Boycotting- is it the answer?

So, I recently got my Dimbleby hat on and hosted a Question Time style talk on ethical fashion. Everything from the corporate accountability to design work was discussed. However, what really stood out for me was that most people in the room thought that the only way to be ethical is by boycotting multinational brands.

As multinational brands have made mistakes in the past and yes there is still a long way to go. It’s like Mallen Baker was saying in his recent article, Nike is always associated with sweatshop labour, but maybe we should stop associating Nike with ‘sweatshops’ now. I do think Nike takes a lot of flak for what happened in the 90’s. Since then they have made improvements and are constantly thinking of ways to be greener and more ethical. Yet when the subject of ethical fashion comes up people always concentrate on the negative things about Nike. And instantly think they need to boycott large companies like Nike, Primark etc.

Large companies DO need to take more responsibility for their supply chains and should be held accountable for their actions. But they need to be recognised for the positive changes they make too.

To support ethical fashion I don’t think you have to boycott brands. I think we need to start looking at our buying habits. Demand now exceeds production by 30%. This means garment workers work three times as hard to make what we want, and this is still not enough. This result's in tight deadlines, no room for mistakes and a greater emphasis on making clothes with no consideration as to HOW and WHO makes our clothes.

But don’t forget boycotting also results in workers losing jobs, jobs they so desperately depend on.

So what do you think?

Can you be ethical without boycotting? Is boycotting the answer?

'Unreel' unveiled

On Friday 18th March, young people from the Oadby Youth Group based in Leicester unveiled their film ‘Unreel’, a film documentary looking at what impact our demand for 'fast fashion' is having on the garment workers in Asia.

This behind the scenes style film was well received by the audience on the night. The youth leader was interviewed by BBC Radio Leicester and the event got a mention in the Leicester Mercury.

Take a look for yourself to see how well the young people have captured the plight of a garment worker.



But young people in Leicester continue to surprise us! Another Leicester based group have put together an animation and will be holding their event in a couple of weeks time. Keep a look out on the blog for more details.

Trapped

Who knows what a Sumangali means? Neither did I. Sumangali in Tamil means an unmarried girl becoming a respectable woman by entering into marriage.

In some parts of India, the bride’s parents have to provide the groom’s family with a dowry (gift of money); they also have to pay for the wedding. If the bride’s family cannot do all of this then she will be treated badly after marriage. If she then get’s married at all because some families will just say no.

One way for families and girls to get around this issue is for them to get into a Sumangali scheme aka ‘marriage assistance system’. Under the Sumangali scheme, poor families are encouraged by brokers to sign their daughters up to work in a garment factory for three years. After the three years the family get money to help pay for the wedding costs and dowry.

Some girls get treated well but for most this ‘scheme’ is like a trap. The girls are seen as the property of the factory or the broker. According to research by the Centre for Education and Communication in India, girls are often forced to work up to 12 hours a day, live in hostels with few facilities and are paid a very low wage.

The worst thing is some factories fire the girls just before they are to complete their contracts so they don’t get the money they were promised at the end.

The money is usually around 30,000 to 50,000 rupees which is between £400-700. The legal minimum wage is 140 rupees. Which means the workers should be receiving 80,000 rupees – not including over time.

One of the reason factories are trapping young women into forced labour like this is because factories can’t produce the volume of clothes that is demanded from shoppers from the developed part of the world. This has created a labour shortage and factories need to keep workers longer, whether they like it or not.

You can change all this, it’s simple. Just find different ways of wearing clothes so we don’t increase demand. If its new clothes you want, pop down to a vintage store or see how you can make something new out of something you already have. There are plenty of ways to do something different. There is currently a huge campaign to get Asian countries to unite against low wages and poor working conditions. It’s called the Asia Floor Wage campaign.

Our clothes don’t have to be made from the hands of trapped and pressured women.

Image Credit- Nishant Lalwani for The Asian Foundation for Philanthropy 

“Let them wear Dior...”

According to Live Mint, a new Bollywood movie has got the fashion police boiling over with excitement and anticipation. Newcomer Sonam Kapoor daughter of Anil Kapoor (Slumdog Millionaire) is starring in Rs20 crore adaptation of ‘Emma’ called ‘Aisha’.

The past 10 years has seen Bollywood becoming a billboard for advertisers. Many Indian actresses are spokes models for various brands and movie in the past have featured brand names like Louis Vuitton. Though this is the first time brands have featured so heavily in one movie. Sonam Kapoor will be endorsing L’Oreal and sashaying around in 60 Dior dresses and accessories.

India’s economy has been getting stronger and the spending power of a privileged few has increased. This has made brands such as Dior and Louis Vuitton the newest additions to India’s urban landscape which already boasts luxury malls, fancy cars and five star hotels.

It seems brands and corporations are keen to make India not only the producer of goods but also the consumer.

Seems like yesterday 7 year old Ravi was found to be getting paid 7p an hour and working 98 hours a week......oh wait, it was JUST the other week!

India is still amongst the poorest countries. India has had a lot of success recently but they still have a significant number of Indians living in extreme poverty which is roughly equivalent to the current population of the United States!

Despite the glowing reports of India’s growth, those numbers and that cash is not reaching the people who need it the most and the presence of a brand like Dior in a developing country like India might only widen the gap between an already divided nation.

Is it right to be filming a movie about luxury where in a country 7 year olds are fighting to stay alive?

Apple Suicide

What a week Apple has had! As if unveiling the new iPad and iPhone wasn’t enough, they also managed to increase their market value to $229 billion which puts them ahead of Microsoft.

