This is a good simple conclusion about the "ethical fashion" idea, long-delayed, and now probably shared by Ethical Fashion Forum themselves after some market research, and reported by Olivia Pinnock in "The Problem with Ethical Fashion" yesterday. "Ethical" is a category of adjectives; it doesn't work as an adjective by itself.
Ethics Jungle
Maybe "Ethics and Fashion Forum" would make sense if the name isn't given-up completely. "Ethics Jungle" has just come to mind. I like that one.
More likely, another Orwellian term will take-over at the offices of London College of Fashion where EFF have the odd meeting: "Common Objective" seems to be the new brand, which is already tarnished by the "Common Purpose" groups that fund each other behind doors closed to the public, rather like Ethical Fashion Forum. Secondly, traders do not have a common ethic or object. I don't have the same objective as Islamic State or many less extreme groups, but they each ethics and objectives.. How about "Common Disagreements"? Or "Common Arguments"? Maybe that should be the name.
The Olivia Pinnock article is polite, and suggests that "Ethical Fashion" really was a movement that might continue, but I suppose it's easier to be polite about suppliers putting-on a show than to be rude about the customers and consumers who buy the stuff. The public in the UK buy tabloids. The public don't know that UK industry was closed by government-fixed exchange rates from the 1980s and with a bit of good government could recover. We each know bits, within comfortable long-held views of the world, but preaching to the un-converted over a pair of pants is a not going to win a big market share and the boss at the high-street chain still wants to sell all the other pants. No-wonder people sit in offices at Monsoon or Howies think: "What can we call good that makes a profit and the boss allows?".
Bosses vary.
All bosses have to treat ethical claims a sales issue. Some bosses are also evangelists for economic theories that say their other stuff is good anyway: the raw simple theory of comparative advantage (ignoring social insurance), the theory of the trickle-down effect (ignoring evidence), and the raw theory of the nation state that Chinese human rights are best for Chinese people because they have the word Chinese in the title. Those sorts of theories are similar to the views of UK government ministers or economists at places like London University.
What can we call good that makes a big profit and doesn't stop people buying the other stuff?
H&M, Monsoon, Primark, M&S, Boohoo and the rest are unlikely to say these things.
Badly-run countries are badly-run
or anything to do with our buying habits and tariffs
Their products are unfair competition with products from better-run countries
Their populations - in Bangladesh for example -are rocketing faster than jobs to employ them
Wages in Bangladesh are falling and not rising
The things that big firms call good come-down to whether you can put a pair of shoes in the compost bin, or whether a raffia bag from an special fair trade employment scheme in some country without a welfare state (but don't mention that they need a welfare state). Words like "Natural" are an obvious choice or "the ambiguously named Conscious Collection" as Pinnock puts it.. I saw "Conscious Awareness" used of a stall at London Fashion Week.
Most of us can sympathize with employees of big companies where we ourselves shop. I write this in Primark basics trakkies; I have to sympathize.
There is another layer of complication.
There is a government machine with its favorite causes, from Kids Company to Pants to Poverty to Elvis and Kress wallets, each muddying a muddy picture. Elvis and Kress send old fire hose to Italy to be made into over-thick over-priced novelty wallets for sale in gift boxes in the UK. Other old fire hoses are exported to India where there is more cheap labour for patching them up. There used to be a few good cheap wallet manufacturers making sometimes vegan products, until lack of interest allowed them to close while groups like Ethical Fashion Forum got the PR. Doing a gig for "Making it Ethically in China", in Manchester, if I remember right, on the weekend that the Manchester firm JJ Blackledge closed and sold the machines because of lack of interest in the blooming-obvious: the product made cheaply in a democratic welfare state. So: good luck to Elvis and Kress for an expensive giftware item with a donation to the fire service charity built-in to the price, but that's all they are. Government PR from the likes of Social Enterprise UK bigs them up and gets in the way of day to day ethical decisions about cheaper products.
I have written enough and should stop before repeating myself. A lot of previous stuff about Ethical Fashion Forum, mainly evidence assembled in a way which is rude to them, is on Veganline.com/info/ethical-fashion-forum or a successor page. I hope the evidence speaks for itself, but if you want to know why someone is a bit bitter, I did try to sell UK-made products as ethical before they came-along, and I did try to use the business support services and government services that were cut because, as I said, the likes of Kids Company, Pants to Poverty, and Ethical Fashion Forum get the government PR.
There is a pattern, which sometimes happens by chance.
Ethical Fashion Forum finds a UK business that is close to collapse, ignores it and loudly promotes the competition from bad countries
Robbing in a hospital is one way to describe it.
Remploy
Ethical Fashion Forum promoted a firm like Remploy in Bangladesh but were silent about Remploy in the UK closing down. Ethical Fashion Forum had got their hands on money for training small business owners the year before, running seminars in Newham College, so they ought to have known what advice to give to business owners about where to get clothes made in the UK - including Remploy. Otherwise, I think the people who paid taxes via London Development Agency for the training seminars should get their money back.
