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 Claire Bergkamp - COO of Textile Exchange

 

Claire Bergkamp is the COO of Textile Exchange who are a global non-profit who drive positive impact on climate change across the fashion and textile industry. She has had an amazing career path to what is a relatively new role for her at Textile Exchange, via film and TV in LA and her various sustainability roles during her time with Stella McCartney. Her work has gained her a unique insight and deep understanding of the fashion industry. She has been on the cutting edge of new fabric developments and now in a way her journey has brought her back to the foundations of everything, the earth. 

 

 

D: You grew up in Montana a beautiful big sky state which means you were immersed in nature from a very early age.

 

C: I was. My parents are not from Montana, they both moved there. My mom is from Arkansas and my dad is from Kansas, they met in Oregon and moved up to Montana. They moved there because they loved nature and were thinking about settling down it is really special for folks like them. I spent a huge amount of time in nature as a child as both my parents are avid hikers and backpackers and love being in the woods. There were lots of hiking tops up mountains, carrying little packs, and sleeping under the stars. Montana is special for that, it is pretty unpopulated and there is still a lot of untamed nature. You learn how to hide food from bears as a kid growing up in Montana that’s normal.

 

D: Did you have early influences as far as fashion was concerned?

 

C: No, not really, outside of the fact that I was always drawn to it, I don't think there was anything specific. Vogue I guess would have been my early influence. There wasn't really fashion in Montana, we didn't even have a Gap or anything in town. I think we had JC Pennies which is far from fashion. It’s one of those things–you get drawn to what you're drawn to, and I was always drawn to it. I used to play soccer and whenever we travelled around, I would always go to the malls in whatever city we were in and shop for more exciting things than you could get in Montana, where there was nothing.

 

D: Did you have big thrift stores?

 

C: We did, and I always thrifted growing up. A lot of what I wore was thrift store stuff, but you would only get the remnants of the population of Montana, so still not very

fashion-forward, but you did find some wonderful old things. I still have some vintage blazers from the 40s which are beautiful. You could find some incredible vintage pieces in the antique stores, but in all fairness, they were more expensive than I could afford as a teenager. When I was at college I really enjoyed coming back to Montana and being able to dip into that. I don't see it that much anymore, I think it was limited stock and has been moved out of the stores by now.

 

D: Hopefully those who saw it’s worth and snapped it up and kept it and it hasn't ended up in landfill. Did you study in Boston?

 

C: Yes, I studied costume design, not fashion. I was always interested in fashion as a young person. My mother is an artist, so I was always surrounded by the arts world. I did a couple of summer courses at the Chicago Art Institute when I was in high school. One of them was a fashion design course and I realized while doing it, that I didn't want to be a fashion designer. The design that I liked was more historical, more based on problem-solving than trying to come up with a new trend. That lead to my interest in costume design and the psychology behind clothing. I was fascinated by the history of clothing too, it really tells you a lot.

 

D: Did you work in film and theatre in Boston?

 

C: It was a required part of my degree. I love the theatre but the costume design I was more interested in was film-based, more subtle, I guess. Theatre is beautiful, but you have to be very bold with what you're wearing, it has to translate to the back row. I was more interested in subtle design which is more applicable to film.

 

 

 

D: That took you to LA which saw you working on programs like Heroes and Glee.

 

C: Different life, very different life. I worked on Heroes for a long time.

 

D: I loved Heroes. What was it like working on that?

 

C: My whole journey through film was interesting. It was so exciting at the beginning and so exhausting by the end. I worked in LA for about three and a half years, and I worked on Heroes for almost all of that. It was a dream to work on films and TV shows and be on set, it was extremely exciting to see how it all happened and to understand what it takes to create a show like that, with all the special effects.

 

How that translates into clothing means buying many multiples of anything so that when someone’s arm gets blown off, they can change 10 more times and have some for reshoots. That’s what my job became, trying to find 30 of the exact same black Theory T-shirts in the malls of Los Angeles.

 

I started on set, which was interesting, but the hours on set are pretty brutal, so I switched over to being more of a shopper, which still means very long hours but a little less. On set you would be working 14-hour days (12 hours minimum). I've never understood how people do it forever. In my 20s it was easy, but it would be very hard to keep that kind of lifestyle up long term.

 

D: When I was a photography assistant, we used to work like that on trips, photographing from morning to night with maybe a break in the afternoon but we didn't have unions like the film industry. As the assistant, I would try and sort everything so that at the end of the trip we could have a day off but that never happened, re-shoots ended up in that space.

 

C: We did have unions in LA and negotiated rates. I made very good money for someone in their 20s but worked very long hours. I was very grateful for the union and in one respect it was the best health insurance of my life. I will never have insurance like that again, it was spectacular.

