Ethical!

Part of the concept of this brand is to create an ethical fashion label.

I am approaching it in two ways:

a) To work with environmentally friendly fabrics, and to try and integrate environmentally friendly practices throughout the manufacturing and supply chain.

b) To support small communities through fair trade manufacturing.

However as a start up designer based in Dubai, I am finding it quite difficult to integrate this fully as resources are limited,scattered and difficult to source. It is clear that this is something that will happen in stages as information becomes more accessible.

For now what I have managed to do is the following:

Sign up as a member of the Ethical Fashion Forum at http://www.ethicalfashionforum.com/

I highly recommend that anyone interested in creating conscious fashion, sign up with them as they are assembling a rich resource of information in this area.

To develop eco-friendly labels and size tags BCI labels (bcilabels.com) give you the option of selecting micro-organic cotton. This can be found under the eco-friendly tag on their menu, HOWEVER, not all labels on that particular list are eco-friendly. Specifically ask for the ORGANIC cotton. My labels are currently under production and I'll post more on service and quality once i've received them:

As for my stationary, I have approached a Dubai based company called 'Birdie'. They have a division called birdie 'friendly' which includes a whole bunch of stationary that is green. They are currently designing my business cards, look book folders, etc... all of which will be printed on recycled paper. They go as far as providing the option to print with recycled 'ink' believe it or not!

http://www.birdieuae.com/

I've also sourced fabrics from a market called 'Dilli Haat' in South Delhi. This market supports artisans and communities that come from different villages in India. Most fabrics are natural and handmade, woven on hand looms. I will be using the following fabrics for my collection:

100% Silk

75% Silk 25%Cotton

Combined the two fabrics together and kept the blue edges rough to unravel naturally.

Signed up to annually donate part of my sales to theclimateproject.org . Al-Gore set this organization up and I sincerely believe that he has done alot in this area to spread awareness of climate issues more than ever before. Signing up and donating helps mitigate your CO2 emissions... and this is necessary as we haven't found complete solutions to FULLY go green.

I hope for more integration within the year and for the following season (as i have sourced organic cotton jersey and bamboo).. yaaay.

Until then, that's it for now :)