These black t-shirts are 10-years old and the screen-printing is as good as the day it was created for the Save the Aussie Banana awareness campaign I ran with the Australian industry.

Australia is the only Western country with a commercial banana industry and is relatively free of the world’s worst pests and diseases. It was on these grounds that Tully banana grower Len Collins led the industry campaign against Philippines banana imports.

We used creative ways to raise public awareness via a big banana giveaway at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show and a Cowboys’ rugby league home game in Townsville – see photo below right with a Cowboys’ fan, Benny Banana and Jane Milburn, taken by my friend Chrissy Maguire in 2004.

After an extended import risk analysis by Australian authorities, the quarantine bar was set high to prevent disease incursions (such as black sigatoka, moko, bunchy top, freckle) and imports have not proceeded on this basis.

This has led me to be part of a global Fashion Revolution which has April 24 – the anniversary of the Rana Plaza clothing factory fire – earmarked as a day for everyone to think about where clothes came from and who made them. The Fashion Revolution Day team includes Carry Somers and Orsola de Castro who say:

• We want you to wear an item of clothing inside out because we want people to change the way they look at the clothes they wear. Be curious
• We want you to start asking ‘who made my clothes?’ in order to initiate human connections throughout the supply chain. Find out.
• We want hundreds of thousands of people to make that gesture which will, in turn, raise awareness within the fashion industry that they need to continue the process of change. Do something about it.

My doing is upcycling – and today it’s two banana drama t-shirts (they were made in China but printed in Brisbane with Save the Aussie Banana on the front and No Imports on the back). Years ago I cropped the arms and shortened the length to groove up the top, and the t-shirt material just rolls up in response. For the skirt, I turned a larger t-shirt upside down then shaped it in at the waist and created a casing for elastic. I then cut along the shoulder seams and sleeves using pinking shears and trimmed off the angles to make an irregular hemline. The writing on the skirt upside down but it continues to make a strong statement against imports.