 

D: If only all unions had that much power. Your next step was your move to the UK.

 

C:  That was for my master’s. I don't remember exactly the moment I realized that sustainable fashion was a thing. It most likely started with my love of vintage and thinking about second-hand but not really understanding why. I think that reuse and upcycling is always the entry point into the larger topic of sustainability, because you see excess. For me, in film, I saw so much excess. They're buying so much, and you're seeing everyone else buying so much, you spend all day in the mall buying. Consuming at a rate that no normal human could because it is your job.

 

When my interest started in sustainability, I looked around at courses and found the course at the London College of Fashion. It was very unique at the time, I think there are more now, but there was nothing like it in the US, or anywhere else that I saw. I eventually did a more business program, but I still did all my work through the Centre for Sustainable Fashion with Dilys (Williams). The best thing I ever did was moving here and getting to meet Dilys. She really did change the course of my life in a big way. She's inspired a lot of people being in that role.

 

D: Did you go and work with Stella straight after that course?

 

C: During my master’s I worked at Arcadia, which was interesting and I realized quickly that it wasn't the part of the fashion industry that I wanted to be in. I started at Stella pretty much immediately after I finished my master’s. I started as a temp to work on the end-of-year environmental impact report, the reporting that most companies do and we reported to the Kering Group as we were still a member then. At the same time, Kering decided that it wanted to have a sustainability department and was really encouraging brands to hire people. So for me, it was the right place, the right time, the right skills. It was still a pretty niche thing that I had done, it’s way more competitive now. Hiring others and bringing in team members got so much easier, but it was so niche when I started that nobody wanted to talk about it at all.

 

D: Your mandate was to make the company more efficient and green.

 

C: Broadly yes, that was the idea. At the beginning a lot of it was getting to know the supply chain a lot better, looking at where the risks were, not only environmental but human rights too. For the first couple of years I did both, by myself, only me, so way too much. Looking back, when I did my indefinite Leave to Remain to stay in the UK, you have to tell them everywhere you've ever been, which is insane if you have a job where you travel. In the first two years, I was gone so much more than I was here. I think I spent two months in Asia at one point, I don't remember that. My time had been spent between India and China and a huge amount of time in Italy. Over the years I hired people to help so I didn't have to do it all by myself, which was a lot better.

 

D: That must have been a huge education, to see how everything works and how people were treated.

 

C: It was and I'm so grateful that I had to do it all myself because I saw it all first-hand. Drom embroidery in India, to big factories in China, to high quality luxury mills in Italy, to farms, I've seen a lot of what any global fashion supply chain has to offer. I was also at an age where it was fun. I think now, in my late 30s it would be a lot harder, but I was 27 and it was exciting to see it all. It was a real education into what it actually looks like to make fashion.

 

D: You worked on the EPNL (Environmental Profit and Loss) system with Kering. Do you think that that and all the travel you did has set you in the direction you have taken now?

 

C: I think the EPNL had quite a big role in that because I was very involved in helping to develop it with Kering. Many of the brands were, but with Stella, obviously it was very important to us. What it showed, because of the types of materials we used in luxury, is that the raw material part of the supply chain has the largest impact. Where a lot of the focus went for me, for the team, and for the brand, was on raw material production and sourcing.

 

The travel that accompanied that was visiting farms and spending a lot of time on wool farms and really getting to understand that part of the supply chain, where those impacts were, and what they looked like in reality. It was the part that spoke most to me also, I think that comes back to my connection with nature. When you're on a farm you are in nature, and you can see how that farm is acting in nature. I grew up around that too, I grew up around ranches, they were mostly cattle in Montana, but there were quite a few sheep ranches too. It made a lot of sense to me, the impact was very tangible in a way that I can personally understand and engage with. When you're in a dyehouse you can see water pollution and you can also see water treatment, but the technical differences between water filtrations is not my strength. I'm not the person that can tell you if that chemical mix is good or bad. For me, raw materials has always been the part that I understood. That is what drove me to Textile Exchange, because that's what we work on.

 

D: When did Stella stop using cashmere?

 

C: When we started doing the EPNL report, cashmere had such an outsized impact for the amount we used. As we were being very serious about trying to reduce impact, the easiest solution was to stop using virgin cashmere and switch to recycled, so we didn't source virgin cashmere after 2016/2017. Cashmere has an impact on the degeneration of grasslands. We did a lot of work in Argentina and we walked away from it because of some animal welfare concerns. But a group of Argentinian farmers was doing incredible restoration work on grasslands through holistic grazing.

