October 2008
How did the ethical fashion movement come about? Like nearly all revolutions, there's a colourful history to tell.
It's easy to forget that this island has serious fashion pedigree. The hills were once alive with the rattling, whirring noise of spinning and knitting machines and automatic looms. The British industrial revolution was based on textiles and fashion, centred on mills in the North of England. And until a decade ago brands and labels, including M&S, were still producing on these shores.
Remember, fast-fashion is a very new invention. Our grandparents lived by a system of make do and mend (pictured left). But if we were to do a 'Who Do You Think You Are?' of ethical fashion, we'd trace most of its DNA back to the 1970s eco movement; it's a direct descendant. Back then eco style consisted of a lot of sack and tent-like shifts, woolly leggings and rugged tie-dyed fabrics that were hessian-and hemp-based. These outfits were based on thoroughly noble intentions - however, they were never going to make it onto the runway. Kids like me were still clothed almost exclusively in synthetic fibres that didn't breathe but were cheap to produce.
By the 1980s many more people had become concerned about chemicals in fabrics, particularly flame retardants in the polymers of synthetics. In response to worries about toxic fabrics, particularly in Germany, labels began to appear on clothes to show they were 'natural' or 'chemical'-free. Fears about toxicity began to focus on cotton the crop, which uses more pesticide in the growing phase than any other. C&A, for example, started to sell green cotton ranges in the early 1990s. To be honest, some of these early attempts at non-toxic fabrics and green cotton were motivated by fears over our own health. But some committed pioneers began to understand what a raw deal producers and workers in developing countries were getting.
In 1992, the US newspaper The Chicago Tribune uncovered stories of the iconic denim brand Levi Strauss using sweat-shop labour. It was as if the floodgates had been opened. One after another, the big brands - the ones we saw constantly on TV, in posters and being endorsed by celebrities - were implicated. It suddenly dawned on activists, consumers and the fashion industry (although it liked to keep negative fears quiet) that the big brands had lost control over their supply lines, and that cheap fashion had a very dear cost.
British Fairtrade fashion company Gossypium (www.gossypium.co.uk) began in 1998 when textile experts Abigail Garner and Thomas Petit realised that clothes could be made better, with less chemicals, and in a far, far fairer way. Gossypium linked up with Agrocel, an Indian cooperative that puts the needs of the farmer first. With the World Health Organization estimating that there were 3 million poisonings and 20,000 deaths annually from pesticides, they decided to work with organic cotton, grown without the expense and health hazard of lashings of agrichemicals.
In 2000, Naomi Klein published No Logo, a worldwide best-seller that told the truth behind the label. It was enough to put millions of people off big brands - well, for five minutes anyway.
But the stage was essentially set for the emergence of ethical fashion as we know it. We now had health, environmental and labour rights reasons to change the clothes we bought, and the way we bought them. The new ethical labels put workers' rights and health before selling cheap-as-chips cardigans that are designed to be thrown away after one wash.
We started to see a new type of fashion entrepreneur, such as Safia Minney, who set up an environmental campaigning NGO in 1991 and went on to found People Tree, one of the UK's leading ethical fashion brands. Rather than designing a piece in London then going around the world looking for someone to make it really cheaply, she goes around the globe working with impoverished communities, discovering their particular skills, such as fine embroidery, and designing around them.
From there, ethical fashion picked up pace. Even Bono (the U2 frontman) got involved, launching the Edun brand with his wife, Ali Hewson, in 2005. Even that palace of fast-fashion, Top Shop, began to stock three ethical labels: People Tree, Gossypium and Hug - an organic T-shirt brand started by Nick Pecorelli, who used to write speeches for Gordon Brown.
By the time Estethica - the ethical fashion arm of London Fashion Week - launched in 2006, those of us who like the environment but don't want to wear a scratchy tent were beside ourselves with excitement.
Fast forward to now and the new eco labels don't feel the need to shout their ethical credentials from the roof-tops. A case in point is Julia Smith, a young British designer whose glamour-filled take on everyday life uses clean production, transparent supply routes, and even the odd bit of hemp silk. Yet she doesn't classify herself as an ethical designer, just a designer. 'I think that's how fashion should be anyway,' she says, reasonably.
Whether designers flaunt their eco credentials or get them out there by stealth, ethical design has traveled a huge distance in the past five years. And it's going to develop at an even faster and more furious rate with new resources, notably The London College of Fashion's new Sustainable Design Centre.
I was thinking about how far we've all come at the recent Make Your Mark fashion event. It was the final of the competition and three very talented young labels were in the running. At 33, behind Miss Brazil and dressed in a lovely RAJE dress (Miawi was the eventual winner), I thundered (rather too literally) down the catwalk myself.
See Lucy strut her stuff in our Make Your Mark picture gallery
Lucy Siegle is a journalist and broadcaster and visiting professor at the London College of Fashion.
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