Equity Shoes
Ethical Fashion Forum ran a public-funded set of training lectures about buying from Co-ops, but left-out Equity Shoes, the large hundred-year-old shoemaking co-op in Leicester that went bust the same year. Oddly enough, a Leicester MP was minister at the Department for Business at the time, which gave grants to overseas visitors to London Fashion Week and so can influence what goes on show. That year I think it was Terra Plana footwear made in China and shown in the Estethica room, which is meant to sound a bit like "ethical" I suppose. The MP signed-off the grant payments without knowing or caring. Oh and one of the speakers was Ben Ramsden of Pants to Poverty who's Pi Foundation claimed to promote worker-owned manufacturing.
JJ Blackledge
wallet manufacturers in Manchester. This firm that made flat goods for the corporate gift market went bust the same weekend that Ethical Fashion Forum spoke at a public-funded seminar called "Making it Ethically in China", which was held a mile or two away in Manchester.
James Grove Buttons
About the time this Birmingham factory went bust, and someone was trying to set-up a smaller company with the same tools called Grove Pattern Buttons (hornbuttons.co.uk), Ethical Fashion Forum advertised a member on their mailing list. That ethical claim of this "fellowship 500" member was that these are (1) "locally sourced buttons" from (2) "the poorest areas of the local Panama community". "Locally sourced" is a stylish bit of cheek as an ethical claim, a bit like "nutricious food" - something McDonalds claimed could mean anything but water. The buttons are sold by Miami company and sourced in Panama, according to Ethical Fashion Forum, but when emailed the suppliers say it might be Equador; they're not quite sure. They are sure that they're harvested by low-paid artizans, which follows if you buy from countries without a welfare state and pay as little as you can - even though Panama is a wealthy 100 year-old stable country quite capable of sorting-out poverty if their government wanted to. The third ethical claim - (3) is "100% eco-friendly and sustanable", but I guess that's before airmail. One final thing to say: the american buttons were something I'd rather wear, made out of large nuts, but maybe the machines are the same whatever the material.
One Ethical Fashion Forum founder member - Pants to Poverty - had a problem. If you googled their name and address, you get a list of pages about poverty in Tower Hamlets, within walking distance of their office. That's probably why they had to close; their customers among Guardian-reading Londoners noticed the contradiction. Pantstopoverty.org.uk is a new site that spells-out the argument and might sell UK-made pants in future. The landlord, Rich Mix, now publishes a list of tenants on its web site with no Futerra fashion-related agencies left at all, and mail is returned to senders "not known". Pants was one of the earlier departures, leaving a few days ahead of Tower Hamlets trading standards officers, chasing-up claims of non-delivered pants.
This is a draft page to send to Ethical Fashion Forum, in case they will change their current one. Comment welcome. They sounded a bit softer in the line they took in about 2014, as though their party line might change, so I wrote this.
You can use Bing or Google to do a site search Ethical Fashion Forum's pages for the use of any words like "NHS" "welfare state", "national insurance", "social insurance" and find next to nothing. Some search engines have boxes to construct searches like this so you can check for yourself. The searches are cleaner when restricted to the UK.
https://www.mojeek.com/advanced.html
https://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search
http://advangle.com/
Silence says a lot about Ethical Fashion Forum's views, and those of those organisations that do business with them - Department for International Development helped them get started for example, alongside some similar work done by London College of Fashion.
There are handy links to those very search results on this page - http://veganline.com/ethical-fashion-forum.htm
While they and their backers refuse to mention anything about a welfare state on their web site, there's not much point in talking to them and offering suggestions, but this was written anyway. It doesn't try to parody their style by writing "things are very difficult - Nana, 17, Bangladesh textile worker", or "The East India Company are doing wonderfully- photographed work, buying from happy with artisans in Bengal - or plan to do so in future because they haven't started yet (case study number 4 for your essay)". Oh alright then, I've added it to the bottom of this page in a box if you're interested.
International Trade is influenced by the price of goods in different countries.
That depends on ingenious mechanisation, and the cost of labour. An area or a country with rising levels of skill and investment in machines, but a low cost of living will tend to export goods.
Tariffs
Trade is controlled by tariffs that divide the world into trade blocs described here. If they co-operate, it is sometimes through a trade association called the World Trade Organisation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_bloc
Exchange Rates
Trade is influenced by exchange rates, when they are manipulated upwards to control inflation, or downwards to increase exports. To make a currency more valuable, governments pay extra to creditors for government debt. Investments flow-in. The value of the currency rises. To make a currency less valuable, governments and the private sector move money out of a country into overseas investments or bank accounts.
Exchange rates are a big part of what's done my monetary policy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy
low wage economies are caused by the lack of a welfare state
Trade is influenced by the ingenuity and investment of workshops making goods, but it is also influenced by the cost of living and peoples' availability to work on low wages. Some countries have a better developed welfare state, paid from taxes or national insurance on workers. Others are run by elites which choose not to have a welfare state, making the output of those countries cheaper. One complication is that new industrial towns which spring-up tend to have a higher fertility rate - more people over time - in countries with no welfare state. The lack of girl's secondary schools, the lack of health advice, and the lack of pensions for people who have no children to support them are all factors which cause people to have large families. When families grow fast, there is a lot of unemployment and wages remain very low.