 

Huge swathes of the grasslands in Argentina have been turned into desert because of overgrazing cattle. It's a very different ecosystem, very similar to Montana in climate, very brittle, very dry, not lush at all – I think parts of Mongolia are still quite lush. Overgrazing with goats happens a lot quicker than it does with sheep.

 

 

D: Through your work you've managed to work with a lot of innovative fabrics. Which one fascinated you most?

 

C: The partnership we had with Bolt Threads at Stella was the first major one and the promise of spider silk still holds very dear to my heart. I know there has been a lot more focus on mycelium, but spider silk with Bolt was my entry point to the whole topic and for me is still one of the most exciting. However, the unsung hero of material innovation is textile-to-textile recycling. I also worked with an organization called Evrnu, which is pretty incredible too.

 

I think like anything in life, and this is something I think we really undervalue when we talk about this idea of sustainability, is human connection. All that change we made in the supply chain was from getting to know the people in the supply chain. It’s not like there is this hard science, it's about transformation and changing people's minds, getting to know them, and understanding the reality. With the innovators, it's the same thing. The people that I had the most connection with personally also tended to result in the best results for us as a company because we could work together. The technologies are often very similar but having that working relationship really unlocked getting it to the next level. You're going to run into so many problems – every day is a problem when you're trying to bring in a new material or innovation to supply chains that have been working one way for hundreds of years. So much of that was because of the people running those companies.

 

D: I guess you found yourself working with sci-fi a little bit again with these technologies.

 

C: I love it, it's interesting. But I think because of the state the world is in we need to be careful not to let innovation distract us. We have a lot of work that needs to happen and within that, it should still be invested in. But some of the investment does need to be on the big problems we have right now. I think it's easy to get excited, I did and still do, with some of the innovations out there, but none of them are at scale and we have very little time to address some very big problems. So focusing on the solutions that can scale up quickly and that already exist, for things like soil health, has got to be where a lot of the focus is now.

 

D: Tell us about Textile Exchange, what they do and what you are doing with them? Can you also explain the tier system?

 

C: Textile Exchange exists in what we call Tier Four. If we think of a supply chain in tiers, Tier Zero is where a company operates itself, its stores, and its offices. Tier One is garment manufacturing, Tier Two is fabric mills, Tier Three is the transformation of raw materials into fibers through processes like the scouring of wool and the creation of pellets, and Tier Four is where the actual creation of the material occurs – where the sheep live, where the cotton farming happens, where oil extraction is, mining for metals, whatever the material is. Where the actual, on-the-ground impact is happening is in Tier Four.

 

D: Does Textile Exchange also do certification?

 

C: We do. We are a non-profit, not a membership association, but we do have over 700 members made up of most of the brands you have ever heard of, but also farmers and suppliers. That's one part of our world that brings members along on the journey, trying to encourage transformation inside companies. We are also a standards holder and certification organization. We don't certify farms, but we developed the standards that are then applied, or asked of farmers or the supply chain to adhere to.

 

We hold standards covering both animal welfare and sustainability for wool, alpaca, mohair, and down. Then we have an organic cotton certification, which does not certify the farm –that's a separate thing that is important to acknowledge. Our most used standard is our Global Recycling Standard, which is pretty much the main certification out there ensuring that something is recycled, and we do see that as a very important part of transforming the industry.

Certifications result in impact change on the ground, which is important, but they also provide a chain of custody to the finished product. It is a way to verify a claim that is being made. There are all kinds of claims made in this world, but certifications are real, in a way that a lot of stuff isn’t, and we believe they are an important part of helping the industry transform. We also run a big benchmarking effort which is the largest peer-to-peer benchmarking effort in the industry, where companies voluntarily report to us the use of their materials.

 

The report for 2020 had 191 brands that reported on how they're doing. They are then benchmarked and can see their progress on the adoption of preferred materials. It helps us keep an eye on the industry and point in the direction of travel. We have a few other tools that help companies understand the bigger picture of impact because a lot of times what we've seen is that companies get very focused on looking only at Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to understand impact. This is a very scientific way of looking at it, but it has very strict boundaries – it doesn't take into consideration things like microfibres, animal welfare, or in the case of polyester, oil. We have created a tool that gives you a much more holistic view of trying to understand the impact of different materials, which we call the Preferred Fiber and Materials Matrix.

D: How are you encouraging farmers to look after the soil?

 

C: We have a new program called Impact Incentives which is one of the tools that will be able to help incentivize farmers. It is a way of getting money directly to a farmer – it is not a certification, but it is about helping transformation happen without building it into the supply chain. It’s that initial piece of transformation we’re looking for. We don't typically work directly with farms, but what we do is help to create movement and point the direction of travel.

