The first meeting was with the Meurthe-et-Moselle departmental council. In attendance were Sylvain Mariette – the vice-president for ecological transition and environmental education, Anthony Perrin, Barbara Thirion and Severin Lamotte. After explaining our project to them, the harmful effects of fast fashion and its advertising, our recommendations and the various things they could do at their level, we were able to talk to them. For them, one of the key points is not to make people feel guilty, and it’s important for advocacy to have a positive side (as we have done).

There needs to be a balance between what we see, what we criticise and what we propose.
They also put the emphasis on education. But according to them, influencing and initiating in colleges is very complicated. However, the subject is well covered in their programme, with the example of how jeans are made, for example. They also talked about the need to be careful with the definition of fast fashion, because for example, instead of having 3 companies producing 36 fashions, you could have 50 companies producing 3 fashions a year.

But for them, the EU is a good target, and it’s important to legislate. We’ll just have to watch out for the lobbies and their power. But they were really interestedand open to sign our petition and open letter and talk to their politicians relations. (They have 3 senators who could potentially support us too). They then made links with their areas of expertise, particularly agriculture (local wool production, do local jeans, etc.).

They will be talking about our project during the spatzer meeting. There is also a seminar from 9 to 11 October on waste management, particularly textiles (Amorce).

For the second meeting of the morning, we met with a number of municipal councillors from the Nancy metropolitan area: Sabrina Benmokhtar, Dahman Richter, Mohamed El Ghazili, Patrick Hatzig and Laurent Watrin.

For them, it was important to take into account the origins of fast fashion. We opened up the market to Asia to get cheaper clothes, and now we need to regulate that. We need to put up firewalls, import what we need and if not, make it locally. But it’s not easy, you have to change the way people think.
The beginning was a bit distant. Advertising is a very complicated subject. They can’t choose what they advertise, but they can’t choose not to advertise at all either. The manoeuvring is complex. So it’s important to get into the community networks and to speak out and fight as we are doing. The law can’t do everything. In fact, many companies prefer to pay fines rather than follow the rules. They also talked about a new national regulation on advertising. However, it remains difficult for them to take action, except in the case of aggressive illuminated advertising, which will be removed from the city centre.

We could also follow the example of tobacco. But we also need to change attitudes and culture.
They are already seeing changes in their consumption habits. They want to encourage local development. They also have a local currency, the Florin, and an online shopping platform with rapid delivery by bicycle. So the meeting got increasingly interesting. We made them question and challenge themselves. They wondered if it was getting worse and worse and indeed it’s only getting worse (+300% for Shein). So we need to pull the right levers. Why not fines by revenue or by %?

We need to show that local clothes last longer, even if they are more expensive. There’s also the question that a certain part of the population won’t be able to afford it. We’ll have to go through a cycle or consume less but better. There was also the big question of the globalised and hyper-connected world.  It would be important to add that to the manifesto. There is a strong link between the economy and networks. Behind our demands, the battle is actually much bigger. It opens the door to a much bigger problem – our economic system itself, which is destroying our resources, our environment and even our social ties. This raises the question of the redistribution of wealth.

They also asked themselves how they could offer alternatives to local businesses that can’t afford to be on TF1 for exemple? Could they create public spaces just for alternatives? This seems complicated, given that we can’t choose advertising. Were they also thinking of recreating a body of flexible law with the advertisers directly, based on the citizens’ assembly? Why not distribute local clothes to children at the start of the school year too? We ended the meeting on a high note, with a lot of soul-searching and new perspectives.

9 September, Nancy