“Behind The Leather“ An activist stunt by Ogilvy and Mather Advertising, Bangkok for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Asia. YouTube video embedded above.
A new luxury store called ‘Leather Works’ opens at the high end CentralWorld mall in Bangkok selling coats, ties, gloves and bags. Shoppers come in to browse. As they touch and try them on, they see flesh, bones, muscles and sinews inside. As they open the handbags, there are beating hearts too. Shoppers get blood on their hands. This leather was clearly ripped from the bodies of crocodiles, snakes, lizards and other ‘exotic’ animals. It’s like a scene from a horror film. Shoppers recoil in shock. These luxury leather goods are disgusting. The video goes viral. Behind this shopping prank is an NGO called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather who made it all for them. PETA’s Asia office wants to draw attention to the cruel conditions under which ‘exotic’ animals are farmed and butchered for luxury leather fashion. But how genuine, how ethical, can a ‘hidden camera’ stunt like this be? What can these shock tactics do?
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Behind The Leather (taster). followthethings.com/behind-the-leather.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Mardi Gras: Made In China“ A documentary film directed by David Redmon for Carnivalesque Films. Trailer and pay-per-view stream embedded above. Search online for streaming availability here.
During the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, USA, a tradition has emerged in which women who bear flesh have strings of plastic beads thrown at them to wear. Filmmaker David Redmon films this revelry and travels to Fuzhou, China to meet the ‘easy to control’ women who make those beads. He films their high speed, low wage, work and returns to New Orleans to show this footage to drunken revellers. He’d done the same thing in Fuzhou, showing the factory workers how the beads they made were ‘consumed’. The film connects women in China making plastic beads for women in the USA to wear, but under very specific, throwaway circumstances. So what were their reactions to seeing these hidden relationships? How did they make sense of this? Or push it to one side? Or find it funny? What happens when labour exploitation meets carnival excess? Where did these beads go afterwards? Who cleaned them up as trash? Why were they sent to US military personnel in Iraq in care packages? And did those factory workers really tell the director that their jobs were fun and well paid? Who can you trust to translate what people tell you? All of these dramas generated heated debate. Not least about trade justice activism like this being a ‘buzzkill’. But what’s the way forward? The film doesn’t suggest one.
Page reference: Grace Chu, Stephanie Hong & Jasmine Lee (2014) Mardi Gras: Made In China. followthethings.com/mardi-gras-made-in-china.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour” A documentary film directed by David Redmon & Ashley Sabin for Carnivalesque Films. Trailer embedded above. Available in full on Kanopy (with institutional login) here. Search Google for other streaming here and purchasing opportunities here. Website including ‘take action’ advice here.
How do 13, 14, 15 year old girls from Novosibirsk, Siberia end up on the pages of fashion magazines in Japan? Filmmakers David Redmon & Ashey Sabin follow 13 year old Nadya Vall who is scouted in her bra and pants by former model Ashley Arbaugh who finds her look ‘extraordinary’. Nadya wants to live the glamorous life in Tokyo that Ashley’s modelling agency could provide her with, and could earn much-needed money for her family back home. But the reality she experiences in Tokyo is starkly different. She is lonely, hungry and broke. What is it about Japanese fashion culture that values skinny white blonde blue-eyed Europeans teens? Especially as it dehumanises them, treats them as commodities, when they become part of it. Ashley knows she works in a parasitical industry and is conflicted. ‘Girl Model’ is an exposé of its creepiness and exploitation. It’s uncomfortable viewing for its audiences (to put it mildly), and for the people who feature in it. Some of them say that it’s not an accurate portrayal. Nadya calls co-director Redmon a ‘sexual predator’. But is this true or is it what you would have to say if you wanted to continue working in the industry? Models working around the world recognised themselves in the film and shared their experiences online. The film became a rallying cry and campaigning tool to push for change in the industry. It had a powerful impact and features on our site because, here, it’s the workers are the commodities and their supply chain stretches from Sibreria to Japan.
Page reference: Adele Hambly, Elaine King, Andy Keogh, Camilla Renny-Smith, Ed Callow, Joe Thorogood & Vicky Alloy (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Dream Crazy“ An advertising campaign for Nike by the Wieden+Kennedy agency. Video ad embedded ABOVE. Full campaign materials here.
