For over a decade, the San Francisco-based advocacy group Remake served as fashion's most insistent conscience, stitching together campaigns like #PayUp and #NoNewClothes with the radical thread of accountability. Much like the early 20th-century corset reformers who argued that liberation required structural change - not just a looser fit - Remake demanded that the industry alter its very skeleton. But in late February, founder Ayesha Barenblat announced the nonprofit would close after eleven years, a casualty of what she calls "shifting priorities" in a post-2024 election landscape where funding for climate and labor justice has evaporated like a silk slip left in the sun.
Barenblat's diagnosis is sobering. Voluntary commitments, she notes, are as fleeting as a seasonal trend - think of the DEI pledges that vanished once Black Lives Matter left the headlines, or the climate goals brands quietly moved like a sagging hemline. After the election, philanthropy chilled; billionaires found cheaper access to power than a donation receipt. Tariffs and global instability made sustainability the first layer shed when markets tighten. And a creeping nativism, mirroring the isolationist impulses that once made American lingerie manufacturers shun French lace, has turned donors away from the global supply chains that stitch our clothing together.
Yet Barenblat remains skeptical of regulation as a silver bullet. She points to California's Garment Worker Protection Act - SB 62 - as a true foundation garment: it holds brands jointly liable for wage theft, targeting the root cause rather than piling on reporting requirements that enrich consultants. In an industry where the price of a single bra can hide the cost of exploited labor and cheap fossil fuels, Remake's closure is a warning. The corset of activism has loosened, but the body beneath - fashion's global, entangled workforce - still needs a new structure to hold it upright.
Originally reported by WWD