Fair Trade Clothing Brands & Human Rights ... the Ethical Consumer Movement

[utopia]

for anyone who is in london, tomorrow there will be a talk at the fashion and textile museum that I think is very relevant to this topic:

What is the cost of fashion? June 8, 15, 29 & July 13 6.30 – 8.00pm
The Fashion & Textile Museum is proud to continue its much-anticipated series of Wednesday evening talks. Sponsored by Newham College, this particular series will explore and debate four controversial topics whilst attempting to answer the question ‘what is the cost of fashion?’

29 June: Fashion and Working Conditions:
Is there an ‘ethical revolution sweeping through the world’s sweatshops?’ as the Independent suggested in a recent article?

Are large fashion companies really cleaning up their act and turning away from inhumane working conditions? A distinguished panel, chaired by a marketing guru with a conscience, Diana Verde Nieto from Clownfish Marketing, includes fashion icon Katharine Hamnett, Senior Fashion Editor at WGSN Verity Mcliveen, Collin LeDuc from Generation IM, Fashion Journalist Fleur Britten and Tamsin Lejeune from Label behind the Labour.

Tickets: £7 per person (Concessions £5) Capacity per event – 100 To book please call: 0207 407 8664 For further information please contact: Michelle Arnusch on 020 7407 8664 or e-mail [email protected]

 

[sea of stitches]

yes it has undergone a few name changes already... perhaps we might start up a separate organic and vegan clothing trend thread...I think it'd be good to keep this topic focused mainly on fair trade clothing, rather than lumping all the 'philanthropic topics' all into the same thread and thus overshadowing the fair trade focus. I'll do some research and get to it shortly.

it would be great to have a "sustainably made clothing" thread, but i think that's next to impossible. maybe one in which companies could meet two out of three factors would be doable. there would be a lot of overlap with the individual threads though. i dunno, just a suggestion... what i don't get is, if companies are gonna be good in one sense, why don't they just go all the way?

anyway, back on topic, johanna hofring does an organic, sweatshop free label, but i have yet to see her work properly. no sweat apparel is not very good for clothing, but they also make converse look alikes. oh and i think fair trade can be made in any country, as long as workers are being paid living wages and being allowed to leave, etc. i think fair trade and sweatshop free go hand in hand in apparel.

thanks everyone for all the great links and information! great thread

 

[zrzava]

What about Katherine Hamnett? I didn't hear a lot about her in America but in England I understand she's pretty well known. I remember reading an article about her in Organic Style a few years back.

 

[*Happiness*]

Thanks everyone for posting. Do any of these websites ship to the US?

 

[oktobergirl]

American Apparel. Although I hear they did try to stop the workers from unionising

Hi. I'm new here, found this forum through a friend. I'm a big wearer of "American Apparel"s stuff, and I also order our nonprofit tshirts (http://www.africanwellfund.org/merchandise.html) from them.

Is there any truth to this? Where did you hear it? I did a search on google and found nothing.

 

[sea of stitches]

Hi. I'm new here, found this forum through a friend. I'm a big wearer of "American Apparel"s stuff, and I also order our nonprofit tshirts (http://www.africanwellfund.org/merchandise.html) from them.

Is there any truth to this? Where did you hear it? I did a search on google and found nothing.

there are plenty of articles, just google: american+apparel+union. here is the first, second, and third urls that come up. read up, and you can make up your own mind.

 

[Melisande]

Hi, everyone, and thanks for starting this thread, Utopia!

I started a thread about this on another forum but it seemed that so few people are aware of the importance of fair trade.

I buy from Peopletree all the time; I love just hanging out at their boutique--so informative, friendly, and their representatives are just awesome.They sit you down with a big smile and serve you a generous mug of organic tea on the house with cane sugar, even if you're just browsing. Living reminder that world peace starts right at home.The clothes and accessories are stylish too, and their organic fairtrade chocolate?...Ahhh!

It's great to see all the interest here; we as consumers can really make a difference in the world by buying fair trade, yay!!

 

[orlem]

there are plenty of articles, just google: american+apparel+union. here is the first, second, and third urls that come up. read up, and you can make up your own mind.

American Apparel is growing so fast that they're losing some of their premise, I guess. I have a friend that works there and the new salesworkers are being offered a dollar less than they used to give to bring new workers in.

 

[*Happiness*]

American Apparel is growing so fast that they're losing some of their premise, I guess. I have a friend that works there and the new salesworkers are being offered a dollar less than they used to give to bring new workers in.

What is their pay wage? I wonder? Yeah, I have noticed American Apparel is popping up all over the place. I hope they don't lose their fundamentals....they are one of the last companies like that.

 

[Melisande]

Bumpity bump!

Too important to let die...

 

[in the miso soup]

great thread.

i was thinking--it would be nice to start another thread, perhaps one about avoiding certain brands that exploit sweatshops, particularly brands that have sweatshops in CHINA or LATIN AMERICA. i think it would be make things a lot easier for the conscious consumer to know what NOT to buy, if they don't want to spend so much extra money & time on "free trade," they can just avoid certain labels. also a list of sweatshop-free brands such as new balance for sneakers etc. etc. might be a good idea. i'm willing to try and put it together if anyone's interested . . . and if anybody might want to help, PM me.

 

[Melisande]

Hi Miso Soup, thanks for your input! I think it is a great idea to start a different thread on sweatshops and sweatshop free brands since it is not an alternative or facet of free trade but different things all together. Would you go ahead and do it? I personally don't have much info myself but would love to learn more.

And then if the mods would kindly move the posts on American Apparel there?

I don't think we should limit the thread to China and South America, though,...so many people around the world are suffering in sweatshops.