 

We are working on a protocol and some thinking for what drives healthy soils. The word regenerative gets thrown around a lot these days and we believe in it in theory, but we’ve just embarked on a very large exercise mapping regenerative programs around the world, the Regenerative Agriculture Landscape Analysis, to create the understanding that the industry needs of what really does drive soil health. There are a lot of things popcorning off around the world and no one is really taking the time to say, let's look at all of this together and figure out what is working in different regions, what we need to be doing to measure the soil health, where the methodology is in scientific protocols that exist. We wanted to translate that into a practical resource that the industry can use.

 

D: Do you feel that now that you're working for a non-profit that you've put your running shoes on so to speak? With more freedom to push for change faster?

 

C: I'm across more than one company now as Textile Exchange's mission is industry transformation. When you are working in a brand your mission is brand transformation. Textile Exchange is very different, it’s a much bigger mindset which is really exciting. Stella was a little different but it is still about what your individual impact is, and at Textile Exchange, we are all about enabling everybody at once. Anybody who wants it can have it.

 

D: What do you think the impact the pandemic will have had on everything? On one hand, there was an overdrive in production, on the other, more people seemed to be more aware of the bigger picture.

 

C: I think it's too early to say. I see the same thing you see, which is that after a down there is an up. Historically when we've had a down, a lot of overconsumption happens afterward. I think that we should assume that that will probably happen. One thing maybe though is that not everyone feels that way.

 

Personally, I slowed down for the first time in a long time during the pandemic. It’s why I'm working with a non-profit, as I slowed down and thought about what I wanted for the next phase of my career. It gave me time to think about the impact I want to leave behind. I don't know that I would have done that as fast, without the pandemic making me question what I need in the world.

 

I also think that the pandemic taught us something else important. There's a lot of talk of the slowing down of production, which does need to happen, but people were really  irresponsible with their supply chain. They just walked away from orders, all of that was horrible. There are those of us in the non-profit space who are hoping to help lead

thought. We at Textile Exchange are not really in that part of the supply chain, but I do think that there needs to be some real stakeholder engagement thinking about what responsible manufacturing actually means. Again, we're talking about humans here.

D: 100% it's humans and we need degrowth. How do you do that responsibly?

 

C: That’s not something that one company can decide on its own, or it's going to go wrong.

D:  That brings us to the power of legislation.

 

C:  We need that so badly, but I do worry about policymakers not really being educated on the topics. People understand oil. I don’t think people understand fashion supply chains and policy, that's been my personal experience of policymakers and it really freaks them out.

 

D: On the same level you've got governments supporting the oil industry.

 

C: People need to keep on pushing governments ­– they are not doing their job anywhere in the world. I do think policy plays a role in all of this, but with oil and gas it’s a very different conversation. With fashion there needs to be a little bit of incentivization as well. The problem that I've seen with the way that policy has tried to engage with fashion supply chains is that they treat them like every other supply chain and they're not. They are way messier and there are more twists and turns, you can't compare it to say, a car supply chain. They are not the same thing.

 

My concern and what I've seen happening in some of the EU legislation talks is that they want it to be simple. They want a simple solution, they want footprint, with the way they're approaching it, it’s potential to drive real change feels very slim. We need a shift in thinking about how we incentivise good action instead of trying to make it all fit into the same box for every type of product and looked at - what if there was a tax break on organic cotton, what if there was a tax break on second-hand, or what if you didn't pay any tax when you bought something used? That would start to shift the market in a way that would be more effective, less complicated, and could be actioned right away.

 

D: You have seen that work in practice when you were working in the film industry.

 

C: Absolutely, all the films left LA while I was there, all the films left completely. I then worked in Boston and Louisiana on a couple different things.

 

D: And that was purely because of tax incentives.

 

C: Absolutely, tax breaks.

 

D: So if they can make the film industry move like that with tax breaks then absolutely 100% they would be able to move the fashion industry with tax breaks.

 

C: It happened overnight in film. Every film was made in LA then no films were made in LA. It happened in like 3 weeks! It was like that (Claire clicked her fingers). Films relocated, they changed production, they wrote scripts to be based in Louisiana, the entire industry, everything, is still made in Atlanta now. All because there were great tax breaks. It might take a little longer with fashion, but the change is immediate. I'm personally promoting this at this point because I think everything else has gotten way too complicated.

 

 

D: Do you have hope?

 

C: I do. I think policymakers will step up. I'm going to hold on to that, I think we can hit the 45%, I think it's possible. But policymakers need to step up because they can really transform things. It doesn't take that long to change things when people are motivated to change them.