The poverty of overpopulated countries spreads to other countries, as cheap goods under-cut the price of goods woven and stitched in Europe. Governments in poor countries are also scared to introduce a welfare state for fear of loosing export markets to other poor countries that don't have a welfare state. A buyer of something like clothing can easily move orders from Sri Lanka to Ethiopia for example if one country is cheaper than another.
Tariffs again: the multi fibre agreement
Textile products are some of the most labour intensive to make and easily shipped.
The multi fibre agreement was written specifically to control rapid changes in the textile trade. It ran from 1974 until 2005. There may have been a hope that in these 31 years, the cost of production in developing countries would rise because of national insurance and welfare state costs, the costs of inspecting safe factories that do not fall down, and the cost of a developed government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Fibre_Agreement
No consensus: globalization doesn't work very well to promote development
Agreement on trade is hard to find: different groups from different backgrounds have a different idea of what is "ethical" or in their interests. It is rare to find a group of people in one room who take acknowledge all the issues at the same time.
One rule of thumb is that free trade and floating currencies achieve a good deal for everyone, with other points like different levels of welfare state or remaining currency manipulation best ignored. The hope is that these are either unimportant or will come-right in the end: a developing country might introduce better welfare systems after it develops. South Korea, for example, has even become an aid donor to poorer countries after being a very poor country within living memory. Those who talk about world trade tend to be on the right of politics and less interested in welfare systems, so they tend to take this view regardless or complication. It's common to quote Adam Smith's phrase "comparative advantage", which was a very general idea from a different age about a different subject, but the phrase is still used. The same people tend to be very interested in reducing inflation by controlling their local labour market, and favour raising the value of their local currencies so that imports are cheaper.
One rule of thumb is that a few detailed tariffs for specific reasons will achieve a good deal for everyone, despite the reduction in world trade. The European Union imposes a 15% tariff on goods from outside an ever-widening free trade zone. Conditions for entry include some level of democracy and human rights. Some countries in need of development like Bangladesh are also included in the trade zone for no particular reason and many more have followed recently. Detailed rules are written. Ethiopia has 0% tariff access to the EU market for leather goods for example, because someone at some point decided that leather goods would help Ethiopia. Protection of the North American free trade zone can be complex too, with different tariff rates for different classes of goods.
Conditional tariffs were once proposed in the early 70s by the World Trade Organisation. At that time the jargon word was a "social clause" and the condition of a lower tariff was signing-up to standards of the International Labour Organisation (not introducing a welfare state as suggested here). People who ran third world countries, and who do very well out of poverty, were very much against the scheme and it went no further. That's a pity because, in theory, a very general and widely understood scheme can give the government of one country confidence to intoduce a change that gets them a lower tariff, and not be under-cut in export markets by another country that doesn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_clause
Ethical Fashion Forum
Ethical Fashion Forum is based in the UK which is still a major market for fashion products, and a small producer of the more automated or niche-market products. Like the rest of Europe, the UK also has high unemployment. Common ethical claims would be that something is made in a democratic welfare state that needs a fashion industry to remain that way.
Ethical Fashion Forum members are based all over the world. Common ethical claims made of products are that they boost employment for a particular group in an employment scheme, or that they produce a local design that earns more of the value of the product to people on lower incomes in that country, rather than a large trading conglomerate.
As a forum, we can provide no absolute answers but hope to allow groups of members with particular ethical claims to state them as clearly as possible and to refer to facts where possible.
A vague enough term that a lobbyist can then ask "what is ethical fashion?" and answer it any way they like, perhaps with a case study for fashion students to quote in essays
Ethical Fashion Source Summit included a talk by a Monsoon employee and a list of case studies for students to quote.
This set of posts looks nasty to some people; if you don't want to know the score, look away now. All it is is a bit of background nose-poking to find out what sort of people are drawn into Ethical Fashion Forum, Ethical Fashion Consultancy, Anti Apathy (company and charity) and Re-Fashion. There's no single piece of illegal dirt to find unfortunately - just a lot to distroy UK jobs and good things worldwide at UK taxpayers' expense in a mundane legal way. For example each of this cluster of companies had a postal address at Rich Mix, a multi-million pound removal of taxpayers' money from benefits and social services into a grant design in Shoreditch. Millions were spent converting a white-painted commercial building into a white-painted commercial building that had less commercial space.
Business support, like arts, is a low priority compared to health benefits and social care, but these little budgets were neither abolished nor spent wisely; they were raided too. Rich Mix is a monument to evil. One of the first controversies was to commission a mural on the walls of a white woman being raped by black people. Each of these companies is un-embarassed to have Rich Mix as a landlord, and the first used the postal address even before this scam was built.
Unfortunately nothing illegal happened. The government ministers who approved related schemes like Creative Connexions and London Fashion Week in the 2000s are now directing the BBC or seeking a new life in Australia. It is legal to believe in globalisation at all costs and spend taxpayers' money to promote it, even if this money is meant for the opposite purpose of promoting UK employment including manufacturing. It is legal to believe that there is some historical reason why people in the UK should encourage enterprise in Bangladesh, and it is legal to use public money meant for arts of business support to commission a mural of black people raping a white woman, but there are counter arguments in each case.
