The naked brands will catch the worm

With all the unethical production techniques especially within the fashion industry, it has come to clear that consumers are now, more than ever demanding to know more about Where and How their favourite purchases are manufactured. This then influences(or rather forces) brands to be a whole lot more transparent to their market in their start to finish process of things.

With food being an essential feature in every culture and event, we have seen how even the restaurants have developed something we call an open kitchen as a core feature in their design. The food entertainment system has been built to the highest specifications and as such things allow the constant practise of hygiene, freshness and openness from the brand to its consumers. This is an intelligent form of design communication from the brands that caters with transparency to their market as the PCI(proximity consumption index) reveals that the daily consumer is increasingly concerned about the development process of the things they eat, drink, wear and use on their skin. It is no longer just about strapping a watch on your wrist or admiring the rich toppings on your soufflé, it is about being a part of the process of elimination, the history and the overall service of the brand. It's a live quality check and brands need to be confident enough to say, 'All is revealed'. 

Fashion however becomes the tighter string to pull, it is hard to really say whether this department is doing its utmost best to get its house in order with the likes of Foxconn style facilities across the continent of Asia. The idea of wearing a pair of high-tech sneakers put together by overworked individuals who receive no social benefits for sickness, working in conditions that fail dismally to meet the proper health and safety conducts of a work environment is becoming something of a serious wave that's about to hit everyone though nobody wants to truly confront.

Though South Africans still tread a few feet behind in the new trend of things, in developed economies the label of the manufacturer is what seems to contribute towards the sale as the people start to study the 'Made In' tag. Where and how is the question to be asked, so much that noting a high end luxury European brand being produced in China fails the ethics and the ethos of the brand. This also becomes a question of quality and distance(something many refer to as the fashion mile), and the sense of supporting an economy that doesn't support its own. The other issue being the carbon footprint and the concept of one garment being possibly sourced and supplied from five different parts of the world, which can prove to be unsustainable. So we say, at the end of the day when the ethical and quality check is passed, it will be the naked brands that will be the ones who catch the worms. 

Images of The Asos HQ taken from Disneyrollergirl