The We Wear Fair Trade Campaign

The gist

Project Date: April 2019
Client: Fair Trade USA
Industry: Nonprofit – International Development

Rebranded fair trade fashion with an editorial look book featuring a range of people modeling Fair Trade Certified clothes.
30 high-profile brands participated
Circulation = 200M

Idea

The Fair Trade USA marketing team wanted to bring awareness to the growing collection of Fair Trade Certified factory-made clothing, including why the certification exists and what it stands for.

Challenge

To pull this off, fair trade fashion needed a new image. They needed to retire the dated perception of fair trade clothing consisting only of “granola” fashion styles to appeal to a wider range of fashion sensibilities beyond the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) consumer.

The perception of fair trade fashion no longer reflected the diversity of fair trade advocates. In order to shatter the stereotype of the type of person who wears fair trade, it was important to show people from all walks of life expressing their individuality through fair trade clothing.

Solution

The solution was We Wear Fair Trade—fair trade’s first digital lookbook.

The lookbook features Fair Trade Certified apparel modeled by six contemporary human and environmental rights advocates, styled by renowned fashion director, stylist, and fair trade advocate Rachael Wang. It was launched soon after two mainstream fashion brands, J.Crew and Madewell, announced fair trade commitments, and debuted during Fashion Revolution Week (April 22–28, 2019) on the sixth anniversary of the tragic Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh. The lookbook also showcases the stories of three Fair Trade Certified factory workers behind the clothes and highlights the importance of safe working conditions and sustainable practices in clothing supply chains.

We targeted campaign ads to women ages 25–55 with interest in fashion and sustainability. One major challenge was the price point: Fair trade clothing costs “a fair price,” which isn’t always budget-friendly. We needed to figure out how to provide options to those who are interested in shopping fair trade but may not be able to afford to do so—particularly fair trade’s strong, active college and post-graduate age advocate base. To meet this challenge, we created a promotional guide as part of the campaign, featuring exclusive discount codes for fair trade brands.

Stylist: Rachael Wang
Photographer: Justin French
Visual Designer: Natalie Rogers

collage of four pages made for the We Wear Fair Trade campaign — Image: Natalie Rose Rogers

My process

I brainstormed and wireframed the page layout with the visual designer; wrote the campaign messaging guide, page copy, and interview questions for the models; and built the pages themselves in the CMS.

An interview with Sarain Fox about her style, passions, and what fair trade fashion means to her. — Interview questions were designed to get to the heart of how fair trade advocacy fits into the models’ unique personalities and world views. By asking the same three questions to all seven models, the range of answers they returned demonstrated the diversity of fair trade advocates.

Results

More than 30 fair trade clothing brands participated in the campaign, including Patagonia, Madewell, and OBEY Clothing. The campaign was picked up and circulated by Yahoo! Finance, TeenVogue, Refinery 29, Fashionista, and more (total circulation of 200M). Bounce rate for the models’ pages was 43% lower than the site average.

This lookbook looks so great, so exciting to see the brands coming together like this. It would be amazing if you guys could do this for new launches coming up.
Colleen Kratofil, Style Writer/Reporter, People Magazine

It looks amazing! Even better than I had hoped. The people involved are so incredible, this is brilliant.
Jessica Andrews, Deputy Fashion Director, Refinery29