Slow Fashion Trailer - April 2025
1m 29s
Slow Fashion is a documentary that explores cultural appropriation of indigenous designs in Mexico by an international fashion designer and the way weavers and block printers in Laos and India are working with new sustainable designers, whose principals and practices are based on equality, not hierarchy. A major fashion designer from Paris has been appropriating traditional designs in the community of Tlahuitoltepec in the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico. In response to this and other instances of global appropriation, Mexico's Ministry of Culture has asked global fashion brands for “a public explanation on what basis it could privatize collective property". Can credit and compensation be given to indigenous communities where the designs come from? Given the vast economic disparity between local communities of origin and the global companies, who are appropriating their designs; it becomes a matter of not only collective property rights, but also human and cultural rights. In Laos, craftmanship and the value of culture is examined by Nanci Takayama, professor/sustainable fashion activist. Working with communities of Laotian weavers, she raises the subject of empowerment of women artisans and weavers and explores alternative socially conscious ways of working with them in collaboration.