Top established Wellington fashion designers Robyn Mathieson, Ashley Fogel, and Voon will join some of the city’s most promising up-and-coming new design talent to raise money for Wellington Women’s Refuge, on Thursday June 7.
Fashion HQ will showcase Wellington fashion talent at an All-Star fashion auction on June 7. Organised by a team of Massey University public relations students, the auction will feature garments donated by deNada, Paris House and Haley Smith NZ, as well as renowned Wellington designers Fin, Robyn Mathieson, Ashley Fogel and Voon. All proceeds will be donated to Wellington Women’s Refuge.
The designers who are so generously donating their garments to a good cause, live off the labour of garment workers. In New Zealand those women would be paid near the minimum wage of $11.25 (that’s $6-8 in the US, depending on what the exchange rate is doing at the time), and when the garments are made off-shore, the women workers are paid much less than that. The people who made the clothes that were donated to Refuge wouldn’t be able to afford to leave an abusive relationship.
I don’t want to simplify the dynamics of violent relationships; I don’t think pay equity alone would end abuse, but it would make it easier for women to leave. So until they pay the women who make their clothes enough money so that the women would have no financial problems if they needed to leave a violent relationship, those designers are full of shit.
PS – I have lots more I want to write about, but am quite distracted, so I may not be posting much till the end of the week.
