anti apathy

Anti Apathy, company 05352621

http://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/05352621 Still curious as to why a bunch of people got together to sell Chinese shoes in 2005 and got so much public sector backing, I clicked on the directors' links for Anti-Apathy, a charity at the same address which mushroomed-up in the same year. Most directors give their jobs as "freelance consultant", and one as "water". Someone from the New Economics Foundation served his time, as did a Mr Ed Gillespie and Ms Lucy Shea of Futerra Communications who are mentioned further down this facebook page. Futerra aim to provide "social proof" of causes, according to an interview by Mr Gellespie. [no relation to the US politician]

The gist of it is that Futerra Communications helped use the term "ethical fashion" to share PR amongst a whole vague range of shops, just as the ad Agency J Walter Thomson invented the Cheese Bureau and the Ploughman's Lunch some time in the 1950s to share among a long list of national cheese marketing boards.

Somehow, ethical fashion pundits got state backing from UK Trade and Investment, Greater London Authority / London Development Agency, and a bundle of other taxpayer-funded offices that had just been set-up to try and put taxpayers out of work, promoting imported competition and implying that it was more relevant or more ethical. http://web.archive.org/web/20030402234930/http://www.antiapathy.org/story/story.html

The organisation has company-style accounts that don't say where the money comes from or goes but there was about £60,000 going through the books at one point. The name seems to have started as an event. There also registered as charity 119887 "to advance the education of the public in the subjects of social justice and environmental progress" and obtained funding for a an apathy-reducing website called TheNag.net from Esmeefairbairn.org.uk and the Tedworth Trust.

Quite soon the "re-fashion" side of the business started-up with all the usual names that are heard-of together and sometimes nowhere else. Accounts describe the relationship.

http://web.archive.org/web/20051023132108/http://www.antiapathy.org/lifelineissues/index.php
http://www.neweconomics.org/issues/entry/jobs-industrial-strategy
There's an overlap of directors with a thing called the New Economics Foundation and Anti Apathy, the event and charity that overlaps again with the folk who got lots of sudden subsidy to flog Chinese leather shoes and any other stuff they could find. I don't see an overlap of ideas; a page on the New Economics Foundation site about industrial strategy says that manufacturing and transport jobs are generally better than hospitality and retail; it acknowledges that UK manufacturing exists.

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Planb4fashion is a blog by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop

fashion going green

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

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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…

FT.com / Style - Forget black: fashion's going green . .

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.

ft.com

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Planb4fashion is a blog by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop

ethical fashion PR invented 2005

ethical fashion PR invented 2005

The meaningless phrase "ethical fashion" was invented in September 2005 in London, and searches peaked with news stories about ethical fashion shows for firms like Terra Plana

http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/.../well-fashioned.../detail was another government-sponsored exibition of the usual suspects - Terra Plana for example - which our taxes helped show at

• Crafts Council Gallery: 23 Mar to 4 Jun 2006
• The City Gallery, Leicester: 15 Jul to 26 Aug 2006
• The Design Centre, Barnsley: 7 Sep to 20 Oct 2006
• City Museum & Records Office, Portsmouth: 4 Nov 2006 to 7 Jan 2007
• Bilston Craft Gallery, Wolverhampton: 20 Jan to 3 Mar 2007
• Estethica room at London Fashion Week, various dates starting 2005

http://planb4fashion.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/you-are-invited-to-masterclass-in.html says something about the formatting of an ethical fashion PR press release that's meant not to promote UK manufacturing but sell the competition from China instead. In other words to say it's "ethical" to close UK factories.

One of the techniques used to sell sweatshop products is to say that torture by Nike contractors and their autocratic states is better than torture by henchmen of the East India Company, who cut of the thumbs of rival loom owners. So: you see a speech my a rep from some far-eastern trade union about injustice there and think "at least she still has her thumbs: things are getting better". I think this is an unfair example of progress to pick. I don't know the source for the story, but if the East India Company still existed it would have its own PR office to rebuff claims from rival Nike.

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PlanB4fashion is a link to this ethical fashion blog on a single long page

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