Focus on Kellie Dalton - Sustainable Strategist and Responsible Fashion Advisor

 

Where do you turn to for advice on how to bring about change? Kellie Dalton is a sustainability strategist and responsible fashion advisor helping brands redefine well made clothing. Fashion is under pressure to reduce its social and environmental impact and it can be overwhelming, this is where the wealth of knowledge Kellie has acquired throughout her career comes in, helping brands navigate better ways of doing things. 

 

 

D: Where in Ireland did you grow up Kellie? Also did you have any childhood fashion influences?

 

K: I grew up in Dublin. A grey estate on the northside of the city. There was a lot of creative inspiration around though which I wasn’t overly aware of at the time.

 

My Mam was an incredible dressmaker, knitter and crocheter. What we call craft was just how things were done at home. Clothes were made for us. Vogue patterns came through the door, ideas were shared, wool was everywhere, jumpers were pulled over our heads for fittings. My Mam always tried to go for quality over quantity when things were bought. Hand-me-downs were a staple in 80’s Ireland.

 

Industry-wise, I have standout memories of her knitting for Irish designers. Beautiful, intricate pieces. At the time it suited her lifestyle, she had small kids at home and was using her talent.

 

It quickly became clear that it wasn’t worth it. Literally. Pieces were selling for hundreds of pounds and she’d see a fraction of it, being paid a lot less than minimum wage an hour. I remember thinking, how messed up that was. It was my first introduction to ‘home-working’ and the disconnect between how much we revere designers and brands yet undervalue people who make products.

 

She eventually went on to start a knitting café with her equally as talented twin sister, where they taught locals how to knit and crochet.

 

D: What a great idea.

 

K: It was a burst of colour in the middle of our estate - pink, purple, gingham tablecloths, kitsch China tea sets.

 

Older women from our neighbourhood would drop in to swap stories and skills. I loved hearing about ‘back in the day’, making lace by penny candlelight and beading their own wedding dresses. All those wonderful skills have mostly gone from Ireland now. It’s a real shame.

 

D: It was lost when making moved to the global South, the skills went there too.

 

K: I’m always thinking about how our textile skills and manufacturing heritage can live on. I have a bit of a pipe dream to re-shore manufacturing back to Ireland. I know there is still a bit in Northern Ireland but I wonder how will we ever have ‘sustainability’ if we’re not self-sufficient as a country. Right now, we cannot provide the basic necessity of clothing for ourselves. 

 

 

D: Did you go to university?

 

K: I had that fashion influence growing up, I didn't make the connection that there was an industry I could go and work in until much later. I started a business degree with no real direction then had a bit of an awakening in my final year when I was introduced to Naomi Klein's ‘No Logo’.

 

I started to connect the dots between how my Mam had been working, the wider industry, hype culture and the politics that kept it all churning. The system started to make sense.

 

I was shifting to a PhD track when I noticed small, sustainable fashion brands pop-up. Ali Hewson and Bono’s Edun, Katharine E Hamnett, People Tree, The Hemp Trading Company, Veja.

 

I wrote letters to them all hoping to get in the door somehow and Katharine got back to me. A combination of luck and timing. I happened to catch her when she was restarting her brand with Roxanne Houshmand-Howell to do everything as ethically and environmentally as possible, around 2006.

 

I knew the opportunity I’d been given. Katharine was a fashion legend and had been a lone voice for environmental and social justice in the industry for years. I had a sofa to stay on and not much money, but it was a no-brainer to go and get stuck in.

 

D: You must have learned a lot.

 

K: An unbelievable amount. Hands down my favourite job to this day. In small brands you get to do everything. I was helping pick colourways for collections, writing reports on renewable energy, meeting scientists, academics and activists, sweeping the floor, making tea, dealing with customers, researching sustainable development, going to parties, travelling to industry conferences with Katharine… I worked hard and took it all in.  

 

I was under pressure to get back to Ireland to finish my PhD, I made the choice to ditch it instead. A turning point that raised a few eyebrows but looking back, the experience I got with Katharine shaped my career. I wouldn’t change any of it. I loved being hands on. I felt useful in the face of mounting social and environmental exploitation caused by the industry.

 

Plus, the energy in London was something else so I was happy to stay. I did work in Ireland after that, but all roads led back to London.

 

I spent time at Business in the Community to understand how corporates work. I spent time at New Look to understand how fast fashion works. I spent time at Burberry to understand how sustainability in luxury fashion works. Then I went to Futerra to bring it all together and guide big brands through their sustainability journeys. In my first week, I was thrown in on the sustainability strategy for The North Face and never looked back. 

 

 

I have always taken the same approach: work hard, be nice, go after what you want and see what happens. I’ve kept my head down and been incredibly lucky.

 

There was a white privilege that needs to be acknowledged in sustainability professions though. Doors were opened by people who looked like me, to work with more people who looked like me. Yet I was in one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world, in an industry that wouldn’t exist without the skills and creativity of black and brown people globally.

 

I understand now what I need to do to support real, equitable change. I didn’t really at the time.

 

 

 

D: Tell us about the work your consultancy does.

 

I help brands to understand their responsibility beyond making a profit and create strategic plans to take action on their social, environmental, economic and cultural impacts.

 

We work through a process of understanding the big picture and the brand’s place in it. Then we map out the step-by-step of how they can shift from having a negative impact to working with nature and improving the prosperity of people connected to their brand, in the fullest sense.

 

From there, it depends. Sometimes I stick around and help to implement plans with an amazing network of technical experts I’ve been lucky to meet along the way. Sometimes I leave brands to it and check-in down the line.

 

Then a bit of everything in-between: advisory for senior teams, policy recommendations, an ear for designers, introductions to partners, campaigning for legislative change. I’m open to whatever pushes the industry forward.

 

What I’m most interested in though is honesty and action. At this stage, we need everyone to ‘find their place’ and do something. The time for making the ‘business case’ has passed. I’m not interested in convincing industry people anymore. Everyday news is the business case. I only want to work with those who are open and willing to give it a good go.

 

Brands that want to find a way through are energising. Vivienne Westwood is a big favourite of mine. The team are super engaged, they really care. House of Hackney is another. Their deep connection to ecology and wellbeing is inspiring.  

 

 

D: When you initially go into businesses how are you met? Is it with open arms or is it with a bit of trepidation?

 

K: It’s a mixed bag. I’m there because someone gets it enough to want me there or at least know they need my expertise. People are always welcoming. Many are concerned and confused. They want to make sense of sustainability.

 

It’s overwhelming for anyone to take a step back and acknowledge all of your social and environmental impacts in one go. Especially if your brand was set up as a more traditional business, valuing profit above all else.

 

Slowly we work through it together and you can see people’s mindset shift. That nervousness about the enormity of the challenge, visibly changes to clarity and confidence.

 

In general, I think people get swept away in the never-ending flow of information about carbon this, sustainable materials and greenwashing that. We’re not really taught about the economic and political workings of the big fashion system. At a basic level, my aim is to steady people and help them focus. 

 

 

D: How has that move to freelance been?

 

K: I’ve grown so much professionally and personally being freelance. There’s more time for creativity and figuring out what impact you can have with your career. For me, it's always about being useful. What’s the most useful thing I can do with my experience, given the size and scale of the industry problems we face.

 

It’s hard to feel like you’re ever doing enough. I’m not talking about relentless productivity. What I mean is good quality work that will add to the momentum for change.

 

Lately I’ve been campaigning with Good Clothes Fair Pay to bring about a new piece of EU legislation that could require fashion brands to ensure garment workers are paid properly. When just 2% of garment workers earn a living wage globally, that feels like a good use of my time. It’s something I’m very proud to support. 

 

 

D: What inspires what you do? What keeps you going?

 

K: The people I meet through work inspire me every day. Nasreen Sheikh and the OR Foundation team have had the biggest impact on me in the last few years. Their accounts of what’s happening on the ground in supply chain communities are something you can never unknow.

