clothing swap will be throughout the entire event from 1-6pm.

• Explore leading organizations, brands, advocacy groups, fashion designers, and not-for-profit organizations involved in promoting a fossil-fuel free fashion future! Engage with booths to learn about the different social and environmental dimensions of the industry and how their impactful work addresses these challenges.

• Explore booths from various community organizations and vendors selling their products committed to sustainability and circular economy practices.

• Attend a hands-on workshop to learn essential mending skills, promoting the longevity of your garments and reducing textile waste. Learn to customize the clothes that you pick up at the swap and stitch your initials.

• The two 30-minute panels will be hosted by Threading Change and Oxfam Canada

• Engage in thought-provoking discussions on garment worker rights and the importance of transparent supply chains in a panel with Oxfam, and unravel the political and environmental dimensions of the fashion industry with Threading Change

• Dive deeper into the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in the fashion industry. Learn about promoting garment workers' rights, and fair wages, reducing textile waste, and enhancing producer accountability and transparency within the supply chain as we write letters to our municipality. We have designed the workshop to be 15 min sprints where education, consultation and impact can converge!

• Join us for a relaxing, all-day experience where you can immerse yourself in the world of slow fashion. Escape the noise and unwind as you express your thoughts on a piece of scrap fabric, then sew it onto our ongoing collective Solutions Quilt.

LEARNING IN THE DAY, MINGLING IN THE NIGHT!

Our daytime programming will be centred on education-based and community impact programming. From 1 pm to 6 pm we will be engaging in our clothing swap, mending workshop, museum of changemakers, panel discussions, Threading Change Quilt Making, and hosting vendors. Our evening program from 7 pm to 9 pm is dedicated to debriefing from a packed day of learning. We will be networking with other industry professionals, mingling with new friends, and sipping on some non alcoholic and alcoholic beverages while enjoying the tunes from a local DJ lineup!

FREE FOOD:

There will be free catered food available to all registered attendees. Bevy has a cafe available throughout the day that can accomodate any sweet treat needs or caffeine addictions (paid).

PRICES:

Its free! Yes, you heard that right, we will not be charging you to learn more about the fashion industry. However, we will be accepting donations of any size to support garment workers in Cambodia who work long and tireless hours to make the clothes that we wear everyday.

We respectfully acknowledge that this event is taking place on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.

Tkaronto (Toronto) is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. Toronto itself is a word that originates from the Mohawk word “Tkaronto,” meaning “the place in the water where the trees are standing,”.

Today, the meeting place of so-called Toronto is still home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and host this event in this territory.

The 6F’s: a Feminist, Fossil-Fuel Free Fashion Future.

Threading Change is a youth-led, justice-oriented global organization created to address the systemic injustices and inequities that persist in the global fashion industry today.

We address the fashion industry holistically, which includes everything from the way we communicate sustainable fashion to how to invite global communities affected by the industry at the table. Fashion can be a hugely wasteful industry, using excessive resources like water and textiles and over-producing clothes through trends.

Oxfam Canada is an affiliate of the international Oxfam Confederation networked in 87 countries as part of a global movement for change.

Our mission is to build lasting solutions to poverty and injustice, focusing on improving lives and promoting the rights of women and girls.

We work directly with communities, partners and women's rights organizations to challenge the systems perpetuating inequality and keeping people poor. Together we seek to influence those in power to ensure that women trapped in poverty have a say in the critical decisions that affect them, their families and entire communities.

Because ending global poverty begins with women's rights.

Host or Publisher Threading Change