The regional government people who approved funding for the rape mural and Ethical Fashion Forum live in obscurity, and the generations who lost job prospects, human rights and dignity because of bad government get the blame as always.
What dirt has Ethical Fashion Forum got?
If you had tried to find-out what help was available from your nearest development agency during a recession, and found that the money went to a PR outfit trying to put your firm out of business, you'd be nosey too. For example if you hoped to retail shoes made by Equity Shoes, a hundred year-old worker co-op in Leicester making shoes, you went to a public-funded lecture on buying from co-operatives, and you found that the speakers all spoke about buying from the third world and knew nothing about Leicester. Equity shoes went bust that year. Or if you had found one of the last cheap wallet manufacturers in Manchester, JJ Blackledge, and found that the very weekend that they went bust, Ethical Fashion Forum were speaking at taxpayer-funded event called "making it ethically in China", hosted by Creative Connexions on another public grant, you'd be cross wouldn't you? If there were no adult education classes in using better e-commerce software for people who weren't concentrating too well, but you found that business advice grants had been diverted to a pro-globalisation lobby instead of training, wouldn't you be cross? Or if, all your life, you had coped with the effects of the 80s manufacturing recession on yourself and others, tried to promote the ethical advantages of UK products, and saw them actively discouraged as an ethical choice on the Ethical Fashion Forum web site? The quote is on a page called "The Issues" date, and has been on their site since 2009. The gang also includes a firm called Terra Plana, exhibited at London Fashion Week's Esthetica event under Ethical Fashion Forum's influence, which sold Chinese leather shoes. Why "China is arguably more democratic than the UK", they quote an employee as saying on their 2008 web site. In 2010 they published another "Issues" page, rejecting any kind of tariff barrier to protect a welfare state, and quoting an american pressure group in support of their case. As late as January 2011 the group still had a charmed existence borne I suppose of ministerial decisions.
In January 2011, The Victoria and Albert Museum published a long
uncritical interview with an Ethical Fashion Forum pundit after
publicising the group with an exhibition. There's also a relationship with members to publicise un-critical training notes in the style of Centre for Sustainability in Fashion like the the ones at the bottom of this page headed "case study: Monsoon"
Personally, I would be happy to see the ring leaders in prison but doubt they have broken any law so I can't wish it. An explanation and apology would be nice. This bit of detective work is a kind of mundain account and no explanation of motive. It lists the people involved as directors at the cluster of organisations that share an address at Rich Mix Foundation in London, itself a near-criminal waste of public money by people who cannot be prosecuted for the harm their waste did to council social services and allied charities by taking so much cash. There is more than a landlord-tenant relationship between Rich Mix and Ethical Fashion Forum. Ethical Fashion Forum had a postal address at Rich Mix while it was still a building site, even as it first registered as a limited company. There was also a connection with cross-ministry funding. The Hospital Club, a hangout for ministerial advisers, hosted an ethical fashion show. The London College of Fashion published a subsidised "book" published online, quoting Ethical Fashion Forum founders' antics before they had founded Ethical Fashion Forum, to use as examples for a new course to be promoted at the UK's fashion colleges
Any nosey person would check the directors of a company, just digging. The mundane thing I discover in public records is that Ethical Fashion Forum are not "the industry body for ethical fashion"; next to none are in the rag trade; most are consultants in how to look ethical. An exception I found was someone who has a shop and teaches at St Martin's college. Another - Cyndi Rhodes - recycles. A third has opened a shirt shop alongside her consultancy work, selling £80 shirts made in the far east. I wish I could dig more dirt but public records are mundain.
Other people have been nosey too. Assembly members at the Greater London Authority managed to get a forensic accountants' report done into how the then London Development Agency spent billions of pounds, and the next mayoral regime commissioned another one. Both found few examples of corruption but lots of examples of stuff that's just puzzling wierd and naff: - temporary staff at the London Development Agency trying to hold meetings with ministerial advisors sitting-in; projects and agencies to deliver these projects chosen on political whim with outcomes measured as a box-ticking excercise. The second report quoted Westfield Shopping Centre being subsidised by taxpayers, without comment. I think that's so obviously opposite to the purpose of the agency that it's probably a sign of corruption, but the accountants said nothing. Nearby, unemployed youth were kept busy with a scheme that signed a receipt for "youth related activities" in order to spend the full budget up to the end of the year. The accountants noticed that in a wry way. I have not seen an exposure central government at the time, which was used to interfering in regional London government after running the London Residuary Body before the Greater London Authority was invented, as well as running budgets like the Higher Education Funding Council grant for Creative Connexions, set-up to promote globalisation at the expense of UK tax payers and I guess signed by a current BBC director who was then a minister called Charles Parnell.
