Five years after a catastrophic building collapse killed 1,137 garment workers and maimed or injured thousands more in Bangladesh, a group of labor advocates gathered in a light-filled hall off New York City’s famed Times Square to reflect on the watershed disaster and its political and social ramifications. The panel discussion, entitled “Has Anything Changed…

Nearly five years after the world watched a frantic search for survivors turn into an onerous recovery of the dead, the words “Rana Plaza” can still invoke powerful outrage about the precarious conditions that garment workers in the developing world endure every day. But while preventing another Rana Plaza is a vital endeavor, a new…

The Danes have a word, “hygge,” pronounced “hoo-guh,” that the Oxford Dictionaries describe as “a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.” The Norwegians refer to this state of bliss as “koselig;’’ the Finns, “kalsarikannit.” In Sweden, everyone from Malmö to Kiruna bandies about the word “lagom,” which…

Big household fashion names are “coasting and doing nothing” when it comes to sourcing sustainable cotton, one international coalition has said, with the industry unlikely to make progress in this area if more brands don’t get on board. Despite the signatures of industry power players like Adidas, Burberry, H&M, Kering, IKEA, Levi Strauss, and Nike…

All the best parties have a theme, and Textile Exchange’s annual industry event, which doubled as a celebration of the global fiber-sustainability coalition’s 15th anniversary, was no different. Held in Washington D.C., this past week, the five-day Textile Sustainability Conference wielded its focus, “United by Action: Catalyzing the Sustainable Development Goals in Textiles,” as both…