It’s the 30th anniversary of Nike’s ‘Just Do it’ campaign. So the advertising agency hired by the brand most associated with sweatshops hires an African American football player called Colin Kaepernick to front it. He’s the quarterback who became famous in 2016 for taking the knee during the national anthem before games because, he said, ‘I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color’. After George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in 2020, taking the knee became associated with support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Condemned as unpatriotic by many, including President Trump, Nike was courting controversy by making Kaepernick the figurehead of its campaign. But he could show that by ‘dreaming crazy’, marginalised people like himself could excel. And Nike could be part of this. But strange things happened. People who did’t like Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement started burning their Nike gear, criticising its production overseas by sweatshop workers and boycotting the brand. Others normally critical of Nike said they’d buy more from them because of their support for BLM. Others asked why the lives of Nike’s Black consumers and consumers of color mattered more than the lives of their Black producers and producers of color. What did Kaepernick know and think about these marginalised people and their dreams before he took Nike’s money? This kind of advertising – where, for example, civil rights are used to mask labour rights – is called woke-washing. Nike seems to be running this campaign to stir controversy, by launching it on Labor Day bang into the US’s toxic ‘culture war’ around BLM. This campaign itself isn’t trade justice activism. But the responses to it are. The debates that it can take you into are around ‘systemic racism’ and ‘racial capitalism’. Why is it that the workers trade justice activists are concerned about tend to live in the Global South and be people of colour while the consumers they address tend to live on the Global North and seem by default to be white? How did that happen? Can trade justice / follow the thing activism be decolonised? Who would do this work? What commodities would they trace from where to where? What would they make for what kinds of audiences to act upon? And you might be wondering if this controversial campaign does Nike any harm. No. Its impact was much more about the uncomfortable, progressive, ‘mind-f$@k’ conversations that it sparked. Thank you Colin…
Page reference: Louise Mason, Maddy Shackley, Izzie Jeffrey, Megan Holden, Sophia Stainer, Emily Taylor, Andrew Gamble & Monty Leaman (2018) Dream Crazy. followthethings.com/dream-crazy.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)
“Socks“ Undergraduate coursework written by David Roberts, published in the Teaching Geography journal. Full text above. Reference below (Cook et al 2007).
The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Birmingham is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, followthethings.com CEO Ian tells them. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and what properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming’ it. And write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives via that thing. One student – David Roberts – thinks about his Marks & Spencer socks. He has a drawer full of them. And none of them has a ‘made in’ label. After some online detective work, he’s finds one pair were made for him far away in Bulgaria in a factory owned by an Israeli company that’s fighting battles against consumers boycotting their goods because they’re also made by non-unionised workers in factories in Palestine’s Occupied Territories. Marks & Spencer encourages its shoppers to ‘Look Behind The Label’. And that’s exactly what he’s done. He finds some uncomfortable geopolitical issues are protecting his feet.
Page reference: David Roberts (2006) Socks. followthethings.com/socks.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“University Lifestyle: Fabulously British“ Undergraduate coursework designed & written by Charlotte Brunton. Available in full in slideshow above. High resolution download available here.
After researching examples of trade justice activism to add to this site, students taking CEO Ian’s ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter are tasked to make their own. Charlotte Brunton’s inspiration comes from the junk mail arriving at her student house. Instead of getting interesting letters, she and her housemates get student fashion catalogues. In particular, Jack Wills catalogues – six or more every season. They’re selling students an ‘aspirational’ lifestyle, tempting them to buy the commodities they feature. The people in them, the things they have, the carefree, stylish and connected lifestyles they picture – the designers want students to want them. Charlotte and her friends imagine themselves using this, wearing that, experiencing the lifestyles these things can support, together. But who made these things? What about their lifestyles? Charlotte asks herself how she can create a catalogue that highlights how personal these things are both to her and to the people who made them? In real life, she has an interdependent, culture-crossing, ‘British’ life which they are very much part of. So she designs a ‘lifestyle catalogue’ that you can browse to imagine and buy into with her.
Page reference: Charlotte Brunton (2014) University Lifestyle: Fabulously British. followthethings.com/university-lifestyle-fabulously-british.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Ballet Shoes“ Undergraduate coursework written by Maya Motamedi, published in the Primary Geography journal. Full text below.
The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Birmingham is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, followthethings.com CEO Ian tells them. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and the properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming it’. And write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives. One student – Maya Motamedi – is a ballet dancer. She loves her Grishko pointe shoes. They’re part of her dancing body. After some online detective work, she’s finds who made them for her, far away in Russia. The shoes’ component parts come from plenty of other places. This kind of thinking, this kind of detective work, means you are never alone, never do anything by yourself! The lives of thousands of people are wedged into those shoes, says Maya, dancing with her.