 

 

Links:

Claire's Instagram

Textile Exchange

Textile Exchange Instagram

 

 

 

 

Focus On Safia Minney MBE - Sustainable Fashion and Fair Trade Pioneer

 Safia Minney is the very first of my Inspirational Women who I had never met before before I photographed. It has been a very good experience. She is the founder of the ethical and sustainable fashion brand People Tree and was CEO for 24 years. She has been working to save the planet and help its people since she was 25, or as you will see from the interview all her life. She is one of the worlds leading social entrepreneurs and is a leading inflencer in sustainability, creating the first organic Fair Trade supply chain. She has be showing us the way now its time for us all to follow her lead. We can still love fashion and love and take care of the planet and those who live on it.

D:  Safia you are an amazing woman and have done a lot with your life. I feel there is a lot of information about you since she was 17 I would love a glimpse of what life was like before then and what the formative years were like for you. Did you go up in the UK?

S: Yes I grew up in Berkshire near Ascot and then Bracknell. My father was a scientist originally from Mauritius, but he died of cancer when I was seven, we had just moved house from Ascot to Bracknell. My mother was Swiss and neither of them really understood the UK system that, depending on where you live the schools are of very different in quality. The move meant I went from a really great school in Ascot where we had been very academic to a really, really poor quality school. It took me from highly academic approach to learning to basically playing in the sandpit. About three months after that move my father died. It was difficult in so many ways.

The shots you took just now surrounded by flowers, - actually I felt incredibly emotional. As there is a picture of me as very little girl surrounded by flowers at the age of seven, a few weeks after father passed away. 

It was very, very hard for Mum as a foreigner in the UK at the time, you didn’t talk about death. There was no support in terms of the grieving process and she says that her friends were often cold, they would cross over to the other side of the road and wouldn’t talk to her or include her. She was a young woman in her mid to late 30s. Mum was absolutely great, she was looking after three of us my brother was two, and my sister was probably about 5 ½. She was also doing voluntary work and we would be working with her doing these voluntary social work activities. She would help Ugandan refugees who were coming to our towns, help them settle into their homes, find doctors and schools and we would find ourselves trying to find secondhand furniture for them to make a home. I think for me this was very, very powerful. To understand that people could be forced from their families, their homes, some of these people where very professional, very well-to-do and had to travel with a couple of suitcases and absolutely nothing other than that. The sense of loss but also resilience. Learning the importance of welcoming and being there. That was lovely to be part of.

My childhood went from kind of being really quite picture perfect and having two very loving international and curious progressive parents to this.

My great grandmother was a sugar cane plantation worker in Mauritius and her family had come over as indentured slaves. My grandmother, my father’s mother, was also widowed when he was a very young boy. She worked very hard on the land she was allowed to buy it from the government she was very enterprising. Dad was very academic and quite clever so was encouraged to go to Mauritius University. For him and the family this was a big thing. Throughout his childhood he really felt that he wasn’t allowed to play or go riding his bicycle. It was really expected that he would be the one that helped the family. With us he had a very strong attitude that his children should be allowed to play, be free and have the things he didn’t have.  My Mother’s family are from Switzerland. Her grandfather had been a minister and her parents social workers. They lived in France, the Alsace for a while and ran a center for what they called at the time ‘delinquent boys’. A kind of youth center for carpentry skills and that kind of thing. They returned to Switzerland before the war and started a publishing company and a bookshop. My great-grandfather because he was a minister, a vicar, was very socially minded, I guess he was also very, very political. Very progressive. He was he was an environmentalist. This was all stuff I only found out after I started the journey with People Tree and realized that probably I had a pro social gene and was very much made that way, can’t stop doing it.

D:  Your life after 17 is very well documented. It’s an amazing career, Ethical fashion, Fair Trade, setting up Fair Trade Day, working with Friends of the Earth and Body Shop and setting up Global Village and People Tree. I love the global village idea and of course People Tree. I think the global village is a much nicer place to be in the global economy.

S: Yes, yes well maybe now it’s become clear that the economic system is totally dysfunctional when we start redefining what economics should be and putting the planet central, we’ll come up with a sense of Global Village and then decent and fair relationships with other people. Because we all thrive on respect, dignity and solidarity that connection is very, human and instinctive.

D: You are one of the fore runners in the world of sustainable and ethical fashion how does it feel now that everyone else at last seems to be wakening up? Sustainability seems to be on everyone’s lips. 

