What would it look like if we stopped overconsuming fast fashion and became style activists?
Fashion & Overconsumption is a film by Tasma Fulford, Hannah Milton, and Shawn Yang. The film was produced as part of a 2021 Stage 3 COMMS class called Documentary and Social Change at the University of Auckland.
The class had about 45 students. Working in groups of three, students produced a ‘mini-documentary’ – 2-3 minutes long – based around an interview with a ‘social change’ maker. Half way through the class, we had to go into lockdown so students had to respond (creatively). They all recorded their primary interview on Zoom and figured out how to illustrate the interview gathering images safely through archive searches and iPhone recordings.
Through an interview with ‘style activist’ Karishma Kelsey, Fashion & Overconsumption gives a brief overview of the issue of overconsumption in relation to fast fashion, connecting it to the influence of social media influencers and trends, and suggests how audiences can change their personal habits to become ‘style activists’. The key takeaway from the documentary is that the most sustainable fashion is the fashion that already exists."