 

And others: Nazma Akter, Aja Barber, Céline Semaan, Janelle Hanna, Sophie Slater, Brigitta Danka, Dio Kurazawa, Christian Smith, Ayshea Barenblat, Valeria Meliado, the Vivienne Westwood team, the House of Hackney team, the Right Project. The list goes on and on. There are so many people working for a thriving, just fashion industry we can all be proud of. 

 

What keeps me going is what other choice do we have? You need a lot of resilience to work in sustainability. Every year you see fashion consumption go up, while faced with the stark reality that it brings: modern slavery, biodiversity loss, water shortages, poverty wages, textile landfills in the global south, child labour. As hard as it is to absorb that information day-to-day, I know enough now to point people in the direction of solutions. So, I do that. 

 

 

 

D: What do you think will bring real systemic change? What needs to be done?

 

K: You mean aside from radically overhauling our economic and fashion system? What we need is legislation and to seriously address unit volume production. The industry cannot continue to grow and grow.

 

Apparel consumption is set to hit 102 million tonnes annually by 2030. That’s the equivalent of 500 billion t-shirts being put onto the earth every year with no large-scale solution in place to deal with when they end up as waste.

 

SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production is one of two SDG’s that we are going backwards on since 2015. Better made product won’t solve that anytime soon. Overproduction has got to be addressed and legislated for.

 

The industry talks endlessly about sustainability on one hand and on the other, we cling to ways of working that are at odds with the survival of humankind. We’re living a contradiction every day. It’s a lot to get your head around. 

 

 

D: We need a different marketing strategy for reaching people, we can’t buy our way out of this.

 

K: More time needs to be given to understanding why people shop the way they do. It's not as simple as, we overconsume fast fashion so stop. How we shop is informed by our identity, cultural signifiers of wealth, economic circumstances, lifestyle, education, geography and so many more factors linked together. It’s complicated.

 

Consumers get hammered with messages to buy, less and buy better. A sentiment I fully support but we haven’t managed to slow mainstream consumption yet. Even with the rise of resale, rental and repair. I don’t really have an answer for it, consumer culture is a big stumbling block. I’m seeing more fashion psychologists coming into the sustainability space now which gives some hope.

 

One thing I do know is that fast fashion has put us in opposition to each other. We are being forced to choose between the value of one person’s life over another. Those people are usually women.

 

The affordability debate really drives this home. How are any of us empowered by a business model that relies on exploiting women making clothes in one country to supply women in another with an endless amount of cheap trend-driven fashion?

 

How do we benefit from a business model that takes little to no responsibility for millions of its products being dumped in Chile, Ghana, Uganda, Pakistan after being used, donated and or just discarded? Given all we know now, I cannot comprehend how people profit from that with a clear conscience. I struggle with it a lot.

 

I would love for everyone working in fashion to know they have the power to bring about change. The smallest actions matter. The momentum of working together from farms to shop floors, second-hand clothing landfills and everywhere in between can carry us to a new, more equitable, more creative, just and thriving industry.

 

I would like women working in fashion all over the UK to know they can be part of it. That we need them to be. 

 

Links:

 

Website: Kellie Dalton

 

Instagram: Kellie Dalton  

LinkedIn: Kellie Dalton

 

 

 

 

 

 

Focus on Dominique Muller - Policy Director for Labour Behind The Label

 

The work of Dominique and her ‘small but mighty’ team at Labour Behind the Label support the garment workers who make your clothes here in the UK and then globally with the work they do with     The Clean Clothes Campaign They take their voice from the workers, they campaign for them and call out injustices by naming and shaming brands but they also liaise with the brands to bring about change. We talk about their work on the real living wage or actually securing a minimum wage in places where this doesn’t exist, human rights, isolating labour costs, legislation, raising the voices of women within unions and so much more. Read on as Dominique shares with us the vital work they do.

 

 

 

Dv: Where did you grow up Dominique?

 

DM: In Amersham, at the end of the Metropolitan line, a little town in Buckinghamshire. My mother was French and English my father, Swiss German which explains the mix of my names. After school I lived in London, Prague, Hong Kong, France and Holland. I lived out of the UK for 15 years and now live in York.

 

Dv: Your choice of university degrees and the journey you've been on, has very much centred around politics, law justice and human rights, what moved you in this direction and inspired you to help?

 

DM: My mother’s opinion that ‘you are put on this earth to make it better’, was very influential and if I see someone struggling it affects me emotionally. When I was about 14 or 15 I wanted to be a benevolent dictator, I thought that if I could get it right and could push all the bad people out of the country things would be better. That’s when I joined the young communists, it took me a while to realise things weren’t quite so clear cut, that there's a lot more context. Human rights and justice, I'm not sure quite why, a lot of empathy really, my daughter is the same.

 

Dv: Did you go to University in China?

 

DM: I did, in those days it was more common, it was a four year course, Politics in East Asia with a year in China, that was my first degree and I fell in love with China. It was changing, 1987 to 88, the people were lovely, everyone was friendly, everything was fresh and new. Then while I was doing my finals the Tiananmen crackdown happened. After University I felt I hadn't finished with China, so I went back and spent a year researching juvenile delinquency. There were and still are, laws regulating so called hooliganism, you could be put in a juvenile detention centre for things like talking loudly in cinemas, spitting watermelon seeds, being a juvenile, being loud and obnoxious. If you're female you could be detained for having a boyfriend, or for having sex. But they were so lovely and so tame I thought that I would love to know more, and at the same time see a balance in the law. On one hand it's very totalitarian and repressive, but on the other, there was a belief in the reformation of someone’s character. Now, I would consider it to be much more like brainwashing, but at the time it didn’t seem that way. The social workers, really genuinely, thought they were altering someone. In the West oftentimes, kids and adults are just put in prison which is punitive and not reformative. I went back one more time and did six months of a PhD in China on human rights. This time it was more difficult, no one wanted to talk about human rights, the political climate had changed. Also I was older and it was more risky, because this time I was asking better questions than before. 

 

 

Dv: Tell us about Labour Behind the Label and The Clean Clothes Campaign, how are you linked? Was it because of The Clean Clothes Campaign you lived in Amsterdam?

 

DM: When I was working in Hong Kong I worked through with The Clean Clothes Campaign on their 2008 Beijing Olympic campaign, we collaborated with a campaign around workers producing sportswear and kept in touch, later moving to Amsterdam to take up a job there. Then eventually moving back to the UK to work with Labour Behind the Label.

Labour Behind the Label was set up in Norwich about 20 years ago and it's the only UK body focused solely on garment workers. We call ourselves small but mighty, there are six of us at the moment and we do a lot of campaigning work, a lot of naming and shaming, but we also do a lot of brand liaison and advocacy. We reach out to brands about specific cases, which are called urgent appeals. That's when our partners overseas will contact us and say ‘this is happening in our factory can you help?’ In many cases we do this work behind the scenes and don’t need to go public unless the brands refuse to remediate the abuses. We also do policy work and work a lot on that in the UK.

 

We are an independent organisation, but also work as The Clean Clothes Coalition in the UK. Europe has a lot of well established coalitions with newer coalitions in places like Romania, Croatia in Eastern Europe and regional coalitions predominantly in Asia.

On top of those hubs, we have partners and members of the coalitions, mainly in Asia but we have some in in Africa, North Africa, South Africa, Latin America etc.

Then there are global partners who are big global organisations who work on worker rights.

 

It's very much a network, this means we were using zoom way before lockdown.

Our work is with lots of different people in lots of different countries.

The key is that we take our voice from the workers. We don't claim to represent them, we can't, it's their unions and their groups that do that. The work we do comes from the grassroots up and it's very flexible. They create the policies and bring us the issues.

 

Dv: Do they feel it’s easier to speak with you than their unions?