 

S: When I set up Global Village I had people that I was very much learning from and was inspired by. People like JonathonPorritt director of Friends of The Earth (until 1990), George Monbiot whose books I read, Poisoned Arrows is really deeply moving. I see myself as being from another generation (although George is my age ho hum). It’s great to see more awareness and urgency. I think, I still feel very much a maverick. A lot of the thinking behind People Trees product development, the design, the supply chain innovation, was all very new and felt intuitively the right thing to do. For example using only natural materials, using, buttons and interfacings as far as possible using only natural materials, not using plastic buttons and things that wouldn’t bio degrade. That was really quite a difficult thing to do because you know, we were setting up the first relationships with those kinds of suppliers. It is also a very expensive and time consuming thing to do. Now, when we look at the micro fiber debate and see that 80% of drinking water is polluted with micro fibers, you know it feels, it is shocking, it’s absolutely shocking. So micro fibers are the most urgent environmental issue we must address. It’s entering the food chain through fish and all life forms.

It is very exciting to see this new generation of young students and children behind the school strikes. I became a member of Extinction Rebellion in March this year, feeling absolutely that we don’t need it to be a new something and I really enjoyed the approach. Not only the political approach but also the regenerative cultural approach that Extinction Rebellion are so good at.

So yes, I feel its very exciting that we are gradually joining forces into an intergenerational movement the movement of movements. The UK is ahead of many other countries, I was in New York with some leading thinkers and movers but there was nothing really like Extinction Rebellion on the same level in the US. I think the new green deal is our best hope, there were a lot of exciting initiatives at the beginning. Yes it is a very exciting time and it is a time were I have felt certainly in the last 3 or 4 months that finally we have a chance to create the kind of society that we want. And that brings with it great open optimism.

D: 28 years after you founded People Tree and working with Po Zu How do we accelerate what you have started?

S: That’s a really good question, its absolutely critical because we have to bring everything to scale. What we have been doing is tinkering around the edges. We need legislative reform and without laws in place and then being enforced it is really difficult to get the kind of reduction in carbon emissions we need, to get really sustainable practice in place and to meet the minimum laws, in terms of workers rights and wages. I am hopeful. I think with the ESGs (The environment social and governance) standards that the financial markets are beginning to act, it is having an impact. What we are, finding is that actually companies are increasingly under pressure to deliver reports that prove that they are doing something and that’s what we’ve longed for, for the past 20 years. So I think the pressure from above which is legislative, and is very slow in coming but also the financial markets are beginning to put some pressure on in terms of risk management and from below, because really, citizens are demanding that what they are buying from their favourite corporations and brands are transparent. They want human rights, and to know that environmental legislation is in place. There is a lot of Shell reaction now. People are buying a share so they can vote at the AGM, so there is also a lot of shareholder activism. I think people are really aware that we need urgent large scale change and I think the protests that have happened this year have been really powerful in moving peoples consciousness to understanding that the economic system is defunct. When I would talk about it 25 years ago, I did feel like a maverick, I wasn’t a trained economist, but when I studied economics at A’level it became clear that the things that mattered were not being considered. I think now there is real wholesale understanding that the neoliberalist system is simply dysfunctioning that it is a race to the bottom and if we continue in the way that we have, humanity won’t survive.

D: I was listening online and was struck by what you said about the skills of women, how we think holistically and are ‘born to be social entrepreneurs, born to deliver the shift the economic system needs’. Women and the environment has been central to your mission since you were 25. Do you still feel women are leading the way?

S: I absolutely do and I think women are extremely good at thinking holistically, thinking with a multi stakeholder approach. We are extremely creative, we are constantly thinking of the consequences of our decisions and the impact of those decisions on other parts of our social network and often on our communities and the world. I think one reason that we’ve got ourselves into the mess that we have is because women are not equally represented in the decision making and strategy, the high level execution work that needs to happen. Whilst its great that we have a law that insists that companies of a certain size have women represented on all levels, there is still a lot of tokenistic gestures. Men are also changing, they understand that they need to take a more holistic approach and with that comes the acknowledgement of the skills that women have and perhaps happen more naturally than them.

D: If we all work together and use all our strengths together it makes us all strong.

S: Yes exactly. I think that women are naturally collaborative, I think that we are empathetic, that we are good communicators, we tend to be more peace making, I think we are less egocentric and all of those skills are very, very necessary for the challenge we have ahead of us. But of course there are men that have those skills too, but they aren’t unfortunately on as large a scale as we need. We have to really rethink business, politics and finance.

D: Along with everything you have done, you have published, is it 9 books you have written? Is it 4 that you have written completely on your own and some are co-written?

S: I have put my Japanese books in there as well.

D: Wow, Japanese, I mean you learned Japanese.

