Ethical Fashion in the Luxury Market - Case Study Example

Download file to see previous pages The little flame of the idea of ethical issues implanted in the fashion industry, started in the early 80s, by Katharine Hamnett; a British designer who has first introduced the idea of ethical issues into fashion with the launch of her first t-shirts with printed slogans, which are sold with a percentage going to charity. Recently, since the year 2005, ethical issues such as child labor, sustainable fashion, green issues, fair trade, etc have gradually started to catch the attention of the UK fashion industry, when many high street brands started to catch up with the fair trade trend. One of the biggest retailers in the high street, ‘Topshop’ has started to collaborate with ‘People tree’; which is a pure ethical brand, and launched an ethical fair trade range in the year 2007.

During the same time, young UK fashion designers created a new range of clothing for an established, sustainable fashion label in a competition from the 'Make Your Mark in Fashion' campaign which aims to encourage an enterprise culture among the UK's youth in London. Also, during the same period of time ‘Marks and Spencers’ which is an ultimately potential retailer in the UK fashion industry, has started ‘Plan A’ which covers green issues, fair trade, organic material, etc. Their slogan is ‘We do it because you want us to do it and we think it is the right thing to do.’ This indicates that the major factor which constrains their business is their end consumers.

Finally, the ethical boom trickled down to ‘Primark’ which is the low-end high street brand. ‘Primark’ has been voted as the least ethical clothing retailer in the UK, according to a survey by ‘The Times Newspaper’ in 2007. Also, they started to lose 42% of their customer once a UK television show; ‘Panorama rightly’ exposed ‘Primark’ as using child labor to make their cheap clothing. Eventually, in the year 2008, ‘Primark’ launched a fair trade organic range that contains T-shirts and jeans. Moreover, many organizations related to ethical issues were found and are showing rapid growth every season. ...Download file to see next pages Read More