Meeting with fashion designer and professor of Liberal Arts Reet Aus

12 April at 14.15-15.45 (Ülikooli 16-214) will be a meeting with fashion designer, environmental activist and professor of Liberal Arts Reet Aus. Screening the documentary "Out of Fashion" by Jaak Kilmi and Lennart Laberenz (2015), starring Reet Aus.

Is there a way out, or is it only greenwashing? 

Of the possibilities of improving the word by creation with Reet Aus

What kind of Earth will future generations inherit? This question has been asked more often since the United Nations adopted its seventeen Sustainable Developmental Goals in 2015.

In this light, the UNESCO Chair on Applied Studies of Intangible Cultural Heritage at the University of Tartu is organising a discussion meeting with the PhD-qualified fashion designer and environmental activist Reet Aus to elaborate on the possibilities of slow, sustainable and ethical fashion that could make a difference by challenging the global production and consumption patterns to pave ways towards a future with acknowledged responsibilities and reduced inequalities. In this future, products have not lost their value, and people who produce them do not experience physical abuse or 80-hour working weeks. In this future, children go to school instead of working to fulfil the Global North´s growing desire for cheap things. As the Visiting Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Tartu, Reet Aus has invited her audience to discuss and question the consumer-oriented world, aiming to raise environmental awareness and promote more sustainable consumption choices.

These reflections are preceded by the screening of the documentary “Out of Fashion” (2015) by Jaak Kilmi and Lennart Laberenz, depicting Reet Aus´s ambitious plans to change the fashion industry at the forefront of consumption rallies as well as among the producers of toxic waste. This documentary follows her journey from Tallinn through the fashion stages of Europe and the cotton plantations of South America and right into the epicentre of mass production in Bangladesh from 2009 till 2014.