Fashion Revolution Closes London HQ, Shifting Power to National Affiliates

Nearly 12 years after asking "Who Made My Clothes?" loudly enough to become the number one trending hashtag on Twitter, Fashion Revolution faced a harder question about itself: who can sustain a global movement from a single London address?

Fashion Revolution CIC, the Community Interest Company that has coordinated the world's largest fashion activism network since 2014, confirmed it is winding down its London headquarters. The organization shared the decision on LinkedIn rather than issuing a formal press release or splashy social media post, deliberately timing the quiet announcement to avoid detracting from Fashion Revolution Week.

The move dissolves the central UK entity in favor of decentralized governance among its global affiliates. Groups in countries including Australia, Brazil, Kenya, Spain and the United States will gain greater autonomy as the organization transitions away from a model built around London coordination. Founders Orsola de Castro and Carry Somers launched the organization in 2014 to commemorate the more than 1,130 garment workers who died in the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh the previous year. Both stepped away from their directorial roles in 2022.

De Castro has maintained that the decentralized approach aligns with the original vision for local teams to lead. The movement's reach supports that argument. The #WhoMadeMyClothes campaign garnered responses from over 3,800 global brands. Fashion Revolution Week, which evolved from a single day into a longer period for grassroots organizing, policymaker engagement and awareness-raising, begins April 24 on the anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster, with "collective action" as this year's theme. Seven days of action, including Mend in Public Day on April 25, will unfold across more than 80 geographies.

The structural shift is also a frank acknowledgment of the funding pressure now squeezing fashion's activist infrastructure. Fashion Revolution is not alone: the closure follows that of Remake, the US organization behind the #PayUp and #NoNewClothes campaigns, which shut down earlier this year, citing insufficient sustainable funding. Remake founder Ayesha Barenblat wrote in her farewell message that "over the past two years, funding for labor organizing and climate justice work has declined sharply," adding that "the political and economic landscape has shifted, with growing pushback against the corporate accountability measures we fought so hard to establish."

For a movement built on the premise that transparency is non-negotiable, the choice of a LinkedIn post over a press statement speaks volumes about how carefully Fashion Revolution is managing perception heading into its most visible week of the year. Whether a leaner, federated model can sustain the international pressure campaigns that a centralized CIC once coordinated remains the genuinely open question, and one the global affiliates will now have to answer for themselves.