I expect directors were unpaid and drawn-in, as I was, in hope that a
vague forum would
include something to like. There was a call for members on the Anti
Apathy mailing list in about 2005. I replied saying I was keen on things
like the
Maker Spaces that have appeared anyway. I discovered from a successful
applicant, minding a stall at London Fashion Week, that my application
had been rejected. Oddly enough this person wasn't in the rag trade
except to promote saris from a war zone at a few competitions. Later,
the job was advertised again with a specification: applicants needed to
bring consultancy work to the organisation.
Not The Industry Body for Ethical Fashion
You can check this yourself by getting director names and looking online for their CVs if you can find them, and going-on as long as you want until you form an impression. If the issue effects your business and the bunch seem to be on a public grant, then you dig further as I did in the mid 2000s. The trend in the past few years is away from public funding and towards people with fewer directorships. Either way, people who were the "Industry Body for Ethical Fashion" would show plenty of cobblers stitchers and rag traders; these lists do not.
Overlapping directorships with an add agency - Futerra Sustainability Communications - that was a big government contractor to DEFRA at one time. A freedom of information request to Defra asked whether any government advertising could have leaked into overlapping projects by Futerra, and the answer was that surviving documents don't say.
This one is best in summery because I have dug a lot. The evidence belongs in an archive somewhere.
There is an operatic sense of truth about her history, landing in grand newspaper PR in 2005 as a former "award winning architect" or even a qualified one, and as having traded as an ethical fashion business called "Juste". Have you heard of it? Me neither, nor can consumers confirm her architecture qualification to practice, but the PR was on a grand scale including public exhibitions at The Crafts Council and the V&A of products seldom if ever produced. There are multiple joint appearances with Junky Styling, Terra Plana, Sari Dress Project and other clients - I guess without evidence - of Futerra Communications the PR agency.
A domain name for Juste, samples produced by volunteers out of muslin made by a firm like Remploy in Bangladesh, and some photos do exist and quotes given in support of a degree state that she hopes to sell via a Greater London Enterprise Agency shop that briefly existed for new designers in Covent Garden. There is also a long account of a trip to Bangladesh at Dfid expense to obtain these fabric samples, appearing in the same subsidised textbook at Elizabeth Laskar's Sari Dress project, which was a temporary project selling Saris out of a war zone (if Sri Lank ever gets a freedom of information act I'll try to find out whether their government funded this). There is no evidence of Ethical Fashion Forum ever promoting Remploy before it went bust. Obviously, I think that Bangladeshi taxpayers should help set-up a welfare state in Bangladesh and promote a firm like Remploy; I think that UK taxpayers should help set-up a welfare state in the UK and should have helped promote a firm like Remploy or any successors.
There is a Lejeune degree in international development from Brookes Uni, based in large part on a long project describing the work done running Juste, which didn't run, and Ethical Fashion Forum, which did. There are convincing accounts is an interest in architecture and doing some live-in volunteer jobs around the world for development agencies. There is a long association with the Rich Mix address in Shoreditch, started even before the current building was built on Greater London Authority subsidy which was much reported as being mad. There is some loose association with the Estethica room at London Fashion Week. There is, I'm assured by Tamsin Lejeune, no public subsidy of Ethical Fashion Forum at the time of my phone call which was mid 2014; she has also been absolutely open in showing scans of grant proposals for at least one small grant obtained when the agency was in fashion at the Greater London Authority and Defra around 2005. It is a Development Awareness Grant. Another grant is given under the heading of training for small businesses and delivered in some form for a single year at Newham College in East London. There is evidence of Tamsin Lejeune doing a job for Labour Behind the Label, and then doing something I admire as an ex voluntary-sector worker: she got some small grants for her own project. We also have name changes in common; I used to be called David Robertson. If I could have used that to pretend a degree in one subject in order to qualify for a funded second degree in another subject, I might have done so but I can say that I have no architecture qualification and am not an award-winning architect.
I have had about a couple of phone conversations or email exchanges with Tamsin Lejeune and get an impression that impression and people are what she is good at, rather than whether what she says is contradicted by words on her web site. She suggested I be unpaid "ambassador" for UK manufacturing at Ethical Fashion Forum while retaining her warnings against buying UK products on her website. That's thinking of the "Issues" page in which she urges people not to buy British goods on ethical grounds. Someone introduces her in a video trade show and seminar as "Tamsin - good at getting people together". https://companycheck.co.uk/director/911483913/MS-ELIZABETH-ALVINA-AUTUMN-LASKAR/companies
Open Contracting Partnership, Consultant: Providing focused advocacy
support to secure a robust commitment to open contracting in the UK's
open government plan and anti corruption strategy.
Founder, A Lotus Rises. A Community of Women who inspire, and are inspired by, a love of open water.
Global eHealth Foundation, Chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Partnerships and Communications Consultant.
Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Senior Fellow: Leading ISD's research
on digital technology on the future of economic and social development
in Europe. Author of 'Europe's Got Talent: Learning, Creating and
Growing in our Digital World'-Commissioned by the Vodafone Institute for
Society and Communications as part of the Vodafone Digitising Europe
Summit, opened by German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Thomson Reuters Practical Law China, Consultant: Developed a legal news
column for General Counsel working on China-related matters, and their
advisers. Topics include IPRs, labour unrest, and environmental
regulation; Feature articles re: due diligence; impact of anti
corruption legislation on business operations; and working with SOEs.
