Posts Tagged ‘Fair Trade’

Autumn Winter 2011 Kick off meeting

Saori, Julia, Jenny, Misato and Masako share fabric development

I’m working with the People Tree design team on the Autumn/Winter 2011 collection – Looking at craft skills, hand knitted pieces and tribal hints on new silhouettes – and we’re revisiting the producers traditional skills, hand weaves, block prints and embroideries too. The team asked me a few questions about the meetings and I thought i’d share them with you.

How will People Tree start to interpret the themes for its collection?

We’re thinking craft meets couture –practical, wearable clothes that flatter the body with innocent embroidery like cross stitch and braiding.

What sorts of colour pallet can we expect to see for AW11? Some surprise new colours, a gorgeous green and lots of funky highlights.

What’s your favourite idea that you and the team have discussed so far?

A new piece inspired by a block print dress I made at a fair trade group years back – white silk with a beautiful screen print.

Are there any themes that People Tree can’t do and why would that be? We don’t do synthetic fabrics. We don’t do fast fashion – ours is slow. We love craft skills.

Jenny our buyer loves vintage

Traditional embroideries - so inspiring

A rummage through the sample boxes and vintage pieces inspire

Working on the colours for Autumn/Winter 2011 with Tracy Mulligan and Masako Ueda and the design team

Bangladesh minimum wage doubled, but it’s not enough, say campaigners

This week we forwarded 2082 names collected from the Humanity in Fashion petition to the National Garment Workers Federation to support their call for a threefold increase in the Bangladeshi minimum wage.

Executive Travel – being the CEO, on a Fair Trade shoe string budget

Veranda of my guest house home in Aghaijara, Bangladesh – where to watch the water hyacinth float down the river and enjoy a cup of tea is better than a 5 star spa!

Veranda of my guest house in Aghaijara, Bangladesh – where you can watch the water hyacinth float down the river and enjoy a cup of tea - it's better than a 5 star spa!

I was talking to another CEO about a trip I was doing overseas. Oh your going off on a “jolly” he said – little did he know that when you run a social business like People Tree you travel to and fro at the weekends (which means you don’t have time to wash your socks and bake your kids cakes between working weeks). Also I arrive and and go straight into my 12 hour working day. Most fashion company bosses stay in 4-5 star hotels – but I stay in guest houses and villages with our Fair Trade groups, partly because the food is better and fresher but also because it’s a huge waste of money!

The difference in a week’s 5 star stay in a city of a developing country could fund a designer or technical advisor to come to the country and run workshops – obviously it’s an easy choice for me to choose to travel on a shoe string! Little places are more friendly too and because many of our Fair Trade groups are in villages, I get to enjoy fresh air too.

Working in the shelter of my mosquito net

Many suppliers/garment factories put up their customers in 5 star hotels as part of their hospitality, but People Tree pays to stay with our Fair Trade groups in their guest houses. After all it’s real cost for food, housekeeping, cleaning, etc. Why should suppliers pay for their customers hospitality?

Executively dressed?

I’ve been surprised by how people dress when they visit culturally sensitive places – I’m writing in shorts and a camisole at home in the summer’s heat, but in Bangladesh you cover up however hot and humid it is. I wear a shalwar kameez and long thin legged trousers called churidar. When it’s 36 degrees and 80% humidity you have to put your foot in a plastic bag just to get them on.

Here’s how…

Like this...

Crafts to Change the World

Miki and Safia photoshoot and interview between downpours!

Miki and I photoshoot and interview between downpours!

I go kissed by a circus elephant along the way

I got kissed by a circus elephant along the way

My Mum loves crafts – and my grandmother was an embroidery designer before she ran a home for delinquent boys – I guess that’s were my love for crafts started.

Prokritee is part of MCC, the Mennonite Central Committee and has worked to support the world’s poorest people for over 40 years.

Monsoon, Bangladesh

I started working with these groups 19 years ago and together with the brilliant designer Suraiya Choudhury we brought natural dyes to Bagda Enterprises, that now work making body scrub mits for the Body Shop. We’ve also worked closely with craft groups to design literally thousands of products using traditional skills and natural fibres for Japan and UK.

Travelling by rickshaw

Suraiya and Safia with her favourite drink - fresh 'tender' coconut

Suraiya and me with my favourite drink - fresh 'tender' coconut

My third assignment in Bangladesh is to document the amazing craft skills and interview artisans to show the impact on their lives. So I travelled with my photographer friend Miki Alcalde and Kate Wakeling by van, ferry, rickshaw then on foot into Agailjhara, Borisal to do just that.

Fresh flowers, the best welcome of all

Kate and Safia with their flowers

Natural fibres can be used to make so many crafts. Chopstick holders and bangles and a dragonfly made of recycled newspaper – I’m just mad about crafts and the social change it brings!

Too many mangoes eaten along the way

These shoes were made for walking

My very well travelled, very muddy sandals

Kate Wakeling, my colleague wants to make a TV documentary about my sandals and where they’ve been!?

Dress for Wimbledon!

Wimbledon is in full swing and tennis fever is rising high! Get in the mood with classic strawberries and cream, a bottle of Robinsons and our court side treats…

Inspired to make a difference

When People Tree collaborated with Emma Watson on their new youth range the aim was clear; to bring Fair Trade and sustainable fashion to a new audience. The youth of today are the hope for the future and by beginning a conversation with them we have a chance to shape a better future.