 

DM: It depends, our partners and members are unions, well established ones, but also smaller unions in lots of different countries, plus NGOs and women's groups. The garment industry is made up of a lot of women who live and work in a lot of countries where women are not necessarily treated equally. We know there are a lot of traditional unions that don't always represent women well and that won't always give them a voice. We are very clear that they are all equal. For example, we have done work that focused on developing women's leadership in the union movement and in factory representation. Before the pandemic we had global meetings where women leaders come together, from everywhere, where a woman from Honduras, who is a trade unionist could be speaking to a woman from Thailand. We look at how they can develop their confidence and their skills and how we can work on unions that might be more hesitant to let them in or let them talk.

 

Dv: Giving them a voice. That must be that must be very powerful.

 

DM: It’s amazing, some of the women are so inspiring and some people like Kalpona Akter in Bangladesh, she's amazing, she's always so cheerful and yet I know she sits in her office or goes out to factories and meets women that are in terrible situations and she keeps on fighting. Then there are 18 year old women coming up through the ranks that are so full of energy it's great.

 

Dv: It must have been really difficult for them, knowing now what happened during the pandemic when the brands pulled their orders leaving all the people empty handed. Suddenly they had no money, how do you feed your family? how do you feed your children? what happens in that void?

 

DM: It was such a huge shock, but it had been creeping up, during the three waves. The first wave when China shutdown, meant a lot of orders went to other places which created a lot of abuse in terms of overtime, being forced to make up for China. Then came the lockdown in Europe where all the orders disappeared. During the lockdowns in Asia some factories were still working and the women were at greater risk of getting Covid and still are. If a factory shutdown there was no income. It really highlighted that for all the fine words of the last two decades, the brands were quite happy to forget everything to protect their profits. When you look now, obviously there have been some failures on the high street like Arcadia and Debenhams, but they were also being bled dry by multimillionaire owners. All the others are presenting nice tidy profits, or have increased massively, with huge profits.

 

 

Dv: Is there a way of keeping the women safe if they're whistle blowing?

 

DM: It's very different in different countries and factories. The urgent appeal area, it's a very good system, we have partners who will come to us with a case, we will assess it and work out which brands are involved, it might be say H&M, Next or Aldi for example, we then speak to the German CCC (Clean Clothes Coalition) the Norwegians and the UK and we will form a case group with the partner. However, over Covid the number of cases mushroomed, we have had hundreds and hundreds and we can't deal with them all altogether. To cope with the increase we created country groups. Many of the issues are about wages, then the next biggest issue is dismissal and using Covid as an excuse to get rid of unions. In places where the workers are speaking out and are organising, the owners will say we don’t have any more orders, we don't have money, we're going to close this factory, then they simply move it somewhere else, where there are fresh workers desperate for work and no unions. We try and protect workers by pushing the brands to talk to the management by naming and shaming, by campaigning and by direct work with embassies, global unions, in any way we can.

 

One of the things that's been really inspiring is the amount of self-organising in terms of the unions and the women's groups, developing food networks. They're distributing cooking oil and flour to all the families in the garment working areas. It doesn't matter who you work for, if you have a family whose affected you get it, that support has been going on the whole time.

 

We are not a fundraising, project based organisation, we support the workers with the brands, with the local governments, pushing back where we see the need, for example in India, new laws introduced have damaged and set back the Labour Laws, so we push back against things like that. It's hard work and there's always more to be done.

 

A lot of work we have done is on the living wage and now unfortunately we are in a situation where we're asking for workers to be paid the minimum, because they're not even getting that, or their bonuses. On one level that's what we're doing now, but strategically we're also developing a plan where we can keep pushing for the living wage.

 

Dv: Do you think it’s difficult because of self regulation in the fashion industry? Would legislation that protects workers here and abroad work? What are the chances of that happening?

 

DM: If you look at some of the reports you can see that brands are saying that they want legislation. That wouldn't have happened five years ago, but they know they must ask for reputational risk management. That and the growth of possible court cases. They are also asking for a level playing field, that's the big thing for some brands, ‘we want a level playing field, because we're the good guys’. 

 

There is a movement towards mandatory human rights due diligence and proper legislation. I think it’s moving in the EU, but this UK government is failing in one of the most basic things and that is, as a consumer we all have to buy clothes, every single one of us. If you're buying new, wherever you buy from the High Street, or Primark or anywhere else, you have to think, has this been made by an 18 year old woman in a factory earning a minimum wage? We shouldn't have to make that choice, with legislation the government could enable us to have a free conscience. That way we can say, everything in the UK is clean, but it isn't, so every day we are forced to make those choices. 

 

The UK government has a hands off approach to legislation yet brands are calling out for more and enforcement agencies in the UK are failing miserably because they are under resourced. Which means what little law the UK has is not being upheld. We have the modern slavery act which has no teeth, even the government says ‘well you know consumer pressure at the end of the day is a sanction’. But you can't put that on consumers, how dare they fail that as a government.

 

Dv: What are the trade unions in this country (UK) for garment workers?

 

DM: There's the TUC, which is the Confederation and then the key ones Community, Unite, GMB, Bakers Union plus more for those working in logistics and warehousing.

 

Dv: Do you have to be a British citizen to be a member of the union?

 

DM: No, the TUC and other unions are very clear that they will protect workers regardless of immigration status and regardless of contract. We have big issues, in Leicester in the UK, we are working with several different stakeholders including brands and enforcement bodies to develop a binding agreement. That has come out of the exposé we did on Boohoo in the summer of 2020.

 

You can read it here.

 

Dv: Is Leicester the biggest producer of garments in the UK?

 

DM: It's the biggest hub, there is also Manchester, Birmingham, London and some in Lancashire. But Leicester has the biggest concentration, they estimate around 10,000 plus workers the majority of whom are female.

After our exposé brands that have never talked to me before or didn't like talking to me, came and said this is great, we want to do something. That was partly because a lot of brands have pulled out of Leicester because they kept being exposed.

 

Dv: But that leaves a void for Boohoo to happen.

 

DM: Exactly, which is that's why they swooped in, and with no transparency whatsoever it got worse and worse. It’s not only Boohoo, they are the biggest player, but there are lots of other e-retailers with websites that I don't know of, but my daughter, whose 16 has heard of, that cater to that age group. So we are working on an enforceable binding agreement that would bring unions, brands and manufacturers together, that would enable union access and that would support workers in the community. It would also hold up standards on fair pricing, isolation of labour costs, purchasing practises like regular contracts and at the same time it also tries to bring in enforcement agencies. What we've seen is that many agencies undertake raids with the immigration agency. That means, automatically workers don't want to talk to them because they are scared and quite rightly. They feel if they speak out then they might be deported, or their friend might be. Since a new taskforce was set up I think there's been one arrest so far and up until a few months ago it was the only action taken out of all the raids that happened. The person arrested was a worker who was detained and charged with immigration offences. That's the only criminal prosecution which is appalling and sends the message that the government does not care. There’s a really low prosecution of labour rights enforcement, the narrative is that the situation is caused by criminal suppliers or dodgy owners of factories and it isn't the full story at all. It's a whole endemic set of circumstances, much of it pushed by low prices paid by brands and the overall lack of government oversight and care for workers.  

 

Dv: Is this in line with the government sending Levison in to check on Boohoo?

 

DM: Boohoo are spending their own money on Alison Levison to do that review. Now they have Levison who sends out regular updates. Boohoo are making slow progress, but they are starting from a point where other brands were 20 years ago. People have been publishing their supply chain for years and years. Boohoo have only just published their supply list. In the UK it's very small, it doesn't quite add up to their claim that they haven't reduced sourcing in Leicester. We know that they have massively increased production in places like Pakistan and Morocco and information from all those factories is still unknown. £3 a week was commonplace in Leicester for many years and we are still seeing endemic underpayment of the minimum wage and holiday pay is almost unknown still!

 

 

Dv: You mentioned isolation of labour costs, can you explain what that means?

