Fashion’s toxic trail: The rag trade’s role in river pollution

Models don masks during the fashion show to highlight the environmental toll of Java’s rag trade.

Wearing gas masks and designer dresses, models paraded down a catwalk against a backdrop of polluted, rubbish-strewn paddy fields in central Indonesia, a colourful condemnation of the fashion industry’s role in causing environmental devastation.

The women marched up and down in black rubber boots on a runway of wooden planks to dance music, brandishing banners that read “Say no to fashion with a toxic trail”.