Organic food queen gives her top 5 picks!

Geetie Singh MBE set up the UK’s first organic pub, The Duke of Cambridge in Islington, London. 10 years ago. In recent times the pub has been awarded three ethical awards including the winner of ‘Best Restaurant’ from the Soil Association, Natural and Organic Awards.

Fair Trade Fashion Network

FT network

We launched the Fair Trade fashion network today with People Tree, Pants to Poverty, Gossypium, Bishopston Trading, Epona , Pachacuti and Fairy Covered.

The aims are to spread awareness of Fair Trade fashion and our work as pioneers in the industry.

Why now?

The Fair Trade cotton mark has helped cotton farmers earn a better price for their cotton. Launched nearly 5 years ago People Tree and Gossypium were involved in developing the standards with the Fairtrade Foundation, as we had already been working with Fair Trade and Organic Cotton farmer groups for over 10 years.

Carry Somers of Pachacuti explained how her work using the Sustainable Fair Trade Management System (SFTMS) of World Fair Trade Organisation has a huge impact on her producer groups in Latin America.

All the Fair Trade fashion companies use Fairtrade and organic cotton but People Tree works with artisanal groups too and a social business called Assisi Garments that transform the cotton into clothing – set up originally to provide livelihoods for deaf and mute, very low income women. If a standard for Fair Trade manufacture goes no further than the current initiatives of the Clean Clothes Campaign, ETI, etc not only would our producers lose out – it would undermine the work of these initiatives.

All the companies present agreed that we need to mainstream the idea of Fair Trade in the fashion industry and agreed to work and campaign together.

I’ll look forward to sharing more with you soon!

A day in the life of Safia Minney at People Tree Japan office.

1 - DITL

Everywhere I go the team call it ‘Safia week.’ That’s because there’s always a lot to do.

Here’s a sample of a day in my life in Tokyo:

8.30 – Meeting with the Directors to finalise the People Tree Fair Trade chocolate order – it’s made with Bolivian cocoa and muscavado brown sugar from the Philippines and is one of People Tree Japan’s most popular products. We talk about running events to raise awareness of the trade issues that sugar and cocoa farmers face in the developing world.

9.30 – Meet with the Comms team to discuss our 10^th and 20^th year anniversary in the UK and Japan – lots of campaigns and new things happening.

2 - DITL

10.30 – Off to the Bangladesh Embassy to meet Mr Manzurul Haque who is standing in as Ambassador to explain how the closure of the largest land port Benapole has forced cotton yarn prices to double, resulting in over 50,000 handweavers losing their jobs as prices of clothing become uncompetitive. We discuss the issue and have a nice cup of tea together and Mr Haque promises to send my letter to key people in Friday’s diplomatic bag. I wear my Fair Trade handwoven dress from Bangladesh designed by my favourite Japanese designer Mihara Yasuhiro.

12.30 A quick organic lunch with Misao our business development manager and Naoko our General Manager.

3 - DITL

13.30 We start the Spring/Summer 2011 collection meeting, going through samples, fitting them and making final tweaks to each handmade garment and the whole range. Building our collection is always an interesting challenge as we have such a diverse range of customers – department stores, boutiques and Fair Trade shops as well as our own stores and mail order customers. There’s a lot of feedback and ideas from our customers too! Next week I’ll be doing the same in London.

4 - DITL

15.30 - I meet with Marcia, from Bombolulu Workshops in Mombasa who is here visiting us from Kenya as a guest for World Fair Trade Day. We discuss quality issues and new techniques to develop new designs to bring work to the 150 physically challenged people they employ. The world recession has affected Bombolulu export sales and we need to help them now (link).

We’ve designed a new collection using the indigenous skills of hand twisted and hand beaten brass together with beautiful natural stones. The collection is top secret, so no more clues!

17.00 We have People Tree monthly team meeting together with Raihan Ali who’s visiting us from Swallows in Bangladesh. He tells us how Fair Trade makes a difference to women in the villages where Swallows employs 250 women. Raihan was asked how Swallows has changed since People Tree started working with them. He told us , “we had a small room with 17 handlooms and a dye unit. There was an iron roof and bamboo walls and one day the walls just blew away in a storm. Today we have a proper roof and walls and a new handicraft centre where we can employ 250 women. At the time People Tree started working with us we had just lost our only Fair Trade customer and people in the Fair Trade movement were saying there was only a future for Fair Trade foods and handicrafts not textiles. People Tree helped us to completely turn around our project and is still 70% of our sales today”

We also shared People Tree’s plans and activities from each department – there are nearly 50 in the team in Japan.

18.00 – I join the sales managers to talk about a design collaboration with a new baby/kids retail brand who want to partner with People Tree. They are very charming and very passionate and shake my hand a lot (which is very unusual in Japan. I got the royal treatment!) I feel very excited when big business wants to do the right thing! Let’s see…

19.00 – Dinner with Raihan, Naoko and Miki a great friend who is assisting me tomorrow for the People Tree Autumn Winter photoshoot. I have a glass of wine and lots of fun – but get home and can’t sleep – I’m so excited about the photoshoot tomorrow – I’m shooting!!

I sleep for ONE hour OMG! This is going to be great and I’m going to have to be full of energy and at my best. The next day is starting at 4am! And I still can’t sleep…