 

DM: Isolating labour costs – or ringfencing wage costs helps to make sure that any prices agreed will protect the cost of wages so brands do not try to reduce the prices downwards. Brands and especially fast fashion brands keep pushing prices lower and lower forcing suppliers to cut costs if they want the orders and the work. Brands want suppliers to produce cheap clothes for minimal costs. This isn’t sustainable or fair. We have heard anecdotally; a brand will bring lots of suppliers in to a room and say ‘we want a supplier who can make this for £3.00’ someone will say ‘I can do it for £2.50’ the brand will say ‘okay here’s the order’. The supplier needs the money. The profit value in the supply chain, is so big at the top and so small at the bottom. Margins for retailers can be around 40-60% and for suppliers it’s as low as 5%. This means that some suppliers, in order to make money, (and some of them are very rich, the really criminally exploitive ones), will supplement profits by tax fraud or VAT fraud. In the UK one example is to have an official pay slip which says 20 hours at the minimum wage, that goes through the books, but the worker then has to pay back the extra in cash, to reduce their wages to £3, £4 or £5 an hour.

 

Dv: That must be heart breaking for the worker.

 

DM: I know it sounds awful - at the moment the situation in Leicester is pretty tough.

 

Dv: If somebody is having to work like that and are on such low wages do they then get government support to live?

 

DM: Well that's the other thing which is a problem with the enforcement bodies. I'll answer this in two parts. Sometimes the supplier coerces the worker into benefit fraud. They will say ‘I can give you 14 hours so it's part time, at £4 an hour which is better than £3 and you can claim benefit.’ Sometimes suppliers help the workers fill out the forms as many don’t have good enough English to do this. In this way – the employers are coercing workers into criminal behaviour thus making them even less likely to whistle blow.

 

Dv: Of course this is only for people who are legally here.

 

DM: Yes exactly, the people who don't have proper legal status, they are totally vulnerable, and one of the things that we try to raise in our work with the labour market enforcement bodies. They have said ‘well we've also got to crackdown on benefit fraud’. But we are very clear that we're not here to further our own agenda, or for you to get your targets. We are here to support the workers. It’s not being supportive if you go after them for benefit fraud. They don’t necessarily want to claim benefit, they would rather have a decent living wage and a decent job.

Isolating labour costs, creates a transparent costing mechanism, the fabric, the overheads like lighting etc are separated out then you have the wages, the pensions and the VAT so it's all clear and that should create a more equal relationship between the supplier and the brand. Which means the brand can't say, ‘well the supplier said that they could make a garment for £1.50’ _ because we all know that's impossible. You need to ring fence that labour cost. It makes it safe and what we want to see is that in the UK we move towards the real living wage and not the minimum wage which is erroneously called the national living wage.

 

Dv: I hate it.

 

DM: I know, I know, but it's such a good marketing tool, ‘but why don't we call the minimum wage the living wage that would work’, because it's not the living wage, it's the minimum wage.

In so many countries the minimum wage has become the ceiling wage which leaves people struggling to pay the rent, buy food and pay for all the other things. This is not a living wage, if you can't live on it, it's not living.

 

Dv: It feels like a difficult balancing act to protect the rights of the workers. But what’s not talked about enough are the skills garment workers have and our need for them.

The obvious way forward would be to lift garment working up as a as a career path, as something for people to aspire to when they finish school. But the skill is not valued or even taught anymore so why would you. We have become reliant on a migrant work force who are skilled yet are vilified, mistreated and live in fear.

 

DM: Brexit hasn't helped with the uncertainty for EU Nationals. There are a lot of Bulgarian workers, other Eastern Europeans and obviously a lot of Asian workers.

Kate at Make it British, wants to see a thriving British industry, but at the moment Leicester is competing with Bangladesh and Pakistan and the garments often made in the UK are really simple like tube dresses where only the top and the bottom are stitched. There is some skill, and they have to be fast, but in terms of old fashioned skills they are not there, this is because of the pressure from fast fashion brands to, reduce skills and keep costs down.

I have seen some invoices and they clearly show that the prices paid and offered in the UK are less than would have been paid in Pakistan, even including air freight.

It’s shocking, but there is such a great opportunity to create better clothes, more sustainably, more ethically and with climate change things should be made close by. With fast fashion you want things made close by so you can get items out fast. There are so many positive things about having things made in England and yet it's almost like Leicester and the whole garment industry there is being exploited as a sweatshop, within a supposedly first world, first class country.

 

 

Dv: I've read somewhere that only 20% of garment workers in the UK are being paid properly is that correct?

 

DM: Possibly because if you think 80% of those are women, I would think so. The most common missed payment is holiday pay, this is happening increasingly, especially with some migrants, but also with vulnerable women who aren't used to working in formal 9 to 5 full time jobs, there are so many instances where they don't even know that they are entitled to holiday pay. They say ‘but I work part time’ but you should still get holiday pay, you're still allowed a holiday. The denial of holiday pay is so common. Then there is the denial of pensions and if you're on a low wage that’s kept artificially low for benefits, then you're not contributing more to pensions and so it adds up to a lifetime of poverty or possible poverty.

 

Dv: Because of this underpayment and because so many women work in garment production Covid impacted them more, because they didn't stop working.

 

DM: Together with the TUC we did a press release. The ONS (Office for National Statistics) put out aggregated figures at the end of January 2021, very quietly that show the occupations most at risk of Covid and within that garment work and female garment workers were statistically three times more likely to die of Covid. The figures included nurses and teachers, it’s statistically a small group because they are a small category, but the number of deaths from those factories were 3 times higher.

 

Dv: So they are literally dying to make our clothes.

 

DM: In overcrowded factories, with very little regulation from the health and safety executive. Boris Johnson said inspections were going on last spring, they weren't. The agency said they weren't. The Covid guidelines were guidelines only, so these workers were literally forced to work in unsafe conditions. In Sir Lanka for example there was a massive wave of infections spread by the garment industry, because workers are forced into crowded factories and onto crowded transport. The Sir Lankan government has said that in Sir Lanka there needs to be official tripartite committees looking after Covid guidelines and manufacturers are ignoring this. We pushed for brands to step in but it’s a struggle. And again, this is where UK or global legislation would help, then it would impact what's happening to people abroad too. Brands would be held responsible and factories would have to fall in line with the laws, so law really is key.  From the other end we need unions in the factory that can push - so many brands talk about respect for freedom of association, but in reality on the ground they don’t apply it. 

 

 

Dv: The constant need for growth within the fashion industry means we're overproducing and throwing things away, as we know things are being made that don't even make it to the shop floor that go straight from the factory to landfill. Which is awful for planet and people. Do you see a way to bring balance in this?

 

DM: It's such a big question. I think it's got to a point where people are much more aware of the issues around the lack of sustainability, climate change, the impact of how much water is used, pollution, airfreights, all those £2 bikinis being flown in from Pakistan, it's not sustainable. I think, and possibly this is where legislation comes in again, because you have a lot of brands that call themselves ethical, who say a lot about the planet, but nothing about the people. So we're always calling out to ethical brands and telling them, you have got to talk about the people, it is not only about the planet. Your communication and work must be addressed in a very holistic way, because it's livelihoods, its economic development, it's the planet, its resources.

There are laws in some countries around mend and repair, where you can't produce certain electronic goods that are not repairable. It should be the same with clothes, you can't produce something that will fall apart after five washes or produce something unless you have a plan for dealing with it as waste. At the moment, used or throwaway clothes are packed up and given to Africa which decimates their own domestic garment industry and their traditional crafts and that is not sustainable or ethical. Something we want to see coming out of this pandemic, is the idea that another world is possible. The pandemic has given us the opportunity to really reset and think about the future. We have to capture this moment before we're all forced back to normal. Relying on us all to go shopping to keep the economy going is not sustainable either.  

 

My colleague is producing a film, looking at how another world is possible. We're also working on this within the CCC (Clean Clothes Coalition) network, the CCC has something called wigs, which is a working international group, we have them on different topics, where we all come together as a global network. One of the issues we're looking at is what’s called ‘A Just Transition’. Looking towards better, better for the planet, and better for the people, which means a radical shift away from intensive labour, low cost labour exploitation, consumption, overproduction, it's a work in progress.

