Ethical fashion! Is it existent?

Retail is flourishing, but is it carrying forward the ethicality of the business of fashion retailing, not just to give world a better piece to wear – but also make earth the best place to live.

Ranjan Kaplish explores words the world over to visualise the organic clothing scene. It's somewhat like that old joke about the shortest books in the world (Italian War Heroes, Swiss Comedians, etc., etc.). Ethical fashion could be the shortest story in the world because it really does not exist.

There are ethical clothes – baggy, beige t-shirts made in Third World worker co-operatives from organic Fairtrade cotton – but not proper fashion. That's not to say the fashion world is totally devoid of conscience.

There is a lot of tireless work for AIDS and breast cancer charities, but when it comes to the real business of fashion, everything about it is fundamentally counter to current ethical concerns. It is an industry based on fuelling consumption for things that are defined by their built-in obsolescence; on making people want things they don't need and buy more than they can really afford; and on seducing us into believing that owning a material object can change our lives. It is certainly one of fashion's ironies that while spending $100,000 on a single dress might seem the very apogee of its decadence, it is at the peak of the fashion mountain that you will find the most ethical employment conditions.


The “petite mains” (little hands) working in Paris couture salons are treated very differently from the almost slave labour in some Asian clothing factories. The Parisian master craftspeople are valued for their skills and the couture customer can pay the price for it. It is at the other end of the market where the real horrors lurk. The current trend for cheaper and cheaper great clothes is inevitably linked to terrible conditions for the people who make them. If we're not paying for it, someone else is.