Wednesday 29 February 2012

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Its Off To Work We Go

If you could change one thing about the fashion industry, what would it be? Cheaper clothes? Sizes 9, 11 and 13? It’s no lie to say that we all try to get as much as we can for as little as possible.
 But what about the deeper, darker side of the industry, the poor animals that get slaughtered on a daily basis so the people wealthy enough to afford it, can wear their fur. What about those 11 year old children who work 16 hours a day on less than minimum wage to make the clothes we all wear?

We live in a world where it is known and frequently ignored that children are exploited just so that we get the chance to look good and what a damn shame that is.
Our parents and grandparents that fought for freedom in the wars still believe that sweatshops, if they do exist at all in the US and UK, are formed from the issue of immigration, and were not involving American and English citizens. However this is not always the case. As many members of the American government including Frances Perkins, Alfred Smith and Franklin Roosevelt were fighting for human rights in the workplace, World War II erupted and seemed to play a favourable role in this battle. The War had brought around jobs, especially for women, taking away the high level of unemployment that abusive employers had once taken advantage of. Although a lot of the work was still factory based, workers were producing uniforms rather than fashion items and were working under war production contracts meaning they were at least on minimum wage. By the end of the war, sweatshop abuse in the apparel industry was becoming a thing of the past. So why is it that sweatshops are still causing such an uproar?

In the past, Nike has been accused of selling goods that were produced in sweatshops. To get their reputation back, they promised to improve factory conditions, increase wages and make sure that the staff were treated with respect, putting in place a code of conduct for all factories. After inspection, any that did not comply with these rules were threatened to be closed unless improved. In 2000, a report by the BBC released information that they were however breaking these codes of conducts. They found girls under the minimum age working up to 16 hours a day. Nike then rolled out a program to check the identity of about 150,000 of its workers in China and found 167 cases of people who were below minimum-age standards when they were hired, but were now 18 or older. Child labour in China has come under fire from human rights as children as young as eleven are being hired because employers can get away with paying them less than a skilled worker. Due to a high demand for money to pay education fees etc, the costs of manufacturing in China are constantly increasing. This means a lot of brands are moving production to places like Vietnam and Cambodia as labour costs are 25-30% lower, adding the constant circle this arguement goes round. As soon as a problem occurs, the prices raise, the production moves to somewhere cheapers, somewhere that can be exploited a little more than the place before.

Kelsey Timmerman wrote a book ‘Where am I wearing’, a diary of his personal experiences while travelling around the world to find who makes his clothes, his journey takes him to some of the worst sweatshops in the world giving him the chance to meet the workers. Without the work and money that the sweatshops offer them, these people would not be able to survive. This creates the contradicting argument that however bad the exploitation that occurs in sweatshops gets, without the chance to earn money, these people’s lives would be a lot worse. In the conclusion of his book, he wrote ‘There isn’t a single worker who makes my clothes who lives a life that I would find acceptable’.

What is the right answer? Is there one? This, along with fur, is a debate that may never reach an end.

Friday 17 February 2012

The Perfect Stalker


Imagine a world without Facebook. Imagine signing onto your computer and simply browsing the internet or actually doing some work without having your Facebook page open in another tab. It’s strange to think that no more than ten years ago the dramas of Facebook were nowhere to be seen, and what a life that must have been.
For me, Facebook became popular at just the wrong time – my teens! Every day as I got home from school I’d be straight on Facebook checking what people were doing, chatting to my friends and having a good old nose through everyone’s photos. This is where it all went downhill.
You’d think that after about six years of having a Facebook account I’d be bored and would have deleted it - but no, it’s that one little thing I can’t quite bring myself to do. I mean, how else am I supposed to see all of the photos from our once-weekly Girl's Night and check who's been talking to my boyfriend?
Facebook has turned us all into the perfect stalkers and no one seems to care. I’ve seen too many photos of girls in their underwear or arguments published on each other’s walls for everyone to see. It’s amazing what people think they can get away with while hidden behind a computer screen. It’s the perfect place for those wannabe bullies who aren’t quite brave enough to say things to your face.
Relationships also aren’t safe under the pressures of Facebook and are continuously ending over something that has been posted. Everyone will gasp and gossip over the recent change in that poor person’s relationship status, commenting on it and sticking their nose in. In real life you wouldn’t run around town telling everyone your relationship has ended, so why post it on Facebook?
I personally would like to go back to the time when Facebook wasn’t around. A time when you could go out and get drunk without your parents seeing the photos of you passed out in a toilet that your ‘best friend’ uploaded the morning after. A time when that person you didn’t like became invisible rather than a new obsession with looking at their page to see what they’re doing every 15 minutes. A time when you could go wherever you wanted without someone 'checking you in' for the world to know. 
When did it become normal to invite everyone to see every detail of your life? I want my privacy back.

