Rough trade

from the Guardian

Ethical fashion pioneers may have to compete with the profit-obsessed high street but they still believe they are on the wave of the future, writes Matilda Lee

The best kept secret of any department store or fashion boutique is its troupe of soothsayers: the (mainly) women whose job it is - thanks to their skill, experience and sheer gut instinct - to figure out what consumers want to wear. As stores' creative directors or fashion buyers, they are trusted with million pound hunches to suss out the next "must haves" - be it by designer, cut, colour or hemline.

Buyers not only decide what is on offer, they also are responsible for who will make the product, where it will be made, and how fast it must reach the shops. Their decisions impact upon the lives and livelihoods of people thousands of miles away (90% of clothes in the UK are imported) who gin, spin, dye, cut, knit, weave, sew, trim, press and package clothes on their way to the British high street.

Such an impact is not always the most favourable. "The reality in the fashion business is, right, what's available? I want it quick and I'm not bothered how it gets here," says Salvatore Pignataro, the UK purchasing and sourcing manager at Traidcraft, a development charity that "fights poverty through trade" and a former fashion buyer himself.

Lacking industry-wide buying practices and legislation, buyers may be left with the advice of their corporate social responsibility departments or bodies such as the Ethical Trading Initiative to avoid supporting sweatshop labour or other practices harmful to people or the environment. The industry may be aware of the issues, but that does not mean a change in practice.

"A buyer's remit is to make money. There is tension between the end result, which is profit and sales, versus doing the right thing," says Sim Scavazza, a former brand director at Miss Selfridge who is now creative director at Adili.com, an online ethical fashion and homeware shop.

Scavazza, a defector from the conventional fashion business, admits it is difficult to build a fashion brand that tries to be ethical. "Coming from the high street, it is easy to look back and think: we had access to such a big supply base. Now we have to check every single point of the supply chain. It's frustrating, but you have to begin somewhere,' she says.

Adili is working on an own-label womenswear collection for 2009, but for now it is a one-stop portal for a wide range of eco and ethical fashion brands - chosen as much for their aesthetic qualities as whether they adhere to sustainability criteria such as Fairtrade, organic or recycled fabrics.

One jewellery brand they stock, Made, was created by the Italian-born Cristina Cilisino, another refugee from the high street. Having spent 20 years in a business where "buyers were asking me to make cheap copies of Italian designs in the far east and screw the supplier," a trip to Africa made her want to do something that would help, not harm, the people at the vulnerable end of the trade. Made brings together influential designers to design jewellery that is then produced by disadvantaged groups in Nairobi, Kenya.

Made doesn't work with middlemen, thus generating more profit for the 32 artisans who own a stake in the jewellery workshop. Five percent of profits are spent on improving local schools and sanitation.

Cisilino and other fairtrade and eco-fashion pioneers, such as People Tree's Safia Minney, have done the legwork setting up ethical supply chains and building relationships with their suppliers, proving to high street buyers that this type of sourcing is possible. But it does mean changing a number of common practices, such as just-in time sourcing, which allows stores to offer a constantly revolving carousel of fashions - up to 20 "seasons" a year.

The founder of People Tree, Safia Minney, says: "We start from a producer group, see what traditional skills they have and build it up." It can take between three or five years to make a producer group commercially viable.

People Tree works with 3,000 artisans around the world, whose income, by maintaining traditional skills such as handweaving, they have in some cases helped to double. "Handweaving employs 10 million people in India - it is the 2nd biggest employer after agriculture', Minney says.

People Tree came to the attention of Claire Hamer, when, as a junior buyer, she was researching how to get Fairtrade accreditation for Topshop's own brand of ethically made wear. "The Fairtrade Foundation wanted to make sure we were committed, so accreditation took a year and a half. I didn't want to sit around, so we decided on putting People Tree in our flagship Oxford Circus store," she says.