Wear Your Values - Human Rights Foundation

About

Wear Your Values raises awareness of the fashion industry’s complicity in human rights abuses worldwide.

The fashion industry is one of the world’s largest economies and employs millions of people globally. Authoritarian countries often house the most labor-intensive stages of production, leaving workers extremely susceptible to human rights violations without any path of recourse.

Since 2017, HRF’s Wear Your Values (WYV) program has encouraged dialogue about human rights in the fashion industry. Through innovative public awareness campaigns and educational exhibitions, WYV aims to promote transparency in global supply chains and bring awareness to the hidden social costs of the industry.

HRF also highlights brands and designers who are ethically using local materials and labor, as well as those who are advocating for human rights through their work. HRF wants to call for positive investments and show consumers where they can shop with a clear conscience.

Our Work

Fashion Show at Oslo Freedom Forum 2023

HRF partnered with award-winning fashion designer, Louise Xin, to host a fashion show at OFF 2023.

Discounted Lives

Discounted Lives is an installation that raises awareness about Uyghur forced labor.

Uyghur Forced Labor Checker

HRF’s award-winning Google Chrome plug-in extension helps shoppers keep Uyghur forced labor out of their shopping carts.

Uncomfortable Truth

The Uyghur Region, known to the Chinese regime as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is located to the northwest of China.

Our Strategy

Public Education

We raise awareness and encourage dialogue at events such as Fashion Week worldwide and the Oslo Freedom Forum.

Targeted Advocacy

We engage with consumers and brands to promote human rights and transparency in the fashion industry.

Creative Campaigns

We execute campaigns highlighting the fashion industry’s complicity in human rights abuses worldwide.

News & Media

Media

Jul 10, 2024

26 million tons of clothing end up in China’s landfills each year, propelled by fast fashion

At a factory in Zhejiang province on China’s eastern coast, two mounds of discarded cotton clothing and bed linens, loosely separated into dark and light colors, pile up on a workroom floor.

Media

Apr 26, 2024

San Francisco Casts Lens on Art, Fashion and Activism

SFMOMA holds latest Art Bash fundraiser, while couture history and ethical fashion get the spotlight at the de Young, courtesy of FiSF and Wear Your Values.

Media

Sep 15, 2023

Dramatic projections beamed onto buildings during New York Fashion Week shame clothing industry for using Uyghur forced labor

A top nonprofit has beamed striking images onto buildings during New York Fashion week to shame the clothing industry for using Uyghur labor.

Media

Sep 8, 2023

Your Favorite Fashion Brand Is Using Slave Labor. Wake Up!

In August, Bloomberg reported what we at the Human Rights Foundation already knew: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was sending in bots to attack our award-winning Uyghur Forced Labor Checker to deter you from downloading it and discovering the truth behind where your clothes are made and, more importantly, who makes them.

Media

Aug 24, 2023

Google Axes Bad Reviews of Tracker Exposing Uyghur Forced Labor

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has removed hundreds of negative reviews for a tracker

Media

Jul 15, 2023

Miami-based clothing company has a mission that goes beyond fashion

During his 2018 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Dr. Denis Mukwege described some of his first days at Panzi Hospital in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic Congo.

Media

Jun 18, 2023

Designer and activist Louise Xin urges us to ‘wear our values’ with her latest fashion show

Two years after the designer’s first show and Vogue Scandinavia debut, we catch up with Louise Xin as she continues to change the world one dress at a time

Media

Feb 9, 2022

Why Are People Boycotting the 2022 Winter Olympics?

The U.S. and nine other countries are carrying out a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics. It’s a symbolic gesture, but what obligation do regular people have to boycott by not tuning in?

Why Fashion & Human Rights

Media

Aug 4, 2026

Don’t Be Fooled: How To Vet Ethical Brands

Understanding whether a brand is truly ethical and focused on impact, especially when it comes to avoiding forced labor and exploitative labor practices, is not easy.

Media

May 11, 2026

Why is Forced Labor So Prominent in Authoritarian Regimes?

The first piece of our series introduced a harsh reality: the clothes we wear every day are often produced within a global system where human rights are regularly violated and workers have limited ability to refuse or exit abusive conditions.

Media

Apr 22, 2026

What Does Authoritarianism Have to Do with Fashion?

The clothes we wear rarely tell the full story of how they were made. Behind a shirt or pair of jeans is a global supply chain that spans farms, factories, and lives.

Awards

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Other Programs

HRF’s AI for Individual Rights program is the world’s first to support open-source, privacy-protecting artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the hands of dissidents and expose how AI is used by autocrats as a tool of repression.

Art is a powerful tool for dissent in closed societies, provoking constructive dialogue and creating space for debate beyond mainstream bodies of political discourse. Authoritarian governments around the world recognize the power of art as a conduit of change and systematically persecute, repress, or censor artists to silence political dissent.

All governments, especially those of dictators, frequently debase, manipulate, demonetize, and surveil currencies, confiscate property, and freeze the bank accounts of people they don’t like. Dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists, and nonprofit organizations in authoritarian countries face enormous obstacles just to receive donations and pay bills.

So for many years, North Korean defectors have organized efforts to smuggle outside info into North Korea on USB drives to counter Kim Jong-un’s constant propaganda.