The Economist Intelligence Unit: Research for the Access China Service
Upmysport: Community Engagement
China Business Law Journal. Feature articles re:Chinese investment in
CEE; role of women in the Chinese legal system;national security review,
anti-monopoly law;VIEs.
CottonConnect: scoping study on China re the cotton and textiles
industry and wider macro environment. The basis of CottonConnect's
decision to enter China in 2011.
Civil Initiatives for Development and Peace, CIVIDEP, (NGO Bangalore,
part of OECD Watch): Author 'Business Law and Human Rights in India'
cited in the CIVIDEP manual 'Workers’ Rights and Corporate
Accountability’, published in July 2011.
Publicly listed mobile telecommunications manufacturer (UK and China) -
Conducted an evaluation of the Company's product transfer from the UK to
China.
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This
one had work experience on the Ethical Fashion Forum board and choosing
people for public subsidy, sitting on a selection panel for Estethica
at London Fashion Week. She helped choose how more public subsidy should be spent via the Defra Clothing Roadmap.
She went-on to work for clothes importers rather
than regional development Choosing who got government subsidy was this person's first
volunteer job after college in 2009. And 2010. And 2011. I get these
names from http://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/05916585
in hope of finding an "industry body" but the names so far are an
overflow of consultants from Ethical Fashion Consultancy Ltd of the same
address.
The
last director of Ethical Fashion Forum to quote is a consultant with
experience in rug import, large company supply chains including Nike,
and now Indian shirt import for nearly £80 including VAT. She was the
one who told New Internationalist something
like "you're just as likely to find a bad factory down the road in
London where I work than in China", missing the point that UK factories
like pay towards the democratic welfare state that she uses
and has no equivalent in China. Nor Bangalore where the £80 shirts are
made for her import business. https://companycheck.co.uk/director/914191354/MR-CHRISTIAN-BENIGNI/companies
The other company is called "RG Sourcing". This one was "interim MD" at ethical fashion forum when a lot of directors changed in 2014. He has experience at M&S and running a clothing import and sales business.
Training, social work, and "low carbon skills consulting ltd"
I'm not sure if anyone reads down this far, but my impression from trying to research directors of Ethical Fashion Forum and Ethical Fashion Consultancy is that they are mainly consultants. I think the only UK stitchers when I first looked were clothes recyclers - Junky Styling and Worn Again. The new team of directors includes a wholesale clothes importer and someone from high fashion.
Some people have attempted to join the rag trade, more or less. Tamsin Lejeune nearly set-up Juste; the person from Futerra Communications does "Swishing", and a consultant who did some Corporate Social Responsibility work for Nike has opened the Arthur and Henry shirt business in Harringay. There are shirt factories within walking distance, but these people prefer to import from countries without a welfare state.
Someone's ex-teacher from St Martin's College is on the list. She also runs a small shop called Ciel that sometimes sells clothes, so that's someone in the rag trade if not the stitching trade. Another one imports pants from India. Even if you count all the stitchers and rag traders together, they're a small minority compared to consultants.
This is an old picture from a chainstore fashion site, chosen by Ethical Fashion Forum to show the sort of people it hopes to win-over. The picture also shows use of a union jack emblem on something not made in the UK, and people of the work-seeking age who are most likely to loose from a globalised economy with less national insurance or benefits.
People in the UK still get a basic national insurance service, but the government has taken the fund which was meant to exist, pensions are reduculously low and unemploynment benefit depends on being nagged relentlessly to work free or go on a pointless course. Housing Benefits have just been reduced and risk causing homelessness. People use food banks. A lot of paid work is insecure and can be prone to bullying. Services for keeping people out of hospital if they have dementia or such have been cut. Some of the work is in manufacturing but government, sometimes giving grants to people like Ethical Fashion Forum, seems unsure what that is or how to help and can end-up subsidising the competition. As ever, the excuse in the UK is "competitiveness" or just "defecit", while the excuse for importing things at 0% tariff from Rana Plaza where there is probably no national insurance is "development".
Here's
a group which suddenly sprang-up out of the states at the same time as
the Multi Fibre Agreement ended and Ethical Fashion Forum sprang-up in
the UK. In Ethical Fashion Forum's words "The MFA Forum is a
not-for-profit, participation-based open network established in early
2004 to address key concerns that were predicted with the end of the
Multi-Fiber Arrangement. Visit the MFA Forum website". The domain itself
was first known to archive.org in 2005 and the web site, arguing for cheap clothes from Rana Plaza, followed soon.
The gist of the PR is that this is not a flood of goods that are cheap because they come from countries without a welfare state. Nor an injustice to those who try to produce goods in a welfare state and find themselves under-cut without tariffs. Certainly not. It is an empowerment process to reduce no-colonel protection, often explained next to some anecdote about the East India Company's henchmen sabotaging rival local production in Bengall three hundred years ago. Mentions of similar actions by Nike contractors against employees who are paid below the minimum wage and form unions are not mentioned, because they are the the people newly empowered by free trade.
