Jane Shepherdson

“I’ve been working with Safia since we had the People Tree concession in Topshop in 2006. We launched People Tree for Topshop in a response to customer interest and demand, but it was still challenging and therefore very rewarding to get it right. I work with People Tree because I feel they have the best chance of succeeding in what is a tough industry. The only way is by making well designed, good quality products. I don’t think that you can ever change the world with a bad product just by telling people buying Fair Trade and sustainable fashion is the right thing to do.

When we went out to Bangladesh to visit People Tree’s Fair Trade groups it was an incredible experience. One of the women I talked to really impressed me. We were just sitting in the village handicraft centre in a circle embroidering; they were talking about how their lives had changed with Fair Trade. One woman said how she was able to leave her abusive husband, get a house of her own, and have her children looked after while she worked. I asked “Would you get married again?” she looked at me as if I was some kind of idiot, “Why?!” she said. Clearly for her men were a millstone around your neck, someone who takes all your money and gets drunk. It was just moving to see these women with such dignity and self-confidence compared to the women we saw in the garment factories of Dhaka.

If everyone adopted Fair Trade and its principles, then we wouldn’t need charity and aid. Unfortunately that isn’t the case, and I don’t think it ever will be. I’m also a very big supporter of Oxfam. I think they are a very dynamic organisation. I’m just back from visiting a project of theirs in Zambia – that really builds on the community desire to start something, sustain it and then manage it themselves in the long term. Like Fair Trade, that’s real development.

I’ve been asked whether Topshop is responsible for the rise of fast fashion. It has always been important for big retailers, but I think what we did at Topshop was to make mass high street fashion credible. When I left Topshop I liked the idea of owning a small, premium business so I decided to buy Whistles. At Whistles we could buy better fabrics and I wanted to do something different. Whistles had a name that people really liked, and they had a fondness for the brand. My whole team moved with me from Topshop, we felt that if we could get a business that was going slightly wrong and change it around it was the right thing to do.”