Alice Vol. 1 No. 2

Rahab’s Rope supports women in
three ways: rehabilitating women who
have been rescued from the sex trade,
building relationships with women
currently working in the sex industry
in order to help them escape, and preventing
women from getting into the
business to begin with.
“We were seeing teenage girls in a
community where a lot of suicide attempts
were happening,” Moore says.
“That was due to the fact that they
never were allowed to go to school, and
so they couldn’t get a job, and then
their families just told them that they
were a burden. In their minds, their
families would just be better off if they
didn’t exist.”
Through their programs, Moore and
her team provide the women basic vocational
training and life skills. They
also work with the women’s parents to
help them understand the importance
of education. Last year, Rahab’s Rope
and its affiliates were able to open a
home for children rescued from redlight
districts.
Unlike other non-profit stores that
sell a variety of fair-trade products
from around the world, Moore says
her store is unique because almost
all of the products she sells are made
by rescued women in India. Profits
from the store cover all operational
costs and marketing costs, so she is
able to send 100 percent of donations
directly overse.
She says her message resonates with
customers because they can see the direct
connection their money has with
changing lives in India.
“We have a lot of people who come in
the store who have never heard of us,
and once they hear the story they go,
‘Oh, well I can’t leave without buying
something,’” she says.
In addition to non-profit, causebased
fashion businesses, an increasing
number of for-profit businesses
are working to align themselves
with a message. Well-known brands
like TOM’s and Target’s FEED line
[52] Alice April 2016
brought cause fashion to popular attention,
but smaller companies are
working to bring change to the fashion
industry by going beyond sweatshops
and synthetic fabrics.
The sustainable fashion company
Zady, based in New York City, calls
itself “a lifestyle destination for conscious
consumers.” The company assembles
its clothing in the United
States using ethically sourced materials
and environmentally-friendly manufacturing
processes.
Zady was established in 2013 by
friends Soraya Darabi and Maxine
Bédat, who felt disconnected from the
clothes they were buying. They began
their company by selling products from
ethical brands and telling the story behind
how the garments were made. In
2014, the company began manufacturing
and selling its own line.
UA student Lindsay Rieland worked
as a marketing intern for Zady in the
summer of 2015. The senior marketing
major says she was drawn to
the company because of their values
and the opportunity to help people
through business.
“Zady really appreciates transparency
in the supply chain,” Rieland says.
“So you know that the shirt on your
back is coming from artisans
that are paid enough
and treated well, and
they’re using raw materials
that aren’t killing the
environment.”
Rieland says she
knew very little about
the importance of sustainable
fashion before
she began working at Zady but now
has a new appreciation for the benefits
of making informed purchases.
While Zady’s line is more expensive
than what she calls “fast fashion”
brands, she says the long-term benefits
for the environment, workers and
consumer outweigh the temporary
cost disparity.
“These days it’s so easy to go into
Forever 21 or H&M and buy something
that you know you’re only going
to wear once,” she says. “A lot of
people don’t think about why these
clothes are so cheap. Why are we buying
something that’s $2? I mean, yeah,
it’s cheap, but what are the impacts on
the whole world?”
Zady Relationship Manager Navah
Rosenbaum says being transparent
about the process of producing their
clothing helps customers feel more
connected to their purchases.
“There’s really a crisis, I think, in
how things are getting made,” Rosenbaum
says. “Similar to the food industry
where we were really disconnected
from where our food came from and
then as brands like Whole Foods came
along and taught consumers to think
about those things, that really opened
people’s eyes.”
Rosenbaum says Zady’s long-term
goal is to change the way consumers
think about fashion and its global effects.
Other companies, she says, have
looked to Zady as an example of how to
maintain a profitable brand while upholding
higher ethical standards.
“I hope that the fashion industry
will start taking more accountability
for where products that they’re selling
“ ... the shirt on your back is
coming from artisans that are
paid enough and treated well, and
they’re using raw materials that
aren’t killing the environment.”
come from and I hope that consumers
start demanding that more and more
so that there will be a lot more transparency,”
Rosenbaum says. “And I
hope that consumers will feel empowered
to make better choices and understand
what their impact really is.”