I discover a subtlety, which is that the Multifibre agreement didn't cover Bangladesh. That's why the interest in that country, given fear that other countries would take its market share.
I discovered later that the Ethical Trade Initiative, which gets a Foreign Office Grant, subsidises trade associations in countries like Bangladesh to recruit members who can't otherwise pay for membership, and to check corporate social responsibility auditing. This is odd because, as an organisation of employers, a trade association is only going to notice the very worst bad practice that gets a bad reputation for the average; otherwise it's a system for employers to police themselves. A union also gets a grant in Bangladesh, but only enough to rent an office. Meanwhile their colleagues at the trade association have enough money to pass some of it on to Ethical Fashion Forum to help promote Bangladeshi goods at UK taxpayers' expense, in competition with UK-made goods. I think this is a bit unfair as UK manufacturers are very lean and not all able to pay the subscription to - say - the British Footwear Association. If they did, there is no grant to UK trade assocations to promote UK goods, even in the UK.
http://www.refashionawards.org/about/ethics
This account links fashion teaching to the sudden outbreak of crassness
in 2005. One example quoted in a Centre for Sustainability in Fashion
textbook is of a dress designer who contacted fairtrade-certified
suppliers in India because, for whatever reason, she didn't make dresses
herself. They all turned her down. So she went to Bangladesh, got the
dresses made, and used vaguer words to sell them. They were said to be "ethical" because they were woven by a firm like Remploy in Bangladesh, but the person's trade association, Ethical Fashion Forum, did zero to promote Remploy in the UK, which closed, so I don't think their idea of "ethical" was a good one.
Centre for Sustainability in Fashion
Centre for Sustainability in Fashion is a government quango paid-for by a grant from Nike and taxpayers' funding towards universities via the Higher Education Funding Council, although people in the UK have to pay to go to uni via the loan system; these people still get a grant and use offices from a landlord that has housed similar organisations - Own-it to promote use of IT law, Creative Connexions to promote Chinese factories to UK designers (yes, really), and a students union, language laboratory and photography teaching workshops. Those are the bits that students have to pay for via the student loan system. Centre for Sustainability in Fashion appears less crass than other projects funded the same way, but more crass in acting as "secretariat" to the "all party group for ethics and sustainability in fashion" in the House of Lords, led by someone that some government made a lord of course, which has no obvious funding but does have a treasurer.
The All Party Group for Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion began by crowding-out an existing all party group and one or two potential members or speakers, like Lord Sugar who tried to speak about better training for people in UK clothes manufacturing. It held a Westminster Hall Debate, based on the kinds of topics available in the House of Lords Library if you search "ethics" and "fashion". Then it started again with a second Westminster Hall debate, following the style and agenda of Futerra Communications
Futerra Communications
The technique is to use a phrase so vague that it begs a question, and then answer that question how you like. There is also a lot of vague language so mind-numbing that you are softened up for a real whopper of a lie that passes un-noticed. Their blurb says that people made their own clothes in the UK up until the 1950s. True? Of course not but amongst all the rubbish it slips-past.
Futerra agency got a lot of commercial business from the UK government, with £165,000 turnover that year from one ministry at DEFRA. That's the one that ought to have kept up to date with badger biology and flood defences, but was used as a PR budget by government instead: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/funding_futerra_funding_refashio#comment-51088
So what is "ethical fashion"? Just
like fashion, the term means different things to different people, from
vintage clothing to paying a fair wage to cotton farmers. In
essence, ethical fashion represents an approach to the design, sourcing
and manufacture of clothing which is both socially and environmentally
sustainable. Our timeline explores the relationship between ethics and fashion.
1950s: Fashion for the elite
Couture
is king, and the burgeoning industry caters for the social elite by
producing unique and luxury items. Everyday folk follow fashion by
making their own clothes.
1960s - 1970s: Fashion for the people
With
the advent of mass production, fashion suddenly becomes accessible to
the public. Fashion houses and retailers set up production overseas to
the developing world where labour costs are lower.
1970s: World fashion movement
The
birth of the modern environmental movement combines hippy fashion and
values has a major effect on culture, creating an interest in "world"
fashion. Shops spring up around the UK, selling ethnic style
clothing and accessories sourced directly from producers around the
world. Traidcraft and Oxfam start selling clothing and crafts to support
communities. People purchase these for charitable reasons or because
they like the product, not necessarily to be fashionable. Pioneering brands such as Patagonia start to address environmental issues in textile production.
1980s - 1990s: Mass production and consumer backlash
Mass
production swiftly gathers speed, and the first global brands emerge.
By the mid 1990s stories of sweatshops hit the news headlines. No Logo by Naomi Klein is published in protest. Consumer
awareness of the plight of garment workers emerges, along with high
profile campaigns targeting high street brands. Gap and Nike develop and
publish ethical sourcing programmes. A handful of fashion
businesses, such as People Tree and Bishopston Trading, lead the way in
targeting an alternative, niche group of consumers. This new market is
not yet trend led.