 

 Dv: You have a fashion tracker is that part of a project within the clean clothes network?

 

DM: Yes, we researched over 100 brands and completed 4/500 worker interviews in many different countries. Part of the research looks at what brands are saying on living wage and then seeing what’s actually happening in the factory and in the fashion sector. The Fashion Tracker is the result of that. It was launched relatively recently and is ongoing. We will get people in factories to upload information.

 

Dv: Will they be allowed to?

 

DM: They won’t be allowed to in the factory, we are hoping the local unions will be able to action that. Then we can see if, say Next say they have a commitment to the living wage, but at the same time don't have a benchmark or a costing of what that is. Or they've got a commitment to a living wage, but they don't have a plan and that's useless. Either way we can then find out in the factories if 0% of their workers are being paid a living wage. Indeed very few brands pay their workers a living wage, but 99% of brands have a title saying living wage on their websites. Other plans for the CCC, in May 2021 we had a resolution at H&Ms AGM, (we had one in 2020 too, which was rejected,) we are asking for profits to go directly to pay wages and for information on the wages paid. We are also planning to do this with other large high street brands.

 

Dv: We want to know that not all factory owners are bad people.

 

Do: Absolutely they are not. For example BetterBuying.org do surveys of producers and produce research which looks at how manufacturers feel. They show the percentage of suppliers in Bangladesh for example who have payment terms of over 90 days and the percentage of suppliers that don't know when they may or may not get an order. You can see that the suppliers are right in the middle and that they are being really used by the brands who all hold the economic power.

 

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Focus on Aja Barber - Author and Activist

 

 

I have always really liked no nonsense people and this is one of the reasons I really like Aja. She is straight talking and upfront. She is also open, warm and very lovely. Being an advocate for planetary change is not an easy job yet she does it brilliantly. Her one rule is that you be cool and polite and that is a good rule in my eyes. So, grab a cuppa this is a great chat.

 

 

D: I normally start with where you grew up, I know you've been talking about this quite a lot recently, so I'm just got to kick in there, Aja where did you grow up?

 

A: I'm from Reston Virginia which is a small town outside of Washington DC. My family roots: my mother comes from Alabama and my dad comes from Pennsylvania. However, I recently found out that his people came from a plantation in Front Royal Virginia which isn't that far from where we live. So I would say Virginia is in my blood in this weird way.

 

D: Do you have siblings?

 

A: I do, I have two sisters. I'm a middle child.

 

D: I have sisters as well I have three, I'm the eldest.

 

A: My dad came from a family of all boys and I think that he's had a completely unique experience that he didn't think he was going to have parenting. My sisters are badass, so I think he's sort of like, OK. My sisters are, in their own right, both doing really well in their fields, so I think that my dad is sort of like hum (a positive sound). I remember reading the title of a book saying, unsuccessful men have girls. It's ridiculous, it doesn't even like take into account that there are plenty of unsuccessful men that exist on the planet who only have sons. I have two sisters and I think there are amazing. Also growing up people would say to Dad ‘Ooh 3 girls’ in a negative way, when actually it’s pretty badass.

 

D: Also what they were saying is disrespectful to women and girls.

 

A: Its disrespectful to women, yeah totally, I forgot what the title of the book was exactly but it was insinuating that if you're unsuccessful you'll have girls, but that's just the way of the world and patriarchy right?

 

D: Totally. I felt for my dad quite a lot of the times, he was an only child and he had four daughters. My mother was the youngest of seven and five of those were girls. He would come home from work and we'd be sitting in the front room with our friends, maybe watching a movie and crying passing the tissues. He would just walk in look at us and carry on.

 

A: Always outnumbered. I don't know that dad ever thought that he would have 3 girls but I think it's been good for him, (laughs)

 

D: I don't know if anybody is ever prepared for all girls or all boys.

 

 

 

D: At this point I would normally ask what your childhood influences were, to create the person you are today. But doing my research I could see that what you do is literally in your DNA, as the thread winding through your whole family. Social justice from your grandfather who was a civil rights organiser, your mother's financial guidance and from both your parents with the gift of travel.

 

A: Yes, so much of who I am is definitely impacted by the things I saw and in the role models I've had. My grandfather passed away a year before I was born so I never got to meet him but I have heard a lot about him, and am kind of a bit jealous of people that had grandads in their life because I know that, that's a really special bond. What were my other influences growing up? Enya, she was my favourite singer when I was nine and I just think she's so cool. I think for me there's always been…….a longing in this weird way to change things and I think it has to do with growing up in a country that doesn't necessarily want you. I feel very much like someone who's very rootless in a way, I don't feel particular strong attachments to the United states, because of the atrocities done to my people and others. I remember in school on International Day, all the kids would draw the flag of where their ancestors came from and I would literally pick a random flag in Africa as I had no idea. I thought, ‘wait a minute that's not fair, that's not fair’ and I think it was then I started to really question all of them. The more I uncovered America's history and the Pledge of Allegiance, I used to think this is weird, I don't really want to pledge to this country, I'm nine years old. I'm not going to war. This is weird. So I started to really question America's involvement in things in our history. I think when you start to really, really question these things, even as a young person you’ve got a bit of activism coming your way as an adult.

 

D: You just mentioned that you're not going to go to war for this country. Something that you said which really shocked me was that returning GI’s from the Second World War were not treated equally.

 

A: Black returning GI’s were not were not given - basically the GI bill was created so that any returning GI could get a down payment for a home or a loan for school. And for Black GI’s the red tape made it patently impossible to do so. What people don't realise is that it was policies like the GI bill that built the middle class of post war America. In the state of New jersey one in five homes was purchased through the GI bill. So it goes without saying that, that has given some people a very uneven advantage but everybody says, ‘oh get over the past’ but the past formulates what America looks like today. So there's no way that we could have peace and unity until people acknowledge the past and right the wrongs, because that is why America looks the way it does today. It's not because white people are better at making money or better at accruing wealth, it's because there has been systemic laws which put white people in a place where they are in a place of advantage over everyone else. I talk about inequality so that people can really start to understand. It's not like I hate white people. People are like ‘grrr, you people hate white people’ but anytime a black person says ‘hey do you wanna hear about this thing what this country did?  If I hated anyone I wouldn't be in the position that I'm in, doing the work that I do, as I spend most of my time talking to people.

 

 

D: And it's not just America it's a worldwide issue you know Britain has……

 

A: …..the Windrush generation, yes absolutely. In general when we unpick the histories of so many places at the top of the financial market what you'll find is the exploitation of countries that are extremely resource rich. That's been happening for a very long time. How do we build a world that we consider fair without the acknowledgement of that? Without thinking about how we make things better in the future? Right now because of climate emergency I think we as a world have a tremendous opportunity to rebuild and to unpick some of the wrongs of our past. I do feel however that some governments are setting things up, to do the same thing all over again. You've got an infrastructure that is crumbling, you need green energy, green solutions, and that's not going to come from the US alone. We are not going to be able to come up with these solutions alone. We are going to need materials. Where are the materials coming from? How do we treat the countries that have the things that we need?

 

D: I had a I had a conversation with that a taxi driver the other day who was from the Congo, he was driving an electric car and we were talking about electric cars and the fact that a lot of the mineral resource that is needed for the batteries for the cars is coming from there.

 

 A: And it is the same with iPhones. But the problem is, and I always get this in the conversations that I have about fast fashion people and others say, ‘how dare you say that. You have an iPhone’. My reply is ‘yes, but I don't buy three iPhones a month’. This is still something worth talking about but it's not at all comparable to the scale at which people are buying fast fashion.

 

 

D: When did fashion become important to you?

