Celebrating the power that lies in our undies has never been so satisfying!! A HUGE thank you to all who came along – as well as the throngs of media and our wonderful friends at the Guinnes World Records! Our world record coincides with the Re:Fashion awards – the world’s first ethical fashion awards – at Shoreditch town hall the same night.. where we are up for 2 awards!! Best cotton and best business model! Let’s see what happens next!

For now.. here’s a taster of what happened today!

If you want some of these gorgeous, just click here!

If you’re not planning to already, join us on the demo and make it to the afterparty at the Chapel pub minutes away from the park!
After party 4-11pm: After the announcement on the main stage to follow the pants flags to the pub, we’ll all be processing to the Chapel Pub www.thechapellondon.com just minutes away from the park. There’s only capacity for 150 so get there early and bring your voice for a good ol’ fashioned pub knees up!! Here you’ll be able to bathe in over 12 acoustic performances and over 10 types of beer from all over the world:

48 Chapel St

London, NW1 5DP

Get Directions

020 74029220

SPOTLIGHT ON SOURCING

TUESDAY 19TH MAY FROM 6PM, LONDON E1

EVENING SEMINAR AND ETHICAL SOURCING MARKETPLACE

SOURCING FROM ASIA

If you are in business in fashion, sourcing from Asia is almost inevitable.  
China is the largest clothing production hub in the world and India is second. 
Yet garment workers all over Asia continue to suffer from poverty wages, unfair working conditions and limited rights. 

As a fashion designer, business or professional, what can you do to maximise benefits for people and minimise environmental impact in Asia? 

Don’t miss the event- a chance to learn from inspirational best practice, meet and make links with pioneering brands and suppliers.

Scroll down for full details.

Places are limited: REGISTER NOW

In response to your feedback, this month we will be featuring less presentations, carefully structured and going into more depth, to give you valuable insights relevant to your work

RICHMIX, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E16LA
VIEW MAP

ALSO – during the afternoon of the 19th between 2 – 5pm we will be running a masterclass on Sourcing from Co-operatives following up on last months event. 

SIGN UP NOW for the afternoon master class

EVENING SEMINAR: SPEAKERS

Abigail Petit, Gossypium

Abigail has worked with fair trade and organic cotton for more than 20 years, producing Traidcrafts first clothing collection in the 1980’s. Since then she has worked as a consultant for Marks and Spencer, Greenpeace, the EU and others, worked directly with Indian cotton farmers, and launched Gossypium in 2000. Abigail will talk about  building a sustainable fashion brand based on fairtrade and organic production in India.

Clare Lissaman, Ethical Supply chain consultant, and 
Sury Bagenal, Head of Design, Adili

Clare has worked in both trade and aid for over 10 years, including heading up Rugmark UK – working to end exploited child labour in South Asia’s rug industry.  Clare has helped the Fairtrade Foundation develop and launch Fairtrade cotton and now works with NGOs and companies researching, developing and implementing strategic ethical trading programmes. Sury Bagenal has been designing for more than 20 years and now heads up Adili’s own label , produced in India.  Clare and Sury will talk about producing fashion products to high ethical standards in Asia , the challenges in launching a new fashion line and how these have been addressed by Adili’s own label.

Bernice Leppard, Code of Practice Manager at Next, and
Julia Hawkins, Ethical Trade Initiative

Homeworkers form an important part of the garment supply chain, particularly in Asia. Homeworkers may face very poor working conditions and are rarely protected by national labour law. Julia will introduce the ETI’s homeworker project, which has developed guidelines for companies to improve conditions for homeworkers. Bernice will introduce the work of Next in relation to homeworkers in India.

Register for seminar and marketplace 

MARKETPLACE

This seminar will be accompanied by a marketplace featuring suppliers, pioneering brands and  organisations supporting sustainable sourcing from Asia.

Make a night of it! Delicious food and drinks available at the bar at Richmix.

AFTERNOON MASTERCLASS

This masterclass looks in more depth at the issues covered in the Sourcing from Co-operatives seminar, in April.  
Small co-operatives all over the world are producing fashion and textile products to high standards. At the same time,  co-operative and fair trade structures ensure that the benefits of sales go directly to the people , and their families, who need them the most.

Come to this masterclass to consult and work with experts and practitioners on the specific issues facing your business, and how you can effectively engage with co-operatives and fair trade groups.

