Look Great, Feel Great – Making Waves with Ethical Fashion

Look Great, Feel Great Making Waves with Ethical Fashion

As a nation, we've woken up considerably since the 21st century began. At the end of the last century, we were happy to swan around in our designer gear without the least knowledge of where it came from: now, we're all about ethical fashion. Clothes, bags and jewellery that have been made for a fair price, in a place that doesn't treat its labourers like machines.

All this Johnny come lately conscience might not be good news for the big fashion houses, whose vast profit margins have relied on the fact that they can pay some poor kid 5p a week to make their garments: but for the smaller businesses, the ones who do care, it's proving a blessing. Suddenly, the ethical fashion goods they've been promoting all along aren't just the province of tie-dye hippies: they're high on the hit list of the rich and famous.

One of the problems the major problem, in fact with conscience led fashion has always been its image: which until recently was associated with defined sections of the population- Liberals and activists, mainly. Now that A-listers are attending the ethical fashion parade, everything is changing. It's trendy to own ethnic scarves; high fashion to rock cool cotton tops and open toed sandals. The artisan looks that used to be the norm for hippies only are taking over catwalks across the world bringing a statement about values into the world of high fashion and bringing the demands of high fashion into the villages of Southern Asia.

Fairly traded fashion means paying a decent living wage to the people who make it. That means a smaller profit margin per item because every garment needs to be paid for properly at source, while the price at retail can't increase or the whole point about the trade being fair is lost. If a person pays 100 for a garment in London, the person who made that garment can reasonably expect, say 25 but if you pay 25 per item for your ethical fashion lines, as a business, you can't then charge 300 for the dress, or whatever. If you did that, you'd then have to pay 75 per item. And so on. What that means is that companies, who have traditionally made massive profits by paying pittances for their source items, are starting to feel the pinch in the balance sheets. While companies who have always sold ethical fashion items are simply selling more than they used to and so, overall, making more money.

It's a heart warming story, in its way: the triumph of ethical consumerism over big brand capitalism. It proves, for one, that consumers, once informed, are willing to pay for goods they perceive to have been bought ethically. And that gives the lie to the whole excuse big business has been trumpeting for years how people won't pay increased prices for the same article. Within reason, it seems, they will. More importantly, they're buying into the whole look of ethical fashion which means it's not so much about changing costs as changing styles. The fair trade style is in: big business is out.

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