As six Turkish women, we call ourselves Witches of the East Collective.’ We are a non-profit, ecofeminist design collective aiming to repair the relationship between humans and nature through ethical, symbiotic, circular, and slow ways of thinking and designing. We are upcyclers, biodesigners, farmers, ethical foragers, and eco-printers whose instruments are textiles, clothing, spaces, and living organisms. We act as an agent and catalyst for interconnected, just, symbiotic, solidaristic, collaborative, slow, embracing, and circular ways of surviving, communicating, and co-creating. With an intention to repair, care, heal, and reform the colonial, patriarchal and unjust fashion system, we produce multidisciplinary works of fashion, material, methods, and knowledge.

For our GFA24 hosting, we organised an online event to discuss a “sympoetic fashion praxis” by taking the problem of “displacement” as a point of departure. Displacement here refers to -but is not limited to- natural disasters, global and climate crises, migration, loss of biodiversity, and growth of industrial and discarded food, textile, and clothing waste.

Watch the full recording on the GFA Youtube channel.