“Growing up in Oklahoma, wearing a headscarf, I had to accept that I was clearly Muslim,” said the Iranian-American organizer and activist. “People will call me a terrorist or pretend to fire me.” And when policymakers see the hijab and women’s rights as part of the rationale for military action in Afghanistan or economic sanctions on Iran, she said, “that’s when I started really think about clothes.”
A decade and a half later, 27-year-old Katebi has become the leading critic of the global apparel industry, particularly the fast fashion sector. Where many of us might avoid looking too closely at the raw origins of our wardrobe, Katebi devoted herself to that hidden world – and ultimately tearing it down.
Iranian-American activist and organizer Hoda Katebi at her home in Berkeley, California, where she attended law school, April 18, 2022. Katebi has dedicated herself to undoing the hidden world of industry. global apparel industry, especially the fast fashion sector. (Aubrey Trinnaman / The New York Times)
“Instead of just saying, campaigning for garment workers to be paid more than a dollar,” she said, “we are calling for an end to the system that starts to put workers in these positions.”
The “we” there is Blue Tin Production, a small Chicago workers’ clothing cooperative run by working-class women of color, founded by Katebi in 2019. Blue Tin execute clothing deals in ways that are the opposite of contemporary apparel stores: full fairness and transparency, no exploit, abuse or purge (a term applied when a company promotes its eco-consciousness). The goal is to produce high-quality luxury clothing while shedding light on systemic issues related to fashion.
In addition to running Blue Tin, Katebi is active as a community organizer, speaker, and writer, all of whom are attending law school at the University of California, Berkeley. “I run with saffron cream and colored tears,” she says. (The following interview has been condensed and edited.)
Iranian-American activist and organizer Hoda Katebi at her home in Berkeley, California, where she attended law school, April 18, 2022. Katebi has dedicated herself to undoing the hidden world of industry. global apparel industry, especially the fast fashion sector. (Aubrey Trinnaman / The New York Times)
Q: What does abolitionism mean in the context of your work?
A: Fast fashion is a very specific type of manufacturing that basically focuses on speed and output. While the rest of the fashion industry typically operates on four seasons of the year, fast fashion operates on 52: There’s a new season every week. There’s no way that amount of product can be made in an ethical or sustainable way. The system requires brute force to function. Managers’ assaults on workers are common, above all for general subjugation and enforcement poor gives people little choice but to do this work.
That violence is irreversible. A good example is slavery – you can ask slave owners to be nicer, but the institution is inherently violent. So Blue Tin is an abolitionist response to the fast fashion industry.
Iranian-American activist and organizer Hoda Katebi at her home in Berkeley, California, where she attended law school, April 18, 2022. Katebi has dedicated herself to undoing the hidden world of industry. global apparel industry, especially the fast fashion sector. (Aubrey Trinnaman / The New York Times)
Q: How did fashion become your focus?
A: I was exploring fashion blogs right before college. It’s an interesting escape. But some of my favorites have worked with the brands on the BDS, (list of pro-Israel companies and individuals). They don’t think about the politics behind the aesthetic. When I created my first website, it was to push people to think about their clothes in a more complex and nuanced way.
Everything is related to fashion. Fashion is one of the biggest contributors to climate changefor example – it contributes more greenhouse gases than all air and sea shipping combined, (according to data from the United Nations Environment Program and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation).
Then there is the link between sustainability and policy, which helps maintain the viability of cheap labor. That in turn allows some neighborhoods to be disproportionately affected by a coal power plant. pollution the air, thus keeping the communities there from thriving. Every issue that interests you, you can find in fashion.
After all, 1 in 6 people in the world work in the fashion industry. No one knows this because most of them are women of color and working-class farmers.
Iranian-American activist and organizer Hoda Katebi at her home in Berkeley, California, where she attended law school, April 18, 2022. Katebi has dedicated herself to undoing the hidden world of industry. global apparel industry, especially the fast fashion sector. (Aubrey Trinnaman / The New York Times)
Q: Can you provide an example of how this system resists change?
A: In Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, factories will deliberately hire undocumented workers and then not pay them for months. When workers get upset, management calls (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and self-reports the raid on their factory. Some of our former Blue Tin members have gone through that process.
Q: What is your biggest challenge at Green News?
A: Abolition means ending this industry, and it also means thinking about the world we want to create in its place. How can we make clothes in no way violent? That sounds like a low bar, but it’s incredibly complicated and stress. I cry about once a week.
Q: How does that happen every day?
A: At Blue Tin, we strive to prioritize those who are “unsurpassable” by industry standards. That means people who may not speak English, or people with childcare needs, or maybe they need to sit and process the trauma they’ve been through because of them. domestic violence survivors. The people our system has harmed in different ways.
The year we started, one of our members received a call that her uncle and his 8-year-old son were killed in bombings in Damascus, Syria. We asked her, “What do you need in this moment?” We stopped production to walk with her and build interest around her. So we were very late in our production and we lost that customer. At the end of the day, we live in a capitalist world. We can’t create a utopia – so the question is, how can we make the best possible, even if it has flaws?
Q: I noticed that you tend not to use the word “refugee” when describing the Blue News team, even though others do.
A: For me, the class part is more important than the identity part because I hate identity politics. And “immigrant“And “refugee” has become a buzzword in the fashion industry. People were like, “Oh, what a cute needlework circle of immigrant women.”
The team doesn’t want to be tied down by their trauma. We’re trying to completely re-imagine the fashion industry and build garment worker power, so brands should partner with us for these incredible skills and backgrounds, not It’s because they feel bad. Oh, sure, go PR; I don’t care. But those are really nice clothes, and they bring art and craftsmanship is back in fashion where it belongs.
Q: What are people doing now?
A: Right now they are in “bedroom purgatory,” as they call it. They didn’t stop producing underwear for a big customer. I think that’s done in the end, but we’re basically busy entrepreneurs.
Q: How do you feel about these issues? shape?
A: A lot of my value comes from Islamic the value of compassion and divine mercy. That doesn’t sound radical, but it’s really a radical claim that we live in a world of compassion and mercy instead.
So I’m all for an attack on empire and capitalism. But it also requires nurturing. You have to keep both at the same time. I guess you throw your Molotov, but you also hug someone.
(This article originally appeared in The New York Times.)
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