Friday 3 February 2012

All Hail Becks


Since the images of David Beckham’s new underwear campaign were released, everybody has been talking about him, and it’s not hard to see why. It seems H&M have gone all out, collaborating with possibly the most beautiful man in the world, David Beckham's face is now seen on every H&M store window, every magazine and every Twitter and Facebook page. The world has gone Beckham crazy.
With a number of collaborations under their belt, including Versace, Lanvin, Jimmy Choo, Stella McCartney and Karl Lagerfeld to name a few, the pressure was on for H&M to deliver something fantastic, and boy have they done it.
Fans turned up in their thousands just to catch a glimpse of our favourite footballer in the Regent Street store last Wednesday where he posed for photos and signed his new collection. If this is anything to go by, I’m sure the underwear will be flying off the shelves, especially as they are priced as little as £7.99.


Here are some of the photos for those who may have missed them, or for those simply wishing to remind themselves.




Lagerfeld has done it again

Being a fashion student, it would be wrong to not follow British Vogue on Twitter and Facebook for all the updates. Scrolling through my newsfeed today, I spotted this beautiful outfit in their ‘Today I’m Wearing’ section and couldn’t help but want it.


They have thrown together a collar from Karl Lagerfeld, a knit from Gap, denim skirt from ASOS and to top it off, an Allsaints belt and they all work fabulously together. The main item catching my eye was the beautiful sequin collar, so straight away I went on Net-A-Porter, praying it wasn’t going to be too expensive. 



Of course, being a Lagerfeld collar, it was always going to be out of my budget and when I saw the £125 price tag, I couldn’t help but sigh, followed by a small debate whether I really needed my student loan.
The recent collar craze means that all is not lost. I’m sure after a small route through the online stores; I will find a cheaper alternative. Until then, I will continue to question whether £125 is too much and unjustifiable. *Sad face*

Thursday 2 February 2012

'give fur the cold shoulder'

New York Fashion Week is upon us, although I’m sure most of you don’t need reminding and it’s set to be huge. It's a time when every designer is hoping to get their work shown, and every journalist is hoping to get a shot of it. But what happens behind the scenes, behind the glitz and glamour?
Penelope Cruz has hit the news for an issue designers are often slated for, pre-NYFW for something not so beautiful, animal cruelty, and what better time to raise awareness than in the weeks before one of the biggest fashion events kicks off?
It seems PETA have gone all out with their choice of celebrity to back the ‘Give Fur the Cold Shoulder’ campaign, and what an excellent choice they have made. Penelope Cruz is a beautiful, down to earth animal lover that a lot of people respect and is the perfect face for such a charity. It is rare that she is seen without one her dogs by her side and it is said that her parents get frustrated with the amount of cats she finds on the streets and brings into her home. Yvonne Taylor, Peta senior programme manager, says: “Penelope has appeared on every ‘best dressed’ list in the world, and one thing you will never see her wearing is fur. She has a look that kills, without anyone having to die for it”.
The campaign is to be aimed at New York, London and Milan, three of the biggest fashion capitals in the world, with a 70ft billboard hitting Madison Square Garden just in time for Fashion Week. 

Let’s hope the campaign can motivate people into leaving the fur where God intended it to be and give those designers a wake up call to stop using it.