 

A: I came from a childhood of extreme frugality from my mom’s side and because of that I was very determined when I needed to have certain a thing. I realised at a young age that your sartorial choices could make an impact on your popularity and how other students treated you. I didn't have the things that put me in with the in crowd. So I became very obsessive about those things, and that led me to a true interest in the fashion industry. At first it was having the right material items to fit in with your peers, and those who are mean to you. And then it was oh, actually, I like learning about France, I like learning about designers, I like learning about creative directors, actually I really like fashion. So what came from a need to fit in through material possessions, became a lifelong interest. I would say, from my position as someone who never felt like they had the right clothes to fit in with their peers, that I was prime for the picking, for a fast fashion market. I was the perfect fast fashion consumer because I wanted all those things so that I could be accepted by people who were never going to be nice to me. I remember when fast fashion swept America, I remember seeing all of this happen subtly throughout my life. I was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s. The 90s were the last decade where we had a bit of normalcy with the fashion calendar. Then I remember when some of the bigger brands from Europe started to enter the US market and brands that I really liked then, and who are not doing so well today, started speeding up their seasons to counterbalance some of the uber fast fashion from Europe. It happened very quickly, this is why I tell people I'm quite hopeful that perhaps we can pick this apart, because it has happened within our lifetimes maybe we can clampdown on it.

 

D: However this morning an email dropped into my inbox that was saying Primark are seeing growth again after lockdown. But they didn't degrowth during lockdown.

 

A: And that’s expected. The thing is the changes that I think need to happen aren't going to happen overnight. People aren’t going to lean into consumerism. What I want to do is unpick those behaviours for people, and to get people to think about, ‘why am I participating in the fashion industry in this way? Do I shop out of need? Do I shop out of want? What is that little voice that tells me that I should buy all the things? That I deserve it?’ As we get to the bigger issues in our society, I think we will start to really think about those and how they impact how we shop and buy. You get people really digging deeply into this topic. I always tell people, our generation is prime for fast fashion consumption, because we can't buy houses. It's one of those things that if you create a society where there are only a few milestones that only a few people can reach, then, of course we're gonna adopt a YOLO attitude. Climate emergency is one of those examples where, so many governments of the world should be paying attention yet have actually been complacent. So it’s no surprise we have a YOLO attitude towards everything. It makes us, what's the word I'm looking for? Despondent, I guess, indifferent towards creating that sort of change. So we are in some ways in a perfect position to feed the type of consumers that just buy and buy and buy things because the world is heating up. Then you can't cover some of your basic needs, because we created a world where you can't do that, and so it makes a lot of sense to me. So I'm all about picking apart those actions and getting people to really understand why they choose to engage in things that way. 

 

 

D: I do love your frank and honest no-nonsense approach, to cut through and get right to the heart of these things, your voice is amazing for this.

 

A: I made it that for myself because here's the thing, as a fast fashion consumer I began to be someone who liked to make things. That’s when I realised ‘oh I made a dress and it's almost wearable and it took me 10 hours to create’. It took a lot of time for me to make this dress, how is it that this store is selling a design, that is way more complicated for $10?  I don't understand, I don't get it. How did this person survive if they made $0.50 an hour to do this? So in the back of my head I had to ignore the things that made common sense to me. I think I needed a wakeup call in the form of a slap in the face. And so I try and try and provide that for other people (laughs).

 

D: What do you think your slap in the face was?

 

A: One year I added up bunch of receipts for a store I used to frequent. At the time I was earning, by Virginia State standards, poverty wages. There have been times where my employment has been an extremely low income. I have been through many recessions since I graduated. Moved back into my parents’ basement several times, throughout my adult life. Always a proud moment…... So it had been one of those years, where my income was pretty low. I added up the receipts that I had spent at one store and I was looking at myself thinking ‘I gave how much of my money to a billionaire?’ It was a substantial portion of my earnings that I had been unwittingly giving away in little piecemeal shopping. You know, going, I deserve this, 50 bucks here, 100 bucks there. Do that a couple of times a month and you will have easily spent, well over whatever you even think you were spending. That's what happens. There were a couple of years where I added up what I had spent it was several $1,000 and I'm looking at these brands and thinking, ‘well, this is owned by a billionaire who doesn't even pay people a fair wage, there is no way they can guarantee it’. And you know, I wanted to kick my own ass, I was pretty mad with myself about that, but I needed to actually really see those numbers in front of me and keep track of those receipts in order to really get a handle on my own spending. The thing with fast fashion is that low price, always makes you think, ‘oh it's nothing’ we think it's harmless in regards to the garment, we think it's a harmless treat. You think that it doesn't have an impact on the planet. But in actuality that $5 t-shirt accounts for a lot of different things.

 

 

D: Also from a young age, your mum was teaching you that consumption was a trap.

 

A: I remember when the fast fashion stores came over here my mom was like ‘I'm not shopping here that clothing’s really cheaply made’ and that's another thing, people love to go ‘oh poor people don't want to shop well’. But my mum grew up pretty economically disadvantaged. I think middle class people do this thing where they want to participate in the system, and everyone pretends that they are some sort of fighter for the poor when it comes to talking about why the system should exist. But in actuality many people that are economically disadvantage might not even want to buy that cheap clothing. Maybe they want the quality stuff too and they know that it's not quality. So I would say don't put this on poor people.

 

D: I couldn't agree more I also grew up the same way my grandmother helped my parents as far as clothing for us was concerned. We grew up with a Primark in the centre of our town. We never shopped there as the clothing was not good, it was not quality, they would save, and they would buy us good garments that would last and could be passed down. I really only wore other clothes at the weekend, we I spent most of the week in our school uniforms.

 

A: There were several times my mom told me I was wasting my money on crap and boy is she smug today (laughs). Oh, she is so like ‘I'm not gonna say I was right, but it's nice that you finally know I was right’ (laughs).

 

D: Yeah, it takes a while to get to get to the point where you're happy with your mother being right.

 

A: You know what, it's insufferable, but I just have to acknowledge it and get on with life (laughs). 

 

 

D: Something you have said is that it requires a lot of dollars and pounds from the middle classes……..

 

A:….to make a billionaire!’ So this is something I learned when researching my book. I looked at the wealth breakdowns of America, the middle-class person that screams ‘you're being really classist by critiquing the systems that oppress half the world’, needs to realise that America is a country that consumes most of the fast fashion on the planet right now. China consumes more, because of their population. America consumes more per person generally, and so, America is the country I wanted to look at. What I found is that America is broken up into a bunch of class systems, you have the poor and the working poor people. People who are at the absolute bottom of society. These are people around the poverty line, and they account for minus 1% of America’s wealth, they are not positioned as political or economic decision makers at all. They are scapegoated as a burden. So how can poor people be responsible for this system? The next class up you have, is the working class, which controls 3% of the total net wealth in America and they too are not positioned as political or economic decision makers. Then the next class up is middle class. Everybody is talking about how the poor people shop and that's why we have these systems. I want people to explain to me how can these two groups create multiple billionaires at the top of these brands? That's why I think it's absolute bullsh*t when people say its classist to critique the system of fast fashion because ‘what about poor people’? I know plenty of people throughout the whole economic spectrum and there are a lot of poor people that think the fast fashion system sucks, so let's not scapegoat poor people and recognise that it takes a lot of middle class money, to keep this system extremely profitable. As someone who was once on a low income, I think it's very important to make the distinction that I was never poor, I always had resources, I always had certain securities that other people simply don't have. I always had the option of moving back in my parents’ basement, wasn't fun, didn't make me poor. Economically I would have liked to have done better in my 20s but, regardless of that matter I was never poor. That’s something that I really breakdown in my book.

 

 

D: Fast fashion has a lot to answer for in showing us how we treat people in the global South. The pandemic that we're living through at the moment has really highlighted it again. It’s shown us how badly we treat the people who make our clothes. Rana Plaza was one of those examples that was held up to the to the world showing us how women and garment workers are being treated. And again, now with cancelled orders.