In the same week of Apple’s great successes, came news of the 10 suicides at a Foxconn factory, one of Apple’s big suppliers. All of a sudden I went from asking how much is it to where did the iPad come from? Who made it?

Foxconn have been quick to assure the world that their factory is NOT a sweatshop.

Claiming their factory has swimming pools, cinemas and restaurants for which they cannot be considered a sweatshop. But is a swimming pool enough to distract you from the monotony of work and stresses at home? Instead of investing in swimming pools maybe Foxconn should have used that money to increase the workers wages. One of the reasons the workers may have committed suicide was to do with the compensation payouts. As the workers families have received compensation for the death of the worker.

As a means of righting a wrong according to ethicalcorp Foxconn has raised the wages by 30% which means that “the latest pay rise would double the basic pay of assembly line workers in Shenzhen and bring it to a level they currently only reach by working 12-hour shifts, six days a week.“

Would it not have made sense to just pay the workers fairly in the first place? Do the workers only get heard when they take such drastic and life threatening steps? It shouldn’t have to be like this.

We –the consumers can take a stand and demand that workers get paid fairly. At the end of the day it is us who buy the products anyway. We have the power, to influence brands like Apple through our purchase habits.

Would you want to buy electronics or clothes that you knew were the result of someone’s suicide?

I don’t want to buy ANOTHER one!

I was out to dinner the other day with friends, and they all noticed I was wearing the same shirt that I had been wearing to nearly all the recent events I had been to. They wanted to know why I insisted on wearing the same shirts over and over again.

The reason I wear the same three shirts is because they were quite expensive purchases and I also feel a little bad as I bought them from an unethical brand. Because of this I try and give my clothes an ethical life by wearing it as much as possible to make sure the worker’s work has not gone in vain. I think it would just be disrespectful to the worker if I was to treat his or her work with disregard.

I figured boycotting brands would mean the workers would lose their jobs. Besides, boycotting is a bit drastic and difficult for me to do as I haven’t been able to find an ethical brand whose designs I like. I think if I just buy less then I won’t be adding to the heavy workload of the garment workers.

I alone cannot improve working conditions or pay. But I can reduce the pressure of the workload on the workers by controlling how much I buy.

The idea of not wearing the same outfit twice is one we should work against. Especially as these days it takes clothes seen on catwalks to be seen on the high street within six weeks. Imagine how many garments the workers must put together in such a short amount of time.

Only about 8 years ago it would be unheard of for clothes seen on catwalks to be on high streets shelves in such a short amount of time! This adds pressure on the production line to deliver faster results. And workers tend to get treated like machines, sewing 60 sleeves to 60 shirts in under a minute.

Instead of buy, buy, buy, we should take what we already have and make it last longer. So even if it was not an ethical purchase you can try and give the product an ethical life!

One girl wears One dress for 365 days

Its crazy how anytime we hear of a big event coming up we automatically think ‘I need to go shopping’. When all you need to do is put your creative hat on and look at what you already have and experiment.

Certain TV shows promote excessive spending and think to be fashion forward; you need to own a closet like Victoria Beckham’s. Fashion is a form of art and allows you to express who you are through the clothes you wear. Shows that feature young, well groomed, rich girls who appear in a new dress in every scene are expressing their wealth as opposed to their creative selves.

Sheena Mathieken on the other hand is showing us all how one dress can be worn to just about any look or event. She has taken on the challenge to wear one dress everyday for a whole year as part of a Uniform Project



All the donations made from the project will benefit the Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots organization in India that helps fund education and provide school uniforms in the country's slums.

She accessorises the basic dress with vintage and borrowed extras. The dress is a basic black dress that can be worn back to front or as an open tunic.

Clicking through the pictures I thought it was amazing how this girl seemed to look fashionable and completely different everyday but with the same dress.

It is important to see the positive message in her mission. We buy a lot of clothes but we don’t really need them. And people in other parts of the world can barely afford a uniform.

The time has come for you to take what you already own and inject your personality into it!

How much does your happiness cost?

20% of the world's population consumes over 70% of its material resources, and owns over 80% of its wealth.

That 20% is us! We buy, we throw and we buy again. We don’t ask ourselves where we are buying from or where we are throwing to. Is this because we are a nation who are constantly being told the only way to be happy is to keep spending?

I went to Oxford Circus the other day for gloves and came back with 3 t-shirts and the urge to go back and buy a pair of jeans. What makes me spend all this money and think about buying something I don’t really need?

It could be campaigns like Coca Cola who market products with slogans such as ‘Open happiness’ suggest that if we don’t use their products we won’t be happy. Stores such as Selfridges use slogans like “Buy me, I’ll change your life” make us think that buying their products will make us happy and content. As a result we are buying excessively without seeing the repercussions of our actions.

In 1997 the average woman bought approximately 17 items of clothing a year which is a little over one item per month. In 2007 the average woman bought 35 items of clothing a year. With the figure growing it is worrying to wonder what impact this demand will have on the people producing the goods. Did you know it only takes six weeks for clothes on the catwalk to be bought on the high street. Think about the pressure the workers must be under to be producing so many clothes so quickly.

We as consumers need to pause before making a purchase and ask ourselves:

1. What effect the production had on individuals making it?
2. How the environment was effected to make and distribute it?
3. Who influenced your decision to buy it? Poster? Celebrities? Friends?
4. Are you buying it because it is a necessity or a luxury?

We need to start thinking for ourselves and buy only what we need to live not what we might think will make us happier.

Image Credit- Ell Brown on Flickr  at Creative Commons