Our range of ethical fashion is vibrant, stylish and supremely comfortable!

Our Autumn/Winter shoot on Saturday enabled us to show the clothing off to its best; with models chosen to reflect a variety of styles, there really is a look here for everyone!

Using fabrics from sustainable sources and manufacturing products ethically has moved on a long way in the last few years; resulting in a range of clothing and accessories that genuinely rivals the high street brands.

Our range of hoodies and tees take your look effortlessly from preppy to kooky; while our dresses, made by Righteous Fashion work beautifully during the day with boots or pumps, but transform for evening into classic elegance or fierce high fashion.

Perhaps most exciting are our range of footwear and accessories – the new phrase in fashion is not ‘Who are you wearing?’ more – ‘What are you wearing?’ Our Haversack messenger bags are made from recycled tyres, seatbelts and windsurfing sails! Whereas it takes approximately 10 plastic bottles to make each of our beanie hats!

There are loads of styling tips on each of our category pages and a helpful section on each product page to show what items go well together – so shopping couldn’t be easier.

In contrast to London Fashion Week’s sustainable offering there was no green washing – digital printing is environmentally sound because it has less waste than screen-printing is tenuous at best! An event full of facts, samples, shared experiences and goals made for a very informative show.
Particularly interesting was Cindy Rhodes from Worn Again who success in building an upcycling/repurposing manufacturing model is to be commended.
Our friends at Eden Studio and Pants to Poverty were very much in the thick of it with plenty of visitors to their stands and hopefully lots of orders!
While attending such events might lead one to believe that there is a massive ground swell towards sustainable fashion I still don’t see the big brands throwing themselves into the midst of the change. As with all commercial entities they watch the market closely, some even dip a toe in to measure the PR response it provides. Real change will only come from consumer demand that will force the entire industry to revisit their profit models and consider the wider picture.
Yesterday’s event certainly was encouraging and suggests a small army is rising to meet the challenge of commercial sustainable fashion.

Enter the mass-production style emporia, and Western women have the seemingly delicious and liberating option of getting this summer’s must-have tiny floral retro eighties print sundress – which will look appallingly frumpy by next summer – for $12. They – we – can invest in classic items that don’t age so fast, and absorb these low-cost trendy disposables as the mood hits.

These stores solve a psychological problem for us, too, since one can shop at length – a pleasure that may well be hard-wired in the female brain, owing to our evolutionary development as gatherers – without feeling sick about one’s overspending by the end of the exercise.

But what has been liberating for Western women is a system built literally on the backs of women in the developing world. How do Primark and its competitors in the West’s shopping malls and High Streets keep that cute frock so cheap? By starving and oppressing Bangladeshi, Chinese, Mexican, Haitian, and other women, that’s how.

We all know that cheap clothing is usually made in sweatshop conditions – and usually by women. And we know – or should know – that women in sweatshops around the world report being locked in and forbidden to use bathrooms for long periods, as well as sexual harassment, violent union-busting, and other forms of coercion.

But, like any family secret that would cause us discomfort if faced directly, we Western women turn a blind eye to it. Boycotts of sweated college t-shirts in the United States led to fairer manufacturing practices, and boycotts of coffee and produce, led mostly by women consumers, resulted in fair-trade purchases by major supermarkets. And more affluent women do have a history of effective sweated labor boycotts in the past: in the Victorian era, impoverished women were going blind in the `needle trades’, turning out elaborate embroideries for wealthy women, until revulsion on the part of these consumers forced conditions to better. By contrast, today, there is no major movement led by developed-world women to stop this global exploitation by cut-rate manufacturers – even though our money is the one tool powerful enough to force manufacturers to change their ways.

The reason is simple: we like things the way they are.

But it will become increasingly difficult for us to maintain our “out of sight, out of mind” attitude. To their credit, women in the developing world – some of the most exploited and coerced women on earth – are raising their voices.

For example, The Financial Times reported on June 23 that, “Hundreds of Bangladeshi garment factories supplying western buyers such as Marks and Spencer, Tesco, Walmart, and H&M gradually reopened under heavy police protection…after days of violent protests by tens of thousands of laborers demanding higher wages.” A thousand riot police used rubber bullets and tear gas on the workers, and hundreds were injured, but they did not back down.

Most of the two million people working in Bangladesh’s garment industry are women, and they are the lowest-paid garment workers in the world, earning $25 a month. But they are demanding that their monthly wage be almost tripled, to $70. Their leaders make the point that, at current pay levels, workers cannot feed themselves or their families.

Economists predict that strikes and unrest will escalate in Bangladesh, and also in Vietnam, with even investment bankers quoted by The Financial Times calling wages for women garment workers in these countries “unsustainably low.”

The factories have reopened – for now. But Bangladesh’s government is considering an increase in the minimum wage. If it happens, one of the world’s most oppressed legal workforces will have scored a major victory – largely symbolic for now, but one that will inspire other women garment workers around the world to rise up in protest.

Western women, we should challenge ourselves to follow this story and find ways to do what is right in changing our own consumption patterns. It is past time to show support for women who are suffering systematic, globalized, cost-effective gender discrimination in the most overt ways – ways that most of us no longer have to face. Let us support a fair-trade economy, and refuse to shop at outlets targeted by activists for unfair employment practices (for more information, go to here ).

If women around the world who are held in the bondage of sweated labour manage to win this crucial fight, that cute dress at Primark may cost a fair amount more. But it already costs too much to the women who can’t afford to feed and house themselves and their children.

That $3 pair of adorable lace-up sandals? The price – given the human costs – really is too good to be true.

So as I stand here today in the courtyard of Clarence House surrounded by fashion royalty such as Erin O’Connor and Sophie Dahl, waiting for the START ethical fashion show to begin, I confess to having to pinch myself!

For this particular group of eco warriors there is a high-end offering emerging with a price tag to match! While it certainly does its job of raising awareness – the high profile location, the smattering of minor celebs and the attendance of Boris Johnson on the face of it appear well-meaning but listening in to the conversations between journalists and buyers there does seem to be some confusion as to what really constitutes ‘ethical’.

As the fashion show begins – a first for me, I’m staggered at the size of the models, that in my opinion do nothing to show off clothes as they have no curves at all! I can’t help but wonder that in an industry where the latest thing is king, whether the quest for regular sized models was very much last year’s cause?

We are only just starting out, but our Trash-d label is a little more down to earth – designed for regular people to wear every day. I am proud to say that the collection is easy to wear, supremely comfortable and kind to the environment. We have worked really hard to ensure that even the most scary looking heels will allow you to run for the bus with ease.

Our stock rooms are fit to burst with handbags, shoes, scarves and jewellery all of which meet our stringent eco standards. During the next few days we’ll be receiving t-shirts, hoodies, jeans, jackets, skirts and sweatpants ready for our early autumn fashion shoot – which reminds me…

Organise food for the models!