 

A: Even before Rana Plaza. This is the thing, we have a very short memory for the oppression of others in the global South. As a kid I remember learning what sweatshop labour was when I was 12. A TV host had been making a clothing collection for Walmart and someone had gone undercover in the factory her clothing was produced in and saw that there was child sweatshop labour happening. That was all over the news for months. How did we forget about that?

 

D: Was that in America?

 

A: Yes it was in America, a woman called Kathy Lee Gifford who used to host Good Morning America. A big show. I think that she was very much appalled by it, I felt very sorry for her being in that position, because I think she was one of those people who were, you know, she had agreed to do this line, but she hadn't been hands on enough to the point that she actually understood what was really happening. So it caught her quite off guard. For weeks everybody was talking about sweatshop labour in America, how did we become so OK with it? So it wasn't even Rana Plaza that had happened. But I think that because, once again we are facing so many different things, I do think that people have a tendency to just tune out.  There was a building back collapsed in Miami recently yet, there was very little news coverage on it and I feel, and I'm not trying to be a tin foil hat wearer, but I feel like the media refuses to cover things that are connected to the climate emergency. Scientists have been warning the city of Miami for years that things like this will start to happen. I feel there's a deliberate avoidance of talking about these things in our society.

 

D: News channels in the UK the BBC and ITV news are putting out the same, exactly the same news side by side. We're not getting a varied worldview.

 

A: It's a shame really when you can't depend on the news to show you the news.

 

D: The government here are talking about changing Channel 4 so that it goes into private hands which would mean you get some multi-millionaire running and deciding what we hear instead of being publicly owed.

 

A: Monopolies aren't good for our society and that's the same for fashion. That’s what I tell people, and that is what we are up against. I think, particularly with the fashion industry people just do not understand how these decisions impact all of us. How it impacts the climate, how it impacts the global South, how it impacts governments of the world, and I think if you can really break it down to people in a way that they can start to get it, that you can get them to make some changes in their life. I get messages everyday saying that and that makes me feel extremely fulfilled, because one thing I know for certain is that the fashion landscape which I was participating in did not make me feel fulfilled at all. It made me feel grim.

 

D: What do you think needs to be put in place to make the changes that we need to see?

 

A: We need regulation for the industry and we need to unpick consumerism within our society. We need to educate children about clothing and consumerism not just because of all the issues I talk about, but because consumerism is pervasive to children it gets in at a young age. I felt like I was left out because I didn't have the right clothing. I remember going back into school after Christmas, oh my god, so many of those kids would be like I got this and that. I remember hating my peers during that time period. I would make up things that I hadn't received, because it was a game of 1 upping. So why not beat them at their own game and lie about all the things you had received (laughs). Without really knowing it, I've always been someone who really hated the way consumerism and materialism becomes pervasive in our society. I remember when the first iPhone came out, I was living in New York City. I was someone who actually avoided having a smartphone for many years, I was the last person in my family to get a smartphone. Why? because I could sense that there was something sinister about it, but also because I worked in the TV industry and I think that people are largely very abusive of other people’s time in the entertainment industry. So what I wanted to do is limit people's access to me. I did not want to be the type of person who was on email 24/7. I wanted to be a person who had working hours. Now today, I am someone who is on email 24/7 but I'm my own boss, so I have my working hours. But as someone who worked in the TV industry, people would be like ‘why didn't you answer that email I sent you at midnight your time?’ So in order to limit that, I refused to get a smartphone which was great for a while.

 

D: I worked in advertising for a while and it was the same thing.

 

A: I had a brick phone for years it was wonderful.

 

D: Now they are putting Wi-Fi everywhere and in the tube.

 

A: Yes, so you can never turn off. 

 

D: That used to be a place of peace and quiet, me time.

 

A: So I was very late adopter to this technology, part of it was for boundaries, part of it was because I felt that there was something kind of sinister going on there. I remember people lining up to get the first iPhone and thinking what a bunch of schmucks. Why would you want to be tethered to your phone constantly? That is what that item is going to do for you. It is going to tether you to the online world in a way which you probably won't enjoy sometimes, but you won't even notice. And then it's going to take over all elements of your social life. So I could see the direction things were headed in. Now, there comes a point where you can't really fight it anymore if you want to participate in society. Gotta get the phone. So yes, today I have a phone, but I held off for the longest time.

 

D: With the phone it's like falling into a rabbit hole, if you open social media and start to scroll, suddenly half an hour is gone.

 

A: That's exactly what happens, it happens all the time. I try and have a no phone in the bedroom policy. I don't always have that because we don't want alarm clock, so if I need to wake up for something then I do have my phone on my bed side table. But, I also catch myself doing that, one minute you look and it's midnight, the next time you look it's 2:00AM and you're like ‘oh God what have I done’. So yeah it's pervasive, I've always known that and you know I try and limit it, but yeah, it is a very pervasive thing.  I remember definitely feeling like a freak show though for not having an iPhone. People would say ‘ohh you cannot afford one?’ ‘No, I don't actually want one.’ Then, they would be like ‘what sort of weirdo are you?’ Which is also a weird thing that our society does.

 

D: I worry about little children sitting in prams because, even when the phones weren't around a book wasn't handed over in the same way.

 

A: I feel for parents, because I can see how easy it would be, to hand over the phone and to have peace and quiet for a few minutes to enjoy a coffee with a friend. But I will try, if I'm lucky enough to have kids, to limit that if I can. But that’s easy to say before you become a parent and then find it's completely different than you had envisioned.

 

 

D: Something that you have said is that ‘we're not talking about race and class enough in our society and by doing that were hindering the conversations that we need to have to tackle the issues’.

A: Absolutely I think that until America and Britain acknowledge their true and real history we can't actually move forward. It would be like if you had two brothers, and one of them stole money from the other and built an empire and then said, why can't we just forget about this and be friends? Let's just start from the beginning. That's essentially what the world looks like. We just need to get over the past and move forward. But that's not how it works. If your sibling stole money from you and built an empire you would say OK, yes let's start from the beginning. Now give me all that money back, so that things are fair and equitable.

D: Now’s the time to uplift everybody, starting with paying people properly.

A: Yes we have this opportunity to really reset. That's how I choose to look at the climate emergency. Maybe I choose to look at it because it's terrifying and scary and I have to look at the things that could be hopeful about it. I think that we have been given an opportunity to unpick some of these things and I can see that the governments of the world are not trying to have that conversation but they need to. Even with the fossil fuel industry, did you see the news about Exxon? Every government of the world should be trying to move their seat farther away from Exxon right now. I feel they are going to ignore what's been revealed. How their lobbyists were basically saying ‘we target politicians to pay, to vote in our favour’ that's essentially what was being said. This, is something that people like you and I have always suspected, and it was just confirmed on video. I feel like we as a society are pretty saddened to see that it's only a niche group of people drawing attention to this and saying ‘everyone you need to pay attention to this’. I would like to see our entire society outraged at Exxon right now.

D: Absolutely. My husband has been working for years on sustainable energy programmes. A lot of times he’s been hitting his head against a brick wall, getting to a certain point and then all, the goal posts will change. Governments in different countries and here, would say okay we've given this enough money now. We are reducing our help with tariffs et cetera. Then we find out that they are propping up oil and gas. Smacks of greenwashing to me.

A: People also don't really realise that the fossil fuel industry keeps fast fashion afloat. So many, of the materials that are in fast fashion are fossil made. Most people still have no idea that polyester comes from oil and that it will often never biodegrade. It is in everything by design. The fossil fuel industries have been behind this massive push to get Poly fibres into all of our clothing. I think when people start to really understand these things, that things will change. However I still don't think that the word is out there, and that polyester comes from oil and is essentially plastic clothing. I know this because it was something I didn't know about until I was an adult.  

 

D: Well of course and this whole area that we're looking at works perfectly well, for extraction, and exploitation of the people and the planet.

