A painting featuring two headless shop mannequins in the foreground and a rack of garments in the background.

Amelia Rader

Presbyterian Ladies' College Sydney

The Stitches You Sew

Painting

The Stitches You Sew comments on the glamourised, inhuman and automated nature of the unethical fashion industry that so many of us unknowingly support. It represents the process from the collection of raw materials, production of basic fabrics and construction of products, through the people who make the clothes to the final stage – the shopfronts. You as the consumer have the power to stitch approximately 170 million people more tightly into this harmful and inhumane cycle. In each portrait a worker fixes their gaze on the audience, leaving an inescapable responsibility to be conscious of who makes your clothes.