Led by Mo Tomaney and Tamsin Lejeune

Mo Tomaney is currently a Research Fellow in Ethical Issues and Fair Trade at Central Saint Martins and runs the MA in Ethical Fashion at University College for the Creative Arts at Epsom. She has led a Commonwealth Secretariat supported project in developing market access with rural women textile producers in Pakistan, worked in the community trade dept at the Body Shop, as fabric design manager at Levi’s and consultant at  Textil Santanderina and Benetton.

Tamsin Lejeune founded juste. in 2003, developing a fair trade supply chain for design led fashion in Bangladesh. Since then she has worked to connect fair trade suppliers from all over the world with fashion designers and businesses through the Ethical Fashion Forum, worked with the International Trade Centre (UN) to connect African community groups with fashion businesses and is now developing a sourcing pool to make it easier for UK fashion businesses to connect with fair trade suppliers.

Sign up for masterclass

ABOUT SPOTLIGHT ON SOURCING

The Spotlight on Sourcing series is part of Fashion + ,  a DfID funded project aimed at reducing poverty and creating sustainable livelihoods in the supply chains to the UK fashion industry.

The project will do this through:

1. Increasing understanding of development issues amongst fashion professionals, in particular the opportunities for poverty reduction

2. Providing the tools and resources fashion professionals need to make informed choices in their working roles

The project aims to integrate training on development, poverty reduction and sustainable livelihood creation as a core part of all fashion business training in the UK.

The Department for International Development (DFID) is the part of the UK Government that manages Britain’s aid to poor countries and works to get rid of extreme poverty.

Spotlight on Sourcing projects are held at RICHMIX, RichMix’s mission is to create and celebrate work from marginalised communities and to encourage, nurture, grow and explore the cultural and creative talent of all people through a vibrant, dynamic celebration of entrepreneurship, utilising the creative industries and artistic expression as its foundations.

After joint first at the Re:fashion awards and becoming Guinness world record holders at the end of last year, this would be a perfect warm up to all that’s happening over the summer!  VERY exciting… we’ll know in just a few small hours!  Ben’s also been nominated as green god of pants by daisy green magazine!  mmmm….  wish us well go grab some more pants now please!

Yes, OK, we’re excited, and a little bleary eyed… this is going to be truly pantastic…  Check it all out here, you wont regret it!

On thursday, we’re launching something totally new into the world, and then on Tuesday the 7th July, the global pants amnesty and a whole new campaign!

We targeted BAYER CROP SCIENCES calling on them to stop producing endosulfan, the vile pesticide that is banned in Europe but still sold by them into poor countries. After a mobilization that saw farmers, factory workers and consumers across 16 countries send their worst pair of pants to their local BAYER office, we received a letter from them agreeing to our demands. They said, “We plan to stop the sale of the substance endosulfan by the end of 2010 in all the countries where it is still legally available.” GREAT NEWS and an amazing start.

Getting BAYER to change is just the beginning though as now we need to prove an exciting business case for a new organic and fairtrade future for the farmers who will stop using endosulfan. Farmers can up to triple their income, industry can profit from making organic pesticides and fertilizers, governments can see more jobs created in rural communities with greater environmental protection and consumers will receive better clothes that will cost only 20p more than normal!

The future of fashion is going to be a beautiful place but we need to work together to get there. To kick start this new phase we want to thank you all for your support by offering at least 20% off all our pants until 2 August! So get your pants now!!

Come along and let us know your thoughts… http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/aug/10/you-ask-pants-to-poverty

Oh, an we’re keeping the sale running until the end of the week as our new pants have been delayed in transit.

Also, just to make you laugh a little… check out this link to see our pants in the latest Right said Fred video.. “Sexy Bum” as modelled by our friend Les! http://www.myspace.com/rightsaidfred… OK, this is a little ridiculous we know!

Come and ask us some questions!

Now we’re getting ready for the magnificence of Bestival where we’re selling pants for about 20 hours a day and planning on taking our world record back from Cosmopolitan Magazine… HOWEVER, we’re massively short of tickets… so if you (or anyone you know) have access to spare tickets we will both pay for them and also offer the wonderful person a year’s selection of free pants!!! AMAZING!

If you can help… it would be magnificently appreciated!!

PLEASE contact us at linda@pantstopoverty.com

Pant Love to you all!
x
Ben