S: There is a difference between being able to speak it and being able to read/write it and although I learnt the minimum 2300 kanji I don’t think I could write even a quarter of them I could read them probably but yes unless you keep using your Japanese writing skills you just forget. But I think learning Japanese was great. I understood the historic culture of Japan because its really wrapped up in the different kanji and the different strokes that are used, represent things like the rice plant, the tree, rock or fire so there is very much animalistic elements that are about agricultural life, which of course is what Japan living was all about 100s of years ago. 

D: Your latest book ‘Slave to Fashion’ message is so strong for today, when you think of children who are not a school because they are making clothes to feed the fast fashion of the west, or out picking cotton. That this is still happening today. How does it feel to write and research all of this or is it all knowledge you have accumulated over the years?

S: Gosh yes, exploitation really very much depends on the hours of work and the pay because working is not a bad thing. I started working in a market when I was 13 years old selling denims and jackets and I did that before school for about 20 hours a week which I think today would be illegal. I actually think that it would be very, very helpful if children were allowed to work at the age of 13 maybe not 20 hours a week but I certainly enjoyed it. British education is a bit warped currently there should be more vocational opportunities for children and teens. Setting up People Tree and working with Fair Trade groups in countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Kenya, you see things and you are constantly asking yourself questions. I remember seeing a 13 year old girl about 10 years ago working on one of our craft projects and hand making string, we would take the string and make bags, we did natural dye workshops there, the Body Shop came in and they made their scrub mix. It was a really successful project, when I asked why is this young person was making string and they said ‘Well her Father died and her Mother is an invalid she has 2 younger brothers and sisters and she is working part-time to be able to support the family but she goes to school.’ I visited the school and that was the case. The Fair Trade Organisation is fantastic at really looking after people. But that unfortunately is the exception. If the social welfare of the child isn’t being considered, if the welfare of the family isn’t being considered, you find children trapped in slavery and modern day slavery, often living in the same premises where they are working. When my son was about 7-8 years old I travelled to India to do some research on where accessories were being made, the kind of accessories you would buy on the British high street. I did this trip alongside my Fair Trade work and was absolutely shocked. I found rooms in the slums in Delhi in the red light district, 100’s of rooms with between 10 and 20 child workers in each. If they were sick they would tell them to go sleep against the wall. They would feed them in these rooms, have them work there, they would watch television there, they would go to bed there, and they were barely allowed to get up and leave the immediate surroundings, no play, nothing. The story of slavery, the story of bonded labour is utterly shocking it is a visceral thing for me you don’t have to see it with your own eyes, but you can go onto my website or YouTube site and you can see children making accessories at the age of 4 and 6 and 8. It’s a different thing learning a skill from your parents because that is an artisanal livelihood, to being pretty much kidnapped and put into a room where you are unable to play, unable to have any kind of access to the outside world, education is absolutely unheard of.

So I think this is the reality of a dysfunctional system where we don’t have laws that are implemented. Companies signed to minimum wages but they don’t vet their supply chains. I came back to the UK and I knew exactly where the trinkets were being sold. I went to the CEO of the company with photographs and said ‘look your companies products are being made by these children’ and the CEO who was also the owner of the company said OK well I am very shocked. He started a foundation for deaf and mute people in Calcutta. Did he actually look at his supply chain? Did he tell the buyers they needed to check for modern day slavery? I don’t think he did at all. So the modern slavery act is absolutely critical. Companies with a 36million turnover or more are obliged to report what they are doing to eradicate modern slavery, but sadly even though the British government is working to strengthen that law and its implementation its still something that the companies can cut and paste into their report and side step. We need legislation, what’s shocking is there are progressive companies that are working very, very hard they are not just The Fair Trade movement pioneers there are others like the ETI – Ethical Trade Initiative which are working on a very strict base code that would deliver ethical business. Without laws being enforced, the progressive companies are at a disadvantage. We need a level playing field and the laws to create that level playing field.  People are becoming increasingly fed up with this government’s inactivity. They realize that business will have to set the way. In the same way that business is very much setting the way for working towards declaring a climate emergency, working towards zero carbon by 2030 because we know that in accordance with the Paris accord agreement this is way too late. So businesses realize that they have to show leadership but its not enough, the government does need to act. 

D: There has been of talk of ‘change one thing’, I think we urgently need to change more than one thing. How do we influence our governments to join in globally?

