“There’s nothing pretty about wage theft.”
Love Island’s Brett Staniland has lead a protest over fast fashion outside Molly-Mae Hague’s PrettyLittleThing show.
Molly-Mae, who works as Creative Director for PLT, showed off her latest collection with the fashion retailer at the Londoner Hotel on Wednesday night.
The 22-year-old’s partner, Tommy Fury, was also in attendance to show his support, along with her former Love Island co-star Maura Higgins.
Protestors gathered outside the hotel near Leicester Square to highlight sustainability issues around fast fashion and call for fairer wages for PLT’s factory workers, which is owned by Boohoo Group.
Brett, a fashion model who appeared on 2021’s Love Island, held a sign that read: “There’s nothing pretty about wage theft.”
“The fashion industry doesn’t get taken seriously with the climate crisis. Boohoo Group don’t care about anyone, and they contribute more to the crisis than any other fashion brand in the UK,” he told OK! Magazine.
“They use women of colour at the front of their campaigns to mask women of colour in their supply chains that they don’t pay. It’s exploitation from where ever you look at it.
“They don’t care.”
Another sign listed Molly Mae’s huge yearly wage as Creative Director and compared it with a factory worker’s wage, concluding that we all have “the same 24 hours in a day” – a reference to the recent controversy surrounding her.
In a YouTube podcast, the influencer had said she “worked her a**e off” to achieve her success and implied that anyone could do the same, regardless of their financial or social status, because everyone has the same amount of hours in a day.
Her comments were heavily criticised for being tone deaf.
Following Wednesday night’s protest, a spokesperson for PrettyLittleThing told The Mirror:
“Any suggestion that the people making clothes for PLT or boohoo group PLC brand are paid less than the minimum wage is grossly inaccurate.”