 

A: Yes, but people don't see it that way when you're making shiny things that make them feel brighter, happier more attractive, and more accepted by society. Our society has done this conversation a massive disservice through patriarchy, by painting the fashion and beauty industries as frivolous, silly things. Instead of businesses that are responsible for billions of jobs and billions of dollars and world economies. We've always done this thing where we negate the fashion and beauty industry, and the arts in general as frivolous and silly because our society does that. Because of the patriarchy it's very easy to negate the impact of these industries.

 

D: An impact that is felt mostly by women.

 

A: Yes. 

 

D: Historically it was women here in the UK and America that were the first garment workers. Then when wages rose, the work started to offshore to the global south so it reverberates all around the world, Vietnam, India, Pakistan Ethiopia.

 

A: The thing about the fashion industry is that it never improves, it just moves to another country were its easier to exploit people. That's something else that I've seen throughout my lifetime. I remember starting to see made in China on everything and then it moved to made in India, then Bangladesh and Vietnam. I've seen this happen within my life span. I've seen how the fashion industry moves to the global South in search of the cheapest labour. But I didn't recognise that this is what was happening until I started to do this work.

 

D: That's exactly what was happening. I remember the conversations about all of the unemployment the moving away of the business was creating here. What is going to happen to all the people and factories and the machines here? It leaves a wake of destruction everywhere it goes, and it takes the economy away from each country and the women who work in it as it does so.

 

 A: I always tell people if we fight for ourselves, we can fight for others as well. But the problem is I think, in many ways we've given up that fight. To sort of leap back to my own history, both of my parents are from cities and places, or have lived in cities and places that are now economic ghost towns. My dad grew up mostly in Pennsylvania later on California and he's lived in St Thomas for many years. But, York Pennsylvania used to be a thriving hub. Pottstown Pennsylvania, they all used to make things, Caterpillar bulldozers I think, Harley Davidsons. Pottstown was known as a place that makes pots, because my grandmother worked there. They used to create things in that part of the world. Now things are not created there, and the economic ripple can be seen in the poverty and the drug use in the area. My mother is from Mobile Alabama, which is a massive shipping port that used to be so thriving, when mom was a child. Now, no, and you can see this all over America, these two cities these places I've talked about are not the exception to the rule but the norm. But the American worker doesn't see how these things have negatively impacted them, because certain politicians love to get you to believe that it's really the immigrant that has taken your job.

 

D: Always the other.

 

A: Always the other. When they can turn you against each other, they can control you. There is never a real or honest conversation about, if you don't like people on benefits, you should actually really hate Walmart, because Walmart is one of the biggest employers in America second is Amazon, who are also just like and Walmart. Walmart does not pay most of its workforce a living wage. Which means the vast majority of those employees are on some sort of benefit or governmental assistance. Meanwhile Walmart continues to turn a massive profit for years and years and years, because it doesn't pay a living wage. Which means the American taxpayer is subsidising the Walmart worker, while the Waltons remain one of the richest families in the world. That’s who you should be mad at.

 

D: I couldn't agree more it's the same here.

 

A: Walmart used to own Asda in the UK too. If America is a country of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps but the biggest employer in America doesn't actually pay a living wage in most states, how are you gonna pull yourself up by your bootstraps how can that happen?

 

D: It can't happen. They have so many tax breaks, and the tax payer is paying for those and subsidising business. If they were paying taxes properly to the government to everybody……

 

A:…… and paying their employees fairly. They probably wouldn't be billionaires. They'd still be rich beyond belief though with more money than you could spend in 3 generations time or a lifetime on earth. There are businesses out there that you can talk about, who do, do things differently. I know that there's a business in Seattle Washington I think, a Tech guy, who decided that he was gonna pay everyone in his company 70K and he wasn't going to make much more than that. This is a company that is not only economically thriving, but the output that you get out of people that are paid fairly and treated fairly is much different. I saw this even when I worked in the entertainment industry. The jobs that I worked on where people were respectful and kind to each other and you didn't have to nickel and dime over your pay check were the happiest shows. They were the shows where people were the most creative, the funniest. I would say really worked as a team, because people are happier when they are treated nicely.

 

D: Of course, and all of this goes back into the economy, so the economy can grow in a fair and just way.

 

D: You have just finished writing your book. (Aja’s book 'Consumed' is now available to buy at all good booksellers or click here for links go get a copy, it’s a great read, easy to understand and be able to get your head around all this info.)

 

A: I would say, for now, I'm never writing a book again (laughs). I am not writing a non-fiction book again, as writing non-fiction is a lot of work.

 

D: Can you tell us anything about it?

 

A: Everything I've talked about in this interview. It's basically been a complete taster, I talk about my history, I talk about wealth, I talk about why we buy, if you if you've enjoyed this interview you will like my book. Because this is basically a brief taster of what you're gonna get.

 

Can I also say I'm super nervous? So many people are saying ‘I'm really excited for your book’. And I'm terrified. I just watched the series Halston, and Halston used to say ‘reviews don't matter’. I basically say that mantra to myself everyday. Just in case, I’ve tasked my partner with reading my reviews for me. I've said, ‘don't tell me how mean they are, just tell me if somebody really hates me so I can avoid them’ (laughs).

 

D: But you have this on a daily basis, you are constantly putting out fires with people.

 

A: It's one thing when it's a person on Instagram, it’s other thing when it's maybe a publication you respect who isn't really digging where you are going. But I'm sure it will be fine. There is something that is slightly terrifying about the world having something in their hands that you've written, and people writing you reviews that are cutting, (laughs).

 

D: The thing is that we all have to start telling these stories, we all have to. If you don't put it out there, it's not out there, so people won't be able to pick it up and read it.

 

A: It's putting yourself out there in a different way which is slightly terrifying to me.

 

D: I understand, and of course putting it into book form means it can pass from person to person. And maybe into the hands of somebody who maybe doesn't have access to you on social media.

 

A: That's what I love about books and that's why I never stopped buying books. I remember when E readers came out and everybody said ‘oh everybody should get an E reader’ and I was once again being technology adverse. I get the purpose of E readers, I think going on holiday it is great as you can pack a bunch of books into one slim item. But in general, nothing beats the feeling of a book, nothing beats a bookstore, nothing beats the smell of a book, nothing beats having a book that you’ve read that has really impacted you and giving it to a friend and saying you must read this. You don't get that with an E reader, even though I totally understand the purpose of E readers. I do tell people get it in, no matter how you can, if it's an E reader if it's an audio book, I tell people all the time, reading an audio book is still reading. And for materials that I consider a bit more dense or challenging, I totally will get it on audio book, because sometimes I find it very hard to read things on the page, if it's information heavy. There is nothing wrong with that, there's no shame. Get the reading in any way you can folks.

 

D: Absolutely I love books too even when it is really dense and heavy so you can underline you can mark that this is somewhere you want to go back to. Books you can re-read and love.

 

A: I also get different editions of books that I love, if I travel, (that seems so far away, travelling to other places). When I travel and I go to other countries and they've a copy of a book that I really enjoyed and it has a different cover, I like buying those too.

 

D: So what do you think drives you?

 

A: Wanting to make the world better place for my niece Avery and my nephew Liam. They deserve to have a childhood where they don't have to worry about this stuff. I'm sure that these concepts kind of negate them, but even as a child I worried. I remember I got this book when I was ten called 50 things children can do to save the planet. I did not know until that moment that the planet was in peril. It was a bit of a shock for me. They talked about this thing called the greenhouse effect that has sort of disappeared from the radar. For a minute everybody was talking about it. Then it was like ‘I’ll just go back to living life’ so now, we are in full out climate emergency. That is what the greenhouse effect has become. So there is this desire for me to safeguard this world for the next generation, because it's not fair. It's not fair, it’s not fair, that the previous generation created an economic system where so many of us can't survive and have the things we need.  I want people to have the things that they need. I want everybody to have a life where they don't have to worry about medical bills. To be able to buy a house one day, because putting down roots is important. I want people to have what they need, and we currently have a system where very few people have what they need and it's not fair. So that's what drives me. 

 

You can see more of Aja’s work by following these links here and here