S: I have spent 20 or 30 years promoting a different way of doing business and reducing environmental impact I just don’t think its enough anymore we need to get political we need to take to the streets. When I was in Parliament Square protesting with Extinction Rebellion I was really overwhelmed by how may people were supportive out of 100 people that we spoke to about 80 were so glad we are doing this, so glad that we are campaigning, an overwhelming positive response. So I feel we just have to get out there and be political. It will take different forms. If you are an introvert you might write letters or you might talk to your child’s school about supporting the protests. So may local authorities have joined the climate emergency now, so many businesses are beginning to. I have been part of a group setting up Business Declares which you can find on twitter and we have a big event planned for the 20^th of September in time for the global strike. The Institute of Chartered Accounts has given us a space for the meeting which is great, it makes it clear that risk management and climate is a business prerogative. All the movers and shakers will be there, people really sticking their head out. We want it to be a network were business can feel they can come into even if they can’t make 2030.

D: What gave you the impetus to set up your podcast and who would love to interview?

S: I think the podcast is a lovely way to bring some of the conversations about actions and the positive things that are going on in the sustainability space, because a lot of us actually are deeply concerned and there are an increasing number of people who are suffering from climate anxiety. I think we all want to know that there is the chance for change, that we do have the solutions. That we have to get behind those solutions and demand action from government. So The Ethical Agenda podcast is hopefully not talking to the converted I am hoping that fashion people are interested in learning a little bit about sustainable fashion and of the deeper thinking around sustainability. Interviews for example with Rob Hopkins, delving into the power of imagination and creativity. I think a designer can really relate to this, its that kind of deeper thinking I think, that creates a kind of personal motivation and actually a sense of how we all need to move forward together and in our in our own different ways. They give me a great sense of ‘what if’. I think on your commute, if you listen to something for 20, 30mins, hopefully it’s a bit of a shot in the arm, you know ‘yes we can’ we can change our fate.

Last year I did an executive coaching qualification and I wondered if the podcast and interviewing people might give me an opportunity to hold the space and speak to some of my peers and people whose work I admire. To also give a voice to younger people to people who are suppliers, producers and people who make.

We were all talking about climate change 20/30 years ago and we are now being asked by children and teens to ‘Get a move on’. ‘Get real ‘  - its not enough to say, when they grow up they will sort it out middle aged people absolutely have to act now, as do all the people.

D: Extinction Rebellion and LFW – I know the protesters outside LFW managed to get fur off the catwalk. How do Extinction Rebellion plan to disrupt LFW?

S: I am not sure (as we speak) of all of the details. What is clear that since the cancelling of Stockholm Fashion Week when you start thinking about fashion and the way that we have done it in the past, its not sustainable it needs to change and it needs radical change.

I certainly think the BFC could take the initiative. Running a citizens assembly style fashion industry debate about how fashion could be sustainable.

D: They could put the issue in the heart of LFW.

S: There have been initiatives like Esthetica run by Orsola de Castro but they always sat rather on the fringe and it feels like its been a rather a tokenistic gesture. The reason fashion people have come together behind Extinction Rebellion and said isn’t it time to pause LFW is because we don’t have any time to waste. 7% of carbon emissions being textile and clothing production is set to be more than 25% if we keep heading in the direction that we are.  Our waterways are completely congested with microfibers so we can’t drink safe water, we have to stop. We have our foot on this fast fashion pedal, more fashion, more fashion, without really thinking about what it means, there are some fantastic initiative’s around in terms of the circular economy and rental and ways of reducing consumption. Looking through a climate lens and saying what are we doing? How are producing, how are we treating the people that make it and unfortunately we are many, many miles away from that. Of course Britain had been incredibly brave, its been a pioneer of the Fair Trade Movement, of Ethical consumerism whilst London is one of the key fashion centers for the world I think we have to take a stand. In the same way that the Tate and the other institutions came behind Culture Declares the BFC could too. Questioning the brands at LFW and their legitimacy. It needs leadership now. Everybody in the sector really needs to show leadership.

D: What’s next for you and your work at the center we met at this morning? Can you tell me about that?

S: The course will probably be launched in September. We are running some pilot courses for citizens and business leaders. The aim is to facilitate a learning process to understand better practice to really help fashion retail leaders go through a mind shift that will allow them also to make transformation happen in their businesses. We will be going to fashion companies to look for founding partners. We will have a very interesting curator set of programs to form an academy. People will come in for a period of 6 months to do

one-off days that will be held for 5 days over 6 months. It’s a blended learning experience where you will also be supported online. The idea is that, we need to work together as an industry and there needs to be a safe space where people can understand. Senior execs can understand different peoples perspectives but also relax in a place where they are connected to nature. They are not in the assault of the everyday world of work with hundreds of emails coming in. So, I am hoping that the InternationalGarden City Institute in Letchworth will provide this and the 28 minutes outside London will give them a chance to vacate and it wont be quite business as usual. It will actually allow them a personal space to reconnect their values and the values of their company.