I for one, enjoy spending extra money and time on free trade; I like knowing I am supporting people who need my help and businesses which are committed to alleviating poverty, rather than huge first-world corporations.

Thanks Miso Soup, we will all be looking forward to the info!! Yay!

 

[irmelle]

YES!

Anti-corporate activist sneaks up on the sportswear giants

By Tina-Marie O'Neill

Kalle Lasn wants to be David to the multibillion-dollar global corporations' Goliath. The anti-corporation activist and founder of Adbusters magazine wants to end corporate exploitation and create a level playing field between society and big corporations.

He's now using a $500,000 marketing campaign for an`ethical sneaker' to do it.

Estonian-born Lasn is taking on global sportswear giant Nike with the launch of the BlackSpot sneaker, which resembles the Nike-owned Converse ChuckTaylor All Star shoe. Nike registered a record $10.7 billion in revenue in 2003 and its stockprice has already risen by almost 60 per cent this year. Although Lasn is undeterred by these figures, he is realistic about taking the shine out of Nike's 20 per cent market share in America.

"It's an open question about whether we can cut into Nike's market share,"Lasn said. But the debate the idea has generated is healthy, he said.

The BlackSpot sneaker will feature a prominent anti-logo black spot where the Converse logo normally appears and a symbolic red spot to the front of the shoe for "kicking Phil's ***". (Phil is Nike chief executive Phil Knight.)

"We went after Phil because he has played a cat-and-mouse game with the activist community for the last ten years," said Lasn. "He is recalcitrant, he plays hardball and is one of the most hated chief executives among the activist community."

The sneaker was supposed to be launched this month, but Lasn, critical of the way corporations make their millions on the back of Asian and South American sweatshops, ran into trouble finding a suitable union factory to make it.

"I looked at South Korea, Indonesia and eventually China. Now I'm looking at Poland and Spain. We'll launch the sneaker in late summer," he said.

The shoe will retail for about $40-$45.

Adbusters is hyping the sneakers with the `Unswoosher's kick-*** marketing strategy' on short television advertisements, or `subvertisements', on CNN, small networks, full-page $47,000 ads in the New York Times and on billboards near Nike's corporate headquarters in Oregon.

The ads include a Nike Swoosh almost blotted out with markers and accompanied by the Rethink the Cool caption. Other ads ridicule Knight.

The costly ad campaign has divided opinions among readers and activists, who accuse Lasn of selling out.

Lasn's response is simple. "For the last 20 years leftist campaigners have failed miserably to change the way big capitalist corporations operate. They're still chanting Marxist slogans.

"We have to play the branding game, the capitalist game, in order to bring about a different, bottom-up kind of capitalism. It's time to think outside the leftist box," he said.

More than 6,900 pairs of BlackSpot sneakers have been pre-ordered on the website, www.blackspotsneaker.org.

More than 480 retailers have signed up to sell the shoe.

Adbusters has encouraged activists to spread the good word by drawing a red dot on their own shoes, `adbust' Nike billboards with black spots or jam' Niketown stores with black spot stickers.

From http://www.sbpost.ie/web/DocumentView/did-141017475-pageUrl--2FThe-Newspaper-2FSundays-Paper-2FMedia-and-Marketing.asp

http://adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotsneaker/

http://www.adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotmusic/

 

[fashionista-ta]

I know companies like Nike, and even Gap, haven't had a good reputation on how they have treated their workers, but I was wondering whether any "fashion houses/Companies" have been know to treat people bad. It would be brilliant if Galliano or McQueen said that all the fabrics they use and the people who make clothes had to do with fair trade. Imagine a fairtrade stamp on a bag!

Zackly what I thought when I saw this thread ... why doesn't fashion have a Rugmark? This seems pretty doable to me, all that's needed is a bit of activism ... It's interesting to me that we have folks extremely active with animal rights as they relate to fashion, but it seems like not nearly as much when it comes to human rights ...

Btw, it was originally the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Women, Children, and Animals. Whatever happened to the women and children part? It's not like that problem has been solved

 

[Melisande]

... It's interesting to me that we have folks extremely active with animal rights as they relate to fashion, but it seems like not nearly as much when it comes to human rights ...

Btw, it was originally the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Women, Children, and Animals. Whatever happened to the women and children part? It's not like that problem has been solved

Thank you, thank you. Exactly...it deeply saddens me when the same people who weep over animal rights and other worthy causes are blatantly racist or have no interest in human suffering, whether in Africa, the Middle East or right under their very own roof...sorry...rant...

Fairtrade stamp would be wonderful!!!

 

[Zazie]

Can someone post images from Edun? Can't find them on their website. Or please direct me to the right link. Thanks!

 

[utopia]

^ pics from the edun collection have been posted here, zazie. they're on the first page of this thread.

 

[Zazie]

Finally got the website to load pictures...to be honest, I'd really want to buy from them but they're not me. :| Maybe as a gift or something.

 

[sea of stitches]

I flipped through Harper's Bazaar between classes today and found an article that featured fairtrade and organic fashions. The one that applies to this thread would be Noir. It is designed by Peter Ingwerson (Denmark) and uses Illuminati II organic cottons. He also uses leather and other materials, and I believe does the manufacturing in Africa (what a bad memory I have ). Anyway, I couldn't find anything about him on the internet, but if you are interested, I think it was the August issue (I can look at it again next week too). The price point was somewhat high, but the designs were also somewhat interesting.

 

[utopia]

for those who are interested, there's a wonderful interview with bono's wife in the current issue of marie claire uk, about edun and her involvement in the fair trade movement. it's worth checking out. I really appreciate her attitude about what she's doing, and think she has some good things to say about the collection. she especially makes it clear that edun is not a charity - fair trade shouldn't be considered a 'charity'-oriented thing as it often is. it should be a way of life.