The Social Outfit
We all do crazy things to achieve our goals. Some people spend years preparing themselves for the Olympics, getting up at 5am every day to hone their bodies through punishing Rocky-style training regimens. Others devote their spare time to hitting the Random Article button on Wikipedia, hoping they’ll retain enough useless facts to win a lifetime supply of mildly tainted whiskey at pub trivia (we won’t name names). And Jackie Ruddock, founder of ethical fashion label The Social Outfit, spent an entire year in 2010/2011 wearing clothes by 1980s icon Ken Done to raise money for fellow label The Social Studio.
“I started with 40 items. Ken donated items and people from around Australia donated gear and let me borrow it,” says Ruddock. “People I’ve never met donated clothes and money. This worked because so many people supported the idea and came along for the 1980s Ken Done fashion ride.”
The project, called ‘What Ken Be Done’, ended up raising over $25,000 for the The Social Studio, which provides employment and training opportunities in Melbourne for recent migrants and people from refugee backgrounds. Their clothing is beautiful, locally designed, and free from lots of the nasties involved with ‘fast fashion’. All the fabric is reclaimed and up-cycled material gathered from local industry, the workers are paid a fair and liveable wage, plus the business aims to produce as little waste as humanly possible.
The whole operation is ethical and sustainable enough for the Captain Planet seal of approval (or it would be if he hadn’t retired back in ’96 due to the stresses and strains of fighting ruthless environmental terrorism). In a world where we’re encouraged to buy $8 polyester nightmares from dodgy discount shops that fall apart after one machine wash, this approach is refreshing: what if our clothes were made using fair labour arrangements? What if we bought a few quality pieces, instead of adding that 500th piece of cheap garbage to our disgraceful floordrobes? What if you never had to confront another unravelling cut-price jumper that’s already begging to be punted into the closest wheelie bin, even though it’s only six months old?
“In the process of ‘What Ken Be Done’ I learnt more and more about what The Social Studio did in terms of training and employment, and I loved their use of creativity and community building. I was living in Sydney, and The Social Studio was in Melbourne. What would happen if we replicated their creative work with people from new migrant and refugee communities here?” says Ruddock.
After her year of living Done-gerously turned into such a ripsnorting philanthropy success, it’s not hard to see why Ruddock decided to have a crack at her own ethical fashion project (frankly we’re wondering if we should have a go too). “By the end of that year we’d amassed a community of supporters here in Sydney,” she says. “A number of us agreed to take the challenge, and after two and half years of hard work, we opened the doors to The Social Outfit in Newtown in June 2014. Like many ideas, it started slowly, and it took a lot of effort and a lot of people to actually get the idea off the ground.”
Ruddock’s remix of the ethical fashion studio concept is a bean-to-bar process that takes place entirely in the Inner West of Sydney. “We collaboratively design and create all our garments,” she says. “Our fabric comes from two sources: excess donated by the fashion industry, and digitally printed silk produced by The Social Studio in Melbourne. So we might use swimming suit lycra donated by Seafolly, or a silk crepe from Alice McCall or Ginger & Smart.”
In addition to their other commendable works, The Social Outfit also provides a recovery program for Sydney’s fabric packrats that helps them manage the debilitating urge to warehouse material they won’t ever use but can’t bear to throw away. “Each year we run a fabric donation drive where the community donates their larger pieces of quality fabric to our store. I think there are quite a few people in Sydney’s creative community who collect fabrics over the years and now they know where they can give them a good home,” says Ruddock.
“A regular sight at The Social Outfit is to see us all talking to one another around the cutting table, while we look over the donated fabric and our silk designs. We save fabric from ending up in landfill, and customers enjoy the collaboration across fashion houses.”
Naw Esther, a sewing technician, emphasises The Social Outfit’s environment of collaboration and skills-sharing as things she enjoys about her job. “Working here I get to show my skills. I’m learning one year about sewing and about the shop. I share my skills. This place is nice. Everyone is teaching each other,” she says.