“Employee Visualisation Appendage“ A conference talk prank by The Yes Men at a ‘Textiles of The Future’ conference in Tampere, Finland – filmed & featured in ‘The Yes Men’ movie.
Cultural activists and ‘identity correctors’ The Yes Men set up a fake World Trade Organisation (WTO) website and offer a man called Hank Hardy Unruh to speak at conferences on its behalf. The organisers of a ‘Textiles of the Future’ conference in Finland believe the website is genuine and invite him to give a talk. In the conference hall, the audience watch his assistant ripping off his business suit to reveal a gold lamé telematic suit underneath from which he inflates a huge phallus. This ’employee visualisation appendage’, they say, will allow future managers to give electric shocks to sweatshop workers when their productivity levels dip. To the Yes Men, this gold lamé performance exaggerates to ridiculous proportions the inhumanity of the WTO’s neo-liberal ideology and its dehumanisation of supply chain workers. It’s outrageous and kind of obscene (both the ideology and their performance). Movie audiences find it hilarious. But why is there such a muted reaction in the hall? And what impacts (if any) might these reactions have on the lives of workers in textile supply chains? This compilation page is arranged a little differently than others on our website because this prank had two audiences: the conference delegates and the movie audiences. We find this example fascinating. It’s fair to say that it’s memorable. But where – and upon whom – did it make an impact?
Page reference: Tom Best, Tom Gibson, Beth Massey, Chloe Rees, Kate Ross & Jemma Sherman (2019) Employee Visualisation Appendage. followthethings.com/employee-visualisation-appendage.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Handprint“ A short fashion film by Mary Nighy for Livia Firth’s EcoAge consultancy. Uploaded to YouTube & embedded in full above.
The elegant, graceful actor and model Eletrra Wiedemann, wrapped in a towel after a brisk shower, walks through her beautiful apartment, designer clothes strewn everywhere. As she chooses a red dress, other people’s hands appear to help her get it on, her jewellry on, her shoes on. She doesn’t flinch until she sees the people whose hands these were in a mirror. This film isn’t about the footprint of her clothes. It’s about the handprint. These are the people who made them for her. In the room. With her. Helping her to get dressed. Every day. She couldn’t do it without them. Gulp. This film was made for an exclusive fashion industry audience to encourage them to take care of supply chain workers in the wake of the Rana Plaza factory collapse. It was later published online for a wider audience. What impacts could this vision have on them? What can we find out?
Page reference:Ian Cook et al (2020) Handprint. followthethings.com/handprint.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“The True Cost“ A documentary film (with website) directed Andrew Morgan & executive produced by Livia Firth for Life Is My Movie Entertainment. Available in full on YouTube (embedded above). Website here.
American filmmaker Andrew Morgan weeps in a New York Starbucks after seeing a front page newspaper story about the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh where over 1,100 garment workers were crushed to death making clothes for Western high street retailers and brands. It’s illustrated with a photos two young boys looking at photos the of missing, assumed dead, workers pinned up near the site. They are the same age as his sons and are looking for their missing mum. He is shocked to his core. How could something this atrocious be allowed to happen? He imagines making a film that will answer this question and sets up a kickstarter campaign to raise the money to finance it. He doesn’t believe that there’s an individual or organisation who, alone, could have saved those people’s lives by acting differently (like consumers, for example). So he travels to lots of places in fashion’s supply chains. He talks to workers, farmers, managers, retired executives, ethical fashion pioneers, NGO execs, journalists, doctors and academics. Viewers get to know some – like Shima Akhter the garment factory worker in Bangladesh and LaRhea Pepper the cotton farmer in the USA – better than others. He makes the argument that Rana Plaza was a systematic failure. This film’s networky trade justice activism shows how everyone in the industry could and should act differently to make things better. Some, as his film shows, are already doing so. But can it encourage more people to get involved in the systemic change that’s needed? Who needs to see it? Where? There’s a lot of detail to digest here! Maybe too much. This film generated more discussion than any example researched on our website so far.
Page reference: Olivia Dubec, Sophie Rees, Amelia Daniel, Becca Craig, Ellie Glynn, Frankie Ward & Katy Jackson (2020) The True Cost. followthethings.com/the-true-cost.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
