Pachacuti - Panama Hats and Fair Trade Clothing

Vogue is undoubtedly to be congratulated on devoting several pages to ethical fashion in their April issue as very few fashion magazines are prepared to devote six entire pages to ethical issues.  Likewise, Alexa Chung's commitment to ethical fashion is not to be doubted.

However, it is extremely unfortunate that there were several errors within the feature which I feel it is important to highlight as they will be misleading to anyone without a prior knowledge of ethical fashion.

The first glaring error I came upon was the amount of clothing sent to landfill a year.  2 tons?  As one person replied to my tweet about this error, I bet that's just what their staff throw out!  According to a BBC feature in 2009 the actual figure was closer to 2 million tons of clothing being discarded every year  Only around 16% of used clothing is reused or recycled. 

Just think, if everyone recycled their clothing and took good quality garments to charity shops, more of you may find bargains like the £10 pair of silk Valentino trousers I picked  when I ran into the Cancer Research shop in Ashbourne looking for a lightweight pair of trousers for the Ecuadorian Amazon later this week! 

Seriously though, we have to reduce cotton production as, in addition to the well-publicised health effects of the pesticides used, wider issues include the diminishing Aral Sea which is being drained for cotton irrigation and the overgrazing of grasslands for cashmere goats in China.  See the Traid website for further information.

The second error was in the definition of Fair Trade, a concept given very little space in the feature.   This is possibly due to the difficulty of carrying out Fair Trade within the fashion industry.  Pachacuti was the only Fair Trade company showing at  the Estethica exhibition in London Fashion Week this year.

Although I am sure that the confusion of Fairtrade and Fair Trade is common, I would have expected a well-researched Vogue article to have some basic idea of the concept of Fair Trade two words, as opposed to Fairtrade one word.

Fairtrade is only applicable to commodities, which in the fashion industry means cotton.  The Fairtrade label is a guarantee that the production of the raw material has met the standards established by FLO, the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation, guaranteeing a price which covers the cost of production and a premium to invest back into their business or community.  The Fairtrade mark only applies to the particular product on which the label is displayed.

The accepted definition of Fair Trade is as follows:
“Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seek greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalised producers and workers – especially in the South. Fair Trade Organisations, backed by  consumers, are engaged actively  in supporting producers,  awareness  raising  and  in campaigning  for  changes  in  the  rules  and practice  of conventional international trade.” 

Many people believe that Fair Trade is just about a fair price, but Fair Trade goes much further than this as there are 9 principles other than the fair price. Fair Trade companies such as People Tree and Pachacuti follow the Charter of Fair Trade Principles. 

1 Creating Opportunities for Economically Disadvantaged Producers
2 Transparency and Accountability
3  Fair Trading Practices & the protection and promotion of Cultural Identity
4 Fair Price
5  Ensuring no Child Labor and Forced Labor
6 Commitment to Non Discrimination, Gender Equity and Freedom of Association
7 Ensuring Good Working Conditions
8 Providing Capacity Building
9 Promoting Fair Trade
10 Respect for the Environment

Pachacuti was the first company in the world to be Fair Trade Certified by the World Fair Trade Organisation, a guarantee of the highest social and environmental standards throughout the supply chain.  

I think that part of my frustration stems from the fact that Fair Trade is not easy and we all work so hard to, for instance, provide training to producers or improve environmental standards, and yet Fair Trade is still only seen as being about a fair price. 

In order to obtain our Fair Trade certification, I spent at least 20 hours a week for 6 months working towards the certification, carrying out assessments of each producer group (analysing supply chains, eco-mapping premises, interviewing workers, mapping raw materials to ensure local supply chains) and creating an annual action plan for each group.  I am currently in Ecuador carrying out the next round of assessments for our upcoming audit.

In the case of the Vogue article, it only saw the fair price in terms of the cotton farmer and did not recognise that Fair Trade (two words) should give rise to a much broader definition of Fair Trade which applies to the entire fashion supply chain, including every aspect of the construction of the garment or accessory, not just the raw material.

At Pachacuti, our Fair Trade certification means we don't just look down the supply chain but we also look at how the Fair Trade principles affect our work in the UK, which has led us to convert all of our electric and gas in our studio and shop to Ecotricity, for example, and we calculate the CO2 for all of our travel and freight each year.

Alexa Chung and Vogue are to be commended for the inclusion of the ethical special in the April issue and I hope that it will help to make readers think more about the production and disposal of their garments. It is just such a shame that the research wasn't carried out a little more thoroughly!  Still, there is always next year's ethical special...

Tuesday 5 April 

This afternoon I arrived in Ecuador at our Panama hat association after a gruelling 30 hour journey via Amsterdam, Bonaire, Guayaquil and Quito.  The road from Cuenca down to the village where our hat weaving association is based is always a dangerous one due to treacherous mountainous Z-bends and the propensity of drivers to overtake with insufficient visibility.  Last time I took this 1 1/2 hour journey we were held up for half an hour by an accident and this was no exception: one truck crash blocking the road and a police car which had lost a wheel!

