Yesterday, the Guinness World Record for the Largest Gathering of People Wearing Underpants was broken, and BCSF was there to witness it. Pants to Poverty, the campaigning movement/underwear retailer, used the promise of free pants, bacon butties and shots of whisky to entice 116 brave souls to bare (almost) all at chilly St Pancras International. They claimed the record to the rallying cry of “We love pants, we hate poverty!”
The event attracted a fair amount of media (including an unusually high proportion of Japanese TV stations) and public attention. The message seemed to get round to most morning commuters that these seemingly insane people in their underwear were actually there for a good cause.
With a mission to “rid the world of bad pants” Pants to Poverty has managed to function as a campaigning organisation and a “sexy underwear retailer” at the same time, using the most simple everyday object to mobilise a large number of supporters. Born out of the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005, the company sources organic cotton from tribal cotton farmers in India and manufactures at a factory that pays all its staff above minimum wage, and manages inputs (water, chemicals) and outputs (waste) sustainably. All proceeds from the pants go towards establishing child-labour-free cotton programmes in developing countries.
As far as the pants themselves go, the consensus is that they’re pretty good – comfortable, high-quality and long-lasting.
