Welcome to Re.stance, a collective of makers and movers tackling the challenges of a broken fashion system. By reading this newsletter, you’re already an active part of the circular collective. Somewhere along the way, you chose alternative and slow fashion—and that alone is a big step forward. We want to empower you to create impact, one small, smooth move at a time. Congratulations on joining this global effort!

At its core, this movement is rooted in indigenous ways of knowing and being. Did you know, the United Nations Permanent Forum estimates there are more than 370 million Indigenous peoples spread across 70 nations? And while their practices reflect ancient models for circularity, zero waste, and resource stewardship, they are often excluded from corporate social strategies. A Textile Exchange survey (2021), found that of 252 fashion companies, less than 5% factored in Indigenous peoples in their biodiversity plans. There’s a massive disconnect here, and it needs to change.

You may have felt this disconnect, too, disconnected from nature, from each other, and from our own practices. And yes, it’s glaring-and by design. If you missed it, hate to break it to you, but, you might be living under a rock. But don’t worry: you can lift it. It’s light. Maybe just a pebble. Or likely…a plastic item. Don’t expect fresh air above, though—we’re knee-deep in an endless heap, suffocating in a burning pile of sh...oes and clothing. Re.stance Collective focuses on the reclamation of 4 important pillars for circular change: the Makers, the Movers, the Issues, and the Impact.

Every month, we will introduce you to the:

These pillars set the groundwork for reclaiming sovereignty in our communities and adopting regenerative processes within systems designed against people and the planet. Together, we can return the power back to the people, where it rightfully belongs. The fast fashion monster is out of control, and it’s time for our long-awaited intervention, desperately, imminently, urgently. But don’t stress: change can be chill, as long as it’s sustainable for everyone. We’re in this for the long haul, no burnout allowed!

COMPARISON TIME

Let me point something out. If we observe the systems of our manmade world, a common theme emerges: limitation in how we approach design thinking and innovation. Most modern societies are built in linear formats, cubic shapes, and constrained systems, a value system that rewards boring models of inputs and outputs. It’s the millennial grey, the soul-sucking cubicles of the corporate world, the empty malls with eerie mannequins, the endless liminal spaces, and the absurd abundance of opportunists with repressed scarcity mindsets, greedy wallets, excessive habits, low self-esteem, and inflated egos.

Strangely, when you look at nature, it’s nothing but circular design, regenerative design, collective and symbiotic systems, designed beautifully, effortlessly, and respectfully, by none other than Mother Earth, props to her. Colour in its multiplicity, abundance that feeds and supports itself, roots that are part of interconnected communal networks, how nice! What if we could embody this model without causing further damage to our environment? Look no further because the blueprint is glaring right in front of us.

“We need to go upstream, to create systemic interventions that design out waste and pollution” — (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2022).

Our modern world wasn’t designed with nature, connection, or with us in mind, rather, in limitation, possession, and entitlement, gross!

ANALOGY TIME

I like this analogy of an assembly line at an abandoned factory, just made it up on the spot. Ok, imagine an abandoned factory with the machines still running, the product trotting through the assembly line, and piling up to its eventual demise at the end of the conveyor belt. This feels eerily similar to how we treat craftsmanship in the fashion industry. I’m talking about garment workers, treated like GARBAGE by these corporations, discarded like the clothes piling up in masses around the globe. When did we stop valuing our craft, our people? It’s really messed up, don't you think?

According to Statista (2025), the global fashion apparel market generated an estimated revenue between $1.79 trillion and $1.84 trillion in 2024, and yet, based on findings from Fashion Revolution , it’s estimated that “less than 2% of garment workers make a living wage (San Segundo, 2019)”.

Why is it, that we look at fashion and the luxury houses as esteemed revered establishments, but we disregard the people who are actually making these garments behind the scenes? Why don’t they get credit or fair compensation for their work? Who does this benefit and who does it deprive?

Let’s take a look.

Fashion billionaires are increasing at a rapid rate, with the top 200 rankings including 14 people with a combined net worth of $617 billion in 2024 compared to 9 people at $51 billion in 2000. Namely the richest being LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton‘s Bernard Arnault, who remains fashion’s richest billionaire by far, and Inditex founder Amancio Ortega (Socha, 2024). Meanwhile, according to the International Labour Organization, (2023), 94 million workers across the world are employed by the garment industry, and 60% are women, ranging up to 80% in select regions.

“Women workers are disproportionately represented in low-wage jobs in the lower tiers of the sector’s supply chain, and they consistently lag behind men in terms of equal pay for work of equal value (ILO, 2023)”.

We have spent too long making profits for these entities, corporations that see us as a disposable workforce, rather than the master creators that we are. Where is the respect, where is the credit, where is the honour? We observe this pattern across multiple systems of governance, which are intentionally designed to counter the vast diaspora of cultural practices and tribes rooted in indigenous ingenuity. A system that is rooted in colonialism doesn’t have to exist in perpetuity, and the question becomes, how do we dismantle it from within, without collapsing?

Creativity is the answer and vessel that assists us in addressing and solving for these difficult topics. By supporting this collective, you are helping reclaim craft and sovereignty from a system that has forgotten the value of us as a collective and diverse diaspora. Re.stance belongs in a space outside this assembly line where the workers regain their rightful title as the creators, the makers, the movers of our community.

Please, please, please follow us on Instagram @Re.stance, and watch our collective grow into a beautiful movement that you get to be part of from the very beginning. I don’t know you, but I love you already, because you made it this far in this article.

Thank you for reading all of this, stay tuned and stay circular, stay tubular!

-Bianca Gittens

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