The Story of Amina
H&M and the backyard of fashion
There are millions of people buying clothes from H&M, most of them are teenagers who like to wear fashionable looks at affordable prices but do they really know who is producing these garments and why they are so cheap.
ARD, a German public TV station confronted five young teenagers in Germany with a a short documentary showing how H&M suppliers in Bangladesh produce there favourite pieces.
The journalists went to clothes manufacturers in Bangladesh, told them they are European fashion producers and filmed undercover how female factory workers have to work fourteen hours per day to get a monthly wage of 35 USD.
One of them is Amina, a twelve year old girl who lives in the slums near the factory. Like her older sister she had to quit school in order to financially support her family to survive. She identified two H&M pieces she worked on, one of them is a striped pullover Freja Beha Erichsen wore in one of the ads for the H&M fall 2011 campaign.
In 2010 H&M published revenues of 18,6 billion USD and a profit of 2,7 billion USD, the pullover Amina worked on was sold in Germany at a regular price of € 24,95 (=32,40 USD), almost the monthly wage of Amina.
Assumed that one hour of labour work in Bangladesh is needed to produce the piece and H&M would double the wages of the workers and include 100% of these additional costs in the final retail price, the pullover would cost 0,12 USD more. That would enable factory workers to cover the cost of living for their families and kids like Amina to go back to school.
Confronted with these pictures the German teenagers were shocked and their brand image of H&M will never be the same. What about you?
To see the documentary (unfortunately only in German) click on we recommend below.
Global Culture Today
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Flowmotion Dance Company
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In the dance show "Virtual Insanity" it is about behaviors of real and digital communities, their ways of thinking; a group of young people in search of balance, caught between digital alias characters and real friendship, driven by longing, loneliness and curiosity.
To artistically interpret these emotions the flowmotion dance company not only focuses on modern dance techniques, but also use a new interactive digital floor of THIS.PLAY and thus integrate virtuality in their uniqe dance show. What works for modern dance will also happen in the mise en scene of fashion as already seen in interactive events by Hussein Chalayan or Burberry Prorsum.
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Life Ball 2011
Last night the 19th Life Ball, the greates AIDS Charity Event in Europe took place in Vienna. Life Ball is pursuing two main goals by raising as much donations as possible to support certain AIDS-relief organizations and to increase the consciousness and awareness for HIV and AIDS. Thus celebrities like Bill Clinton, Janet Jackson, Brooke Shields and many more supported the charity event and together with 4000 ball guests and thousands of spectators they watched the opening show with performances by Natasha Bedingfield, Natalia Kills or Holly Johnson. This years Fashion Show was organised by Dsquared² and was a tribute to AIR, the theme of the event. To see more of the glorious opening and the fashion show click on "we recommend".
Leave a message
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The Nike 6.0 brand is especially dedicated to the creativity of active youth and their favourite action sports activities like surf, snow, ski, BMX, wake and moto. They develop products characterized by a blend of performance and lifestyle and actively interact with their customers via all kind of media and the web plus like RedBull support the leading athletes of the scene and document their performance.
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Elizabeth Taylor
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