This interview, conducted by Leah Wise with Tavie Meier, originally appeared on StyleWise Blog, a wonderful website with an incredibly thoughtful, nuanced and intelligent approach to ethical living.

Ethical fashion has a racial representation problem. While we celebrate the women, predominantly women of color, who make our clothing once a year during Fashion Revolution – and maybe a couple more times around the Holidays – in almost all cases, we see white faces and white cultural expectations plastered across Instagram, in marketing campaigns, and in product photos. This dichotomy hurts people of color because it always establishes white people as saviors and people of color as mere beneficiaries of care.

The reality is far more complicated than that, which is why I reached out to several women in the ethical fashion space to ask difficult questions about representation. I’ll be sharing a couple more interviews later on, but today I’d like to introduce you to Tavie Meier. Tavie and I have known each other for a couple of years, having worked together on collaborations when she owned an ethical fashion brand, MadeFAIR. I encourage you to read this interview with openness and understanding, then voice your thoughts in the comments.

StyleWise: You’re a person of color working in an industry that is still fraught with a white savior complex. I think you’ve mentioned before that white people in this space are sometimes seemingly oblivious to the fact that your lived experience is not theirs. Can you elaborate on that dynamic and talk about the issues in the messaging and attitudes of the fair trade and ethical fashion movement?

Tavie Meier: I grew up in Littleton, Colorado and was often the token minority within my friend group. For example, I worked at a movie theater, and the staff dressed-up as James Bond characters for The World is Not Enough premiere. My manager assigned me Solitaire (Jane Seymour in yellow face). I’ve also been Princess Jasmine, Scary Spice, and as recently as last year, I was expected to be Missandei for a Game of Thrones party. (I wanted to be Margery Tyrell.) Costumes seem harmless, but it’s illustrative of how we perceive “the other.” I’m more white European than I am Chinese, Arab, or Black, yet I’m still considered “non-white” because of my skin color.

It’s like a dripping faucet: the drips, themselves, aren’t bad. They get more annoying as time goes on and soon you’re fixing your faucet with a sledgehammer.

Fashion Revolution and #whomademyclothes is ethical fashion’s dripping faucet. It perpetuates the racial divide by showing predominately brown women as the benefactors of white women’s money. It’s a glamorized “White Man’s Burden,” believing – as a society – poor people require intervention and oversight. It strips them of their fundamental right to privacy.

Sure, sometimes US-based studios post photos of themselves for Fash Rev Week, but those instances are small businesses piggy-backing off Fash Rev’s marketing reach. If I’m purchasing a piece from a small studio, I already know who the designer is.

SW: Can you speak more to your point on Fashion Revolution? Is there a way to participate without causing further harm?

TM: I worked on Dorsu‘s Fash Rev campaign this year, knowing the co-founders, Hanna and Kunthear, wanted to avoid the racial divide we see in the #imadeyourclothes photos that would inundate Instagram that week. The idea of the “How to be an everyday advocate” was a sort-of sequel to Hanna’s past Fash Rev article on using the power you already have.  What Fash Rev is missing is an actual call-to-action that will have measurable results beyond social media impressions, because the easiest way to get an Instagram like is to show your “generosity,” and in ethical fashion’s current climate, that is really just veiled racism.

SW: It is my theory that part of ethical fashion’s lack of inclusivity has to do not only with continuing white privilege, but with the fact that the fair trade movement as we think of it today was founded by white Evangelical Christians who, however inadvertently, adopted a colonialist mindset when working with artisans outside the US. This implicit/explicit framing attracts white people because we are less able to see the outlines of that problematic framework.

TM: Let me first acknowledge that I wouldn’t exist if not for Food for the Hungry, an Evangelical INGO that my dad worked for in 1980, when he met my mom in a Thai refugee camp for Khmer Rouge survivors.

Having said that, I have a well-documented dislike of charity for reasons that required a 2000-word guest post on the Note Passer. I don’t think the act of charitable giving is bad – it’s charity structures that are cyclical and unproductive. The reason I switched from charity to ethical fashion isn’t too different than a lot of ethical fashion founders who have rooted their mission in the New Testament. To be Christian means to be charitable, and, ultimately, they’re combining this fundamental aspect of who they are with capitalism – a cornerstone of the United States.

You know Christian-based brands because they use words like hope and peace in their names, and often quote Bible verses within a click of a landing page. Because charity imagery has historically been colonial (white spokesperson standing next to brown, malnourished person “in need”), some ethical brands may feel they need to use this to show their customers they, too, are “doing good” by making a purchase.

Using words like hope, peace, and [gag] redemption is even more problematic than colonial imagery. Many of these brands work with makers in majority Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist countries and create an association between these countries (and their majority religions) with the absence of hope and peace, in need of “redemption” by way of making purses “designed in Texas (or wherever).” I’ve seen some that make mention they work with Christian organizations, which then makes me wonder if they feel non-Christian or secular organizations are unworthy hope, peace, and redemption, which isn’t very Christian.

SW: Some brands say that they “have to use” conventionally attractive, white women for their marketing for things to sell. Do you think this is a legitimate claim? I know that in blogging, for instance, there is some truth to the idea that you’ll be more successful if you fit certain stereotypes of attractiveness and behavior.

TM: There’s a marketing principle about how we buy things from people who look like us. It might give this claim some legitimacy, but that’s about as much credit as I’m willing to give it.

Saying they “have to use conventionally attractive, white women” means one of two things: