Posh Swaps Blog

Posh-swaps.com was at the Southbank Centre in London on Wednesday for the Sustainable Clothing Conference and update of the Sustainable Clothing Roadmap. The conference included entrance to Estethica, London Fashion Week’s sustainable trade show, a reception and address by Environment Minister Dan Norris.The conference brought together over 200 clothing industry representatives to discuss the ethical and environmental impacts of clothing.

One year on from the first sustainable action plan in which Posh Swaps pledged to promote recycling and reuse of clothes by encouraging clothes swapping and buying and selling of second hand clothes as well as other eco fashion and sustainable clothing. A further 40 companies and organisations have signed up to the action plan including British Retail Consortium, Ethical Fashion Forum, Forum for the Future, Levis Strauss, MADE-BY, Cotton Made in Africa, RSPCA, Society of Dyers and Colourists.

Since its creation the SCAP has brought together over 40 organisations, from high street retailers, to designers and textile manufacturers to battle the environmental and ethical impacts of ‘throw away’ fashion.  Some of the biggest names in fashion are working to take actions which will make a significant difference to the environmental footprint and social inequalities which blight some of the consumer fashion supply chain.

Many of the initiatives from the original action plan are now well underway including Tesco’s new sustainable clothing range in collaboration with From Somewhere which will launch this Spring and the Oxfam ‘Clothes Exchange’ partnership with M&S.

There was also the announcement of a £3.5 million fund to be made available over 3 years by the Responsible and Accountable Garment Sector (RAGS) fund for bids from organisations who want to make the clothing business more ethical and contribute more strongly to development in poor countries.

Over 30 international models and celebrities have stepped up to be photographed in EJF’s 2010 summer collection of designer organic cotton t-shirts by Jenny Packham, Richard Nicoll, Ciel and Alice Temperley in support of the charity’s work ending forced child labour in the cotton industry.

The organic cotton t-shirts will be available in stores internationally and will be available from EJF’s own website www.ejfoundation.org/shop for men and women for only £30 for SS10.

Cover girls and catwalk regulars including Noemie Lenoir, Noot Seear, Lui Wen, Arlenis Sosa, Lakshmi Menon, Constance Jablonski, Poppy Delevigne and Devon Aoki, have been photographed in the exclusive t-shirts for the ‘Pick Your Cotton Carefully’ campaign - with most taking part in photo shoots organised by New York based fashion photographer Eric Guillemain.

They join a stellar line up of existing supporters including Lily Cole, Coco Rocha, Elise Crombez and Sophie Ellis Bextor who have also modelled EJF’s eco-chic t-shirts.

Other designer supporters include Giles Deacon, John Rocha, Betty Jackson, Christian Lacroix, Luella, Allegra Hicks, Zandra Rhodes and Katharine Hamnett

They are designed around the theme of “childhood, lost innocence and hope” and highlight EJF’s newly released and highly anticipated report called “Slave Nation” on their campaign to end forced child labour in the world’s 3rd largest cotton exporter, Uzbekistan.

An estimated 1 million children, some as young as 10 years old, were dispatched to Uzbekistan’s cotton fields during the recent harvest. Uzbek child workers are often subjected to squalid living conditions paid little or nothing and illnesses including hepatitis and even deaths are all reported.

EJF’s t-shirts are made with organic and fairly traded Continental cotton from Turkey and printed with organic certified inks. The money raised from the sale of the t-shirts helps EJF’s work to eradicate forced child labour and the use of dangerous pesticides from cotton production.

Alice Temperley says: “I wanted to make this T shirt for the Environmental Justice Foundation, to help those poor innocent children with no way out, no dreams of their own and in order to highlight the chronic and severe exploitation across the industry.”

Juliette Williams, Director of EJF, says: “In the past few years there has been a huge international effort to try to resolve the problem of state-sponsored child labour in Uzbekistan and we’re thrilled with the support EJF has been given to bring change to this industry. But there is still some way to go and the time is now to really turn up the pressure and stop this madness.”

Buying a t-shirt or making a donation online is a positive step shoppers can take to support EJF’s work from www.ejfoundation.org - helping them protect the environment and defend human rights of vulnerable communities around the world and fashion an end to forced child labour.

The Ethical Fashion Show in Paris is the only trade show dedicated entirely to Ethical Fashion. It showcases the work of designers who respect both people and the environment. The show includes a whole range of different clothes from street and sports wear to accessories and couture from all over the world. This year it included over 100 designers in total including Ada Zandition, Bee-Bee, Bibico, Terra Plana from the UK.

The four day event which ran from the first to fourth of October also featured conferences including Fashion, field of social cohesion and Organic and fair-trade textiles: what guarantees across the supply chain? and workshops including Ethical designers’ forum: taking stock of ethical trends for the 6th edition of Ethical Fashion Show®.

estethica at London Fashion week seems to gaining pace. This time the British Fashion councils ethical initiative has added 13 new designer and 9 new labels making a total of 28 designers. estethica is all about fashion which is ethical but also achieves design excellence. Great news, we don’t think that just being ethical is enough, we want the clothes to look great as well.

We have already posted about North Circular the new label by top models with knitwear knitted by grannies using locally produced ethical wool. Other exciting new additions to estethica for this season are AJNA with a collection inspired by natures beauty and crafted by indigenous textile artisans in Peru, Nepal, Bolivia, India, as well as locally in New York in a range of eco friendly materials including The materials used are organic cotton, hemp silk, ahimsa silk(vegan wild silk), biodegradable viscose, bamboo, sasawashi(bamboo leaves and paper), pina(pineapple), abaca(banana leaf), organic wool, himalayan cashmere and indigenous alpaca. Beryl Man, designer at AJNA is also the former knitwear design director at Donna Karan.

All estethica designers adhere to at least one of the three estethica principles of fair-trade and ethical practices, organic and recycled materials. It is great to see support of recycling in the fashion industry. We love clothes swapping but there are also lots of innovative labels finding new ways to recycle and create beautiful clothes.

picture from www.londonfashionweek.co.uk

North Circular has just been shown at Esthethica this week and will lauch in October. It is a new ECO knitwear company that uses ethical wool from rescued rare breed sheep and producec by hand in the UK. The company is a collaboration between super models Lily Cole, Katherine Poulton, Central St Martins Graduate Alice Ashby and Entrepeneur Isobel Davies and uses Grannies and other local talents to produce the clothing.

The collection will include sixteen designs in five seasonal colours with chunky knits and a modern twist. Four of the styles will be available in minature for children and there are plans for the collection to expand through accessories, soft jewellery and womens wear like racer dresses and tank tops.

North Circular uses ethical wool from rescued sheep in Izzy Lane’s Sheep sanctuary in North Yorkshire. The sheep live happily and graze on organic land. The wool is spun and dyes locally within a 120 mile radius.