1990s: The business of ethics
Corporate
attention turns to business ethics. Becoming a good corporate "citizen"
is the watchword and socially responsible sourcing rises up the
business agenda. Meanwhile, in the UK, environmental issues are formally
included in school and college curricula. In response, the first
mainstream brand to bring out an environmental range is Esprit with the
launch of it's Ecollection in 1992. Gossypium and Katherine Hamnett are
leading the way in researching and developing organic supply chains.
2000 - 2005: Ethical fashion takes off
By 2000, new fashion graduates are setting up labels with environmental and social goals. The
Millenium Development Goals on poverty, climate change, rapidly growing
public appetite for "green", and this new generation of designers lead
to the creation of the ethical fashion movement. In 2004, the Ethical Fashion Forum launches in London, while the Ethical Fashion Show presents ethical fashion labels to major buyers. And in 2005, Anti-Apathy
brings together a top notch line-up of speakers, including Katharine
Hamnett, live music and leading ethical fashion labels at London's first
high profile ethical fashion catwalk. Trends in consumer buying
habits show that the market for fashion is polarising into two groups -
low cost, "value" fashion and a growing group of consumers disillusioned
by mass manufactured brands looking to buy unique and individual
clothes and supporting creative new labels. High street retailers
respond by bringing out "designer" ranges, stocking smaller brands and
signing deals with designers and celebrities.
2006-2008: Ethical fashion goes mainstream
Small
businesses started with the millenium are rapidly growing in size and
profile, including Howies, American Apparel, THTC, Kuyichi, Terra Plana,
and Ciel. Esthetica is launched at London Fashion Week in 2006 as the
first ethical fashion section in a mainstream international tradeshow. Big
name designers start to develop ethical collections including Katharine
Hamnett and Stella McCartney. Big retailers start to take the issue on
board more seriously. Gap launches product RED in 2006. H&M, Next,
Nike, Sainsbury's, Asda and M&S all stock organic/fairtrade ranges. And consumers get involved through Swishing - a term coined by Futerra to describe glamorous clothes recycling parties.
Anti Apathy, Juste, Sari Dress Project Junky Styling, United Nude, Terra Plana, Futerra PR
A
newspaper article in May 2005 Mentions Anti-Apathy, Juste, Sari Dress
Project, Junky Styling, United Nude, and Terra Plana. Their PR coins the
phrase "ethical fashion" and reporting of vague ethics like hand sewing
by people who would otherwise not be hand-sewing "giving them an
opportunity to use traditional techniques that would otherwise be lost".
This could be one of the first bits of shared fashion PR for ethical fashion forum members by Futerra
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forget black: fashion's going green . .
By Dimi Gaidatzi, Financial Times
Published: May 14 2005 03:00 | Last updated: May 14 2005
"...A recent proliferation of ethical labels, from mail-order catalogue
People Tree to Edun " ... "Last year saw the first ethical fashion show
in Paris (another has been scheduled for October), while in London,
Anti-Apathy, a socio-environmental campaign group, staged a similar
event in February." "Last April the first forum on ethical commerce was
organised in France and Project, a magazine on "conscious style and
culture", was launched."
"...Edun range that has really got people talking. The couple joined forces with Rogan Gregory of Rogan jeans"
"The UK is also proving to be a hotbed for revolution. Howies makes
eco-urban clothes, Enamore offers bespoke kimono tops and duffel coats
made with organic textiles, Juste has dresses made of silks from
Bangladesh, and Sari makes saris donated by Indian women into couture
and accessories. Junky Styling even offers to take your old wardrobe and
restyle it in a workshop which only uses renewable energy. Crucially
all of them offer good design with the feel-good factor."
"Buba
bags, for instance, has taken care with sourcing its manufacturing in
India. "There's no way you can get that type of work done anywhere
else," says Euan McDonald of Buba, of the heavily embellished and
embroidered accessories. McDonald has joined forces with a local NGO in
India, providing employment to families in Delhi, while giving them an
opportunity to use traditional techniques that would otherwise be lost."
"Unless a fair-trade product is stylish or well-made [consumers] won't
buy it," says Safia Minney, founder of People Tree. Minney's company
relies on the specialist skills of over 1,400 artisans from around the
world to produce pieces such as halter-neck tunics embroidered with
Indian beadwork.
"For Romp, a fur and leather accessories label,
the key factor is sourcing: all its skins are derived from food
by-products. Greg Sturmer of Romp says: "Ignorance is not to be confused
with desire. People don't like what they are finding out about the
production system and the materials they are being offered. This is why
all Romp products are ethically manufactured and their production is
fully traceable.""
"Galahad Clark, of the Clark shoe dynasty, has
also joined the ethical crusade. His footwear label, United Nude, makes
shoes that are "not just a disposable item" - they use simple plastics
and extreme moulding to create designs. Terra Plana, another shoe brand,
uses artisan constructions and natural materials, but integral to both
collections is the idea of maximising energy efficiency and minimizing
toxins and glues." http://www.ft.com/…/a1063764-c387-11d9-a56d-00000e2511c8.ht…
Looking
good and doing good don't always go hand in hand - we all know about
sweatshops. But increasingly it seems that fashion consumers are
purchasing with a conscience: they don't want their retail choices to
result in fewer environmental choices farther down the eco line.
