Fair Trade fashion: an agenda for change

Written by Safia Minney, By Hand – The Fair Trade Fashion Agenda sets out the story behind Fair Trade Fashion. It is a celebration of the hand skills and artistry of those who make and design for People Tree. By Hand offers a new model for fashion, showing how investing in communities and their environment creates a blueprint for sustainable fashion.
Fair Trade can help people help themselves to better nutrition, health, education, and community development, and protects their environment. The Fair Trade fashion industry puts food on the tables of the poorest families, enables parents to send their children to school and to escape a vicious cycle of poverty. The book demonstrates that fashion that is Fair Trade, natural and handmade is not only beautiful, it is vital to our planet and its people.

A fashion history less heard

At the height of British colonial power in 1850, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan were one country. The British Empire systematically undermined local Indian textile cottage industries that had produced cloth and clothing by hand for millennia, destroying countless livelihoods so they could sell British mill-made fabrics to the subcontinent. In years to come, Ghandi identified how this kind of forced trading eroded India’s traditional livelihoods, sense of community and peace.

The muslin weavers of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, were famous throughout the world for their dexterity. To this day, people speak of handwoven cloth so fine that a whole sari could pass through a wedding ring. The mill-made fabrics from the British could not compete. After trying to prohibit headweaving, the British cut off the middle fingers of master weavers. The skill was lost.

Man over machine

Today, synthetic fibres, yarns and machine-made fabrics have largely replaced handmade, natural and biodegradable fabrics and clothing. Nevertheless, in India handweaving is still the second biggest industry after agriculture and continues to provide an income for millions of families. A handloom costs less than £100 and even the poorest household can earn a living.

Crafts and cottage industries receive little acknowledgement, but feed countless households. Hand embroidery, block printing, natural dyeing and organic cotton farming all provide valuable work in the most rural areas of the developing world. Handskills enrich communities economically, socially and culturally. As the world population grows, people’s hands have become our most plentiful natural resource. We are running out of oil, exhausting water supplies and dangerously overburdening the planet with natural resources. Hand production and traditional farming hold the key to reducing CO2 emissions.

By Hand shows how the indigenous skills of Asia, Africa and Latin America can bring social and environmental justice together. Fair Trade projects deserve your support in promoting fashion that respects people and the planet. The book is available here, priced £5 plus p&p.