Since last year, my trips have been made imeasurably more pleasant by the construction of a beautiful Eco Lodge, a 10 minute walk along the river from our weavers. Hosteria El Barranco nestles in the hillside overlooking the rio Santa Barbara and the Andes mountains beyond and is a tranquil retreat where I can work, as well as having the occasional opportunity to enjoy the pool and steam room.

Learning to weave a Panama hat

Wednesday 6 April

This trip to Ecuador was only finalised a week before I left.  Our Panama hat weaving association is one of the pilots for the Geo Fairtrade Project, a 3 year EU project which will provide visible accountability of sustainable provenance, both for raw materials and production processes using technologies which rely on different remote sensing imagery.  The social, economic an environmental indicators collected will increase transparency throughout the supply chain, from the community plantations where the straw is organically cultivated through to the rural communities where our hats are woven.  As the only non-food pilot, our work in gathering data on handicraft production will be vital in ensuring that the indicators work both for food producers and for production within the fashion supply chain.

Although an intern had spent 4 months collecting data in Ecuador, there was still a considerable amount of missing data.  Although it could be perceived that our commercial interest could compromise the validity of the data, we believed that the long-standing trust and transparency we have with our association, coupled with understanding of production processes, would allow us to collect accurate data.  

My day was spent researching the geographical, environmental, social and economic data which has already been collected and trying to work out where the gaps are in data collection.

The Cuenca region has particularly high levels of migration and, as a result of talking to our weavers this afternoon, I learnt that there are now 7 women to every man in this area.  Statistics show that this has had a devestating effect on the chidren of this region, 60% of whom have one or both parents living overseas, with a suicide rate twice the national average and increased alcohol, drugs and truancy problems.

Thursday 7 April

As a result of the pressure put on families in this area by absent fathers, children are leaving school early in order to help support their families.  In theory the minimum working age is 15 and educational is compulsory until 17, but in interviews we have found that many of our weavers' children have left school around the age of 13.  Part of the problem is the lack of schools in this region and many children enroll in distance learning programmes.

However, working children in the area are being assisted by our Panama hat association who administer a series of grants within the region, one aimed directly at working children and providing $110 a year to keep 172 children age 7-18 in education.  The management of our weaving association give both their time and their premises to be used in administering these grants and twice a week children come to receive education in values, maths and language skills.

Today we also conducted a long overdue experiment into the time it takes to weave a grade 2 panama hat, stopping the clock whenever the weaver took a break.  In questionnaires with an intern for the Geo Fairtrade project, the weavers had claimed an average time of 18 hours which we doubted as there are so many distractions within their homes: agriculture, animals, children, elderly relatives.   We carried out a time trial with two weavers making different hats, one plain and one patterned.  The average time taken over two days to prepare the straw and weave a hat was 9 hours 23 minutes, around half the time previously indicated!  This data is extremely important in order to ascertain how many hours a week the weavers work and calculate their average wage per hour. 

For any entrepreneurs out there wanting a ready-made business, the business I set up with my husband a few years ago, Clean Slate Fair Trade and Organic School Uniforms is available at minimal cost.  Clean Slate was the UK's first Fair Trade and Organic school uniform supplier and there was a huge demand for our products for children with eczema which was made worse by the chemicals used to make school uniforms 'Easy Care' and 'Non-iron'

As Pachacuti became increasingly successful, we couldn't run two businesses and took Clean Slate off line two years ago.  However, we have still been getting daily phone calls from parents wanting to our purchase Fair Trade and Organic school uniforms!  We have a room full of varied stock - school shirt, trousers, skirts etc  and would be happy to let the business go at a really minimal price (probably about £2 per garment) to try to cover cost price on saleable stock.  Happy to give away the business name, all website design, photoshoots of the uniforms etc.

It has the potential to be a business which is easy to run and profitable, but the supply chain for the school uniforms needs to be re-established with fairtrade, organic producers. I would love to get the warehouse clear of the many boxes of stock we still have as I am paying monthly storage for school uniform we will never get around to selling.  So if anyone out there is interested in a new business, please let me know! Please email: carry(at)panamas.co.uk

When I arrived in Ecuador to carry out research for my MA in Native American Studies, I never imagined that 20 years later I would be supporting 1200 traditional textile producers throughout the Andean region.  On that first research trip to study textile production, I was shocked to see how the market was controlled by middlemen.  I met two groups of workers who had organised themselves into co-operatives, but both had experienced arson attacks due to the threat which they posed to the intermediaries' monopoly of the supply chain. 

Outraged by these clear injustices, I decided to return to Ecuador in order to provide a sales outlet for these groups who were unable to trade locally. Knitting was introduced as a means of income by Peace Corps volunteers in the 60s and the market in the Plaza de Ponchos was full of the ubiquitous fair isle jumper with very little design development taking place. Armed with a book on petroglyphs from the Imbabura and Carchi regions, I drew some designs, combined them with natural dyes and hand-fired raku buttons featuring pre-Colombian designs, and my first knitwear collection was born.   My intention was to sell the knitwear at fairs over the summer before starting my fully-funded PhD in Andean textiles.  However, I hadn't envisaged the success of my first collection, nor realised the positive impact it would have on my producers' livelihoods, so at the end of the summer I reluctantly turned down my PhD.