Hamnett highlights ethical concerns for fashion's real victims
Sunday April 27 2008
ONE of the fashion world's leading ethical campaigners, Katherine Hamnett, was in Dublin last week to throw her support behind the capital's first ethical fashion week.
Hamnett who is best known for her T-shirts bearing slogans such as 'Protest and Survive' and 'No More Fashion Victims' addressed a public discussion last Thursday, chaired by the Sunday Independent's Fashion Editor Constance Harris, and sponsored by by Marks and Spencers.
The large fashion conscientious crowd that attended Fashion Evolution at the 'Button Factory' heard how the impact of the clothing and textile industry on the environment has become the focus of the Katharine Hamnett's work since she set up her clothing line in 1979.
"We became ridiculously successful, incredibly quickly. It completely exceeded my wildest career dreams," she said.
In 1983, she decided to address ethical and environmental issues by launching a collection of protest T-shirts. Some years later, when she commissioned research into the impact the fashion industry was having on the environment she really stepped up her ethical campaigning.
"The results were absolutely horrific; it was just shattering. I found myself suddenly up to my neck in a living nightmare," she said.
The research exposed the effects the cotton industry was having on both the farmers in the developing world that grow it and its environmental impacts. Hamnett drew particular reference to Uzbekistan, which is the world's second largest exporter of cotton.
She said according to the Environmental Justice Foundation it has become so through forced child labour, excessive pesticide use and the draining of an ocean.
"20,000 deaths annually are caused by accidental pesticide poisoning in conventional cotton agriculture," the designer said, quoting World Health Organisation figures.
She told the Sunday Independent it was up to consumers to send a clear message to retailers.
"The thing to do is buy organic cotton and ask for both it and fair trade items when you shop. Write to your favourite brands and retailers and ask them do they know of the horror stories going on in the industry."
Hamnett said the big retail chains in the UK were taking notice of consumers who are becoming concerned about where and how the clothes they are buying are produced.
"If it's happening there it'll happen here. Irish people are so warm-hearted and generous; it's going to go mad here. I'm here to spread the word," she said.
Constance Harris, a keen supporter of Fashion Evolution, believes the initiative is "an essential development in Irish fashion".
Fashion Evolution was organised by the founders of 'Redress', Kellie Dalton, Kate Nolan and Rosie O'Reilly who hope it will become an annual event.
"We wanted to give people a starting point and get them thinking," said Dalton. "We wanted to make them conscious of their day-to-day choices as a consumer. They have the power to choose the type of world they want to live in and leave behind", she said.
'Redress' also got Oxfam Ireland involved in a young designers competition that was won on the night by Deirdre Harte ,who redesigned an outfit from Oxfam.
Fashion Evolution ended with an inter-industry event on Friday which again involving Katharine Hamnett, and Mike Barry of M&S but also representatives of H&M and EDUN.
Sponsored by the DCU Business School, Dalton said it was designed to educate industry and raise awareness about ethical and environmental fashion.
"There is no roadmap for companies that are trying to make it happen. We wanted to give the Irish industry the tools and blue prints to put it into practice".
- NIAMH HORAN