All of this happens at their Newtown location, so you can actually have a stickybeak and see the pieces being made at the back of the shop – just poke your head into one of the shop fit-out’s little perspex windows, which peek into the workshop. Compared to standard garment manufacture, that’s some radical transparency – many large clothing companies claim they don’t even know what conditions their products are made under because there’s so much sub-contracting and sub-sub-contracting in their supply chains. It’s a bit like laws and sausages: the process of making mass market clothes is so gross that nobody wants to watch. Dodgy, harmful and illegal practices are rife.
In contrast, The Social Outfit runs on harnessing the individual skills and backgrounds of its employees. “Our sewing technicians have come to Australia as refugees and new migrants, and each of them brings a wealth of talent and knowledge with rich traditions in sewing and tailoring,” says Ruddock. “One of the highlights of our work is to watch people from countries across the world, often speaking different languages, sit side by side and share their knowledge together. As Ken Done says, the great thing about creativity is that it doesn’t need the same language.”
New migrants and refugees face many unique challenges in Australia, often on top of traumatic experiences in their home countries and the difficult process of migration itself. Public attitudes toward migrants and refugees, especially those from linguistically diverse backgrounds, can be outright hostile. Migration is a tough row to hoe at the best of times, but this can make finding a job about as likely as winning America’s Next Top Model. Initiatives like The Social Outfit aren’t just a nice idea: they’re critical sources of social inclusion, income and ongoing support.
“Everyone working here is very good. I’m happy here working. The Social Outfit is like family members, gives a good feeling,” says Jabael, an employee at The Social Outfit. “People respect each other a lot. My English is little, but here I am learning, and I can ask people and they help me. I hope our work is successful, I pray.”
The clothes and accessories coming out of The Social Outfit’s twice-yearly collections are gorgeous in addition to being easy on the conscience. The digitally printed designs are eye-catching and playful, ranging from bold florals to a subtle geometric pattern that, upon closer inspection, reveals itself to be a game of Pac-Man. Even Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde are a product of The Social Outfit’s all-in approach to teamwork: the print is part of a collaboration with Celia Morris, whose legendary local label Dragstar has a shop just down the road. Carla Zampatti, who can only be described as A Huge Deal in the world of Australian fashion, became an ambassador for The Social Outfit in 2014 and has donated silks and sequinned pieces from her own businesses.
“Our community silk prints are especially exciting,” says Ruddock. “For our first birthday we worked with five women from the Karen-Burmese community to create a digital print celebrating the amazing weaving and looming talents of the Karen people. Instead of the print being produced in the traditional heavy-weight rayon, we printed it onto silk, perfect for Sydney’s warmer climate.”
You can’t get much better than that as a reflection of the best bits of Australian multiculturalism, except maybe if you dressed a kangaroo in the clothes and it hopped down the street singing the national anthem in five different languages.
“Time and time again we have seen that the people who come to The Social Outfit are keen to contribute and want to settle safely in Australia,” says Ruddock. “When there is a huge amount of change and uncertainty in your life, it’s a real benefit when you can share your own skills and feel like you’re part of something bigger… we want to contribute to the conversation of social inclusion and refugee rights by letting people see, first hand, the skills and talents of the community, and working together to build a resilient multicultural Sydney.”
In 2015 the onsite sewing school partnered with Sydney TAFE to provide Certificate III in clothing production, in order to offer better training to their staff. “We know the fashion industry is a fiercely competitive business, and manufacturing in Australia is in decline,” says Ruddock. “But there’s so much fashion to share! The Social Outfit relies on us coming together to make success continue. We’d like to employ and train more people, and build a robust social enterprise.”
Ruddock isn’t the only person who wants The Social Outfit to succeed: the organisation has received generous support from business and community groups, as well as coming out ahead of their goals in crowdfunding campaigns. These achievements reflect how truly cool their concept is, and the enthusiasm it inspires in strangers, especially given how easy it is to set up a failed Kickstarter and become a global laughing-stock for half an hour.
“Our work so far makes me incredibly hopeful about Australia’s creative future – and all the people who have stepped up to share their own talents with us,” says Ruddock, and it’s tough not to agree.
“We all own The Social Outfit. I think of this shop as belonging to each of us,” says sewing technician Atauollah. “Every day I come to work and do my best, because it will help us all.”
Head to thesocialoutfit.org for more information.
