^{August 10, 2020}

The Love Local campaign from some of New Zealand's 's top fashion designers is raising funds to invest in the future of local manufacturing - here's why that's important.

Finding positives in this scary, stressful year is glorious. One such positive is New Zealanders celebrating local more than ever before. Supporting local brands, local creativity, local craft and manufacturing.

For consumers and manufacturers alike, sustainability has to become a core tenant in all our decisions and buying local is intrinsic to these decisions.

So far so good, but the scary thing is that decades of globalisation and fast fashion driving prices down through offshore production has resulted in a very fragile, very small local clothing industry made up of an ageing workforce and antiquated machinery.

I liken it to an endangered species, and without support and T.L.C. our New Zealand manufacturing base could become extinct.

I co-founded Mindful Fashion with Ruby's Emily Miller-Sharma in early 2019 to begin to address some of these challenges of our unique local industry. Our goal was to unite the local industry in a way that hadn’t been done before, to share challenges, problem solve and reverse a shrinking industry.

Read more from our Co-founder Kate Sylvester here