San Antonio’s fashion community is stitching style and social justice together on Saturday, February 21. Lucha con Fuerza will take over Basila Frocks at 502 N Zarzamora St in support of Fuerza Unida, a grassroots labor organization founded by South Side garment workers more than three decades ago .The all-ages event includes an archival pop-up curated by UTSA Special Collections and a runway presentation titled Hilo de la Justicia (The Thread of Justice), featuring exclusive pieces produced by Fuerza Unida and lead seamstress Enedina Montez. Texas Fashion Industry Initiative (TFII) partnered with floral exchange and mutual aid initiative Flower Friends to pay tribute to the homegrown labor movement.In 1990, Levi Strauss Co. closed one of its three San Antonio manufacturing plants, leaving many primarily Mexican and Mexican American women without severance pay. Outraged by the lack of support, founder Viola Casares joined with Petra Mata, now the organization’s executive director, and hundreds of other workers to demand compensation and accountability. Through boycotts, hunger strikes, and protests that stretched from the early 1990s into the mid-2000s, Fuerza Unida became a lasting voice for garment workers’ rights in San Antonio and beyond.“Supporting Fuerza Unida means honoring the legacy of the women in San Antonio who organized, spoke out, and fought for fair wages and respect in the garment industry,” says TFII’s President Saige Thomas. “Protecting workers’ rights isn’t just advocacy — it’s preserving the foundation our fashion community was built on.”Monica Sosa, co-curator of Lucha con Fuerza and a founder of Flower Friends, calls the yearlong effort to produce the event “a testimony to the love we share for community and each other.”“Fuerza Unida is a representation of the power we have when we come together and advocate for ourselves,” Sosa says.Fuerza Unida remains active in the San Antonio community, providing youth fellowships, health and wellness clubs, free sewing and skill-building workshops, and what it describes as the longest-running food distribution program on the Southside. It’s also a valuable resource for locals who want to step away from fast fashion. The organization hires displaced garment workers, many of whom are elderly, to provide custom clothing and alterations at a fair wage. It’s an affordable, climate-friendly approach to style that reduces clothing waste in landfills."Throughout the years that we've had our Costura Workshop, we've seen that people come to us for alterations to garments due to a lack of means to buy new, explains Mata. “We also see that garments made cheaply don't provide a quality fit for people in our community. So, they come to us for affordable alterations to make their garments fit better."Lucha con Fuerza runs from 4-7 pm at the historic West Side building. Tickets are $45, and capacity is limited. Organizers encourage guests to RSVP in advance and arrive on time. ...read more read less