90% of clothing and accessories sold in the UK are imported, which is worth the equivalent of about £46 billion per year, or 5% of the total consumer expenditure. The British Fashion Council (BFS) estimated that in 2009, in the UK alone some 800’000 jobs are related to the fashion/clothing industry. Economically this all is worth some £21 billion, ranking 15th among all UK industry sectors.
Globally, the fashion industry is said to generate profits of $1 trillion each year. And: these are only the official figures – considering how important the grey and black labour and commodities market is to the industry, the reality probably still looks substantially more profitable.
So far the facts.
The question generally is what we do about it, how to go about changing the status-quo, and – last but certainly not least – how to get small and large companies, one by one, to commit to a ‘better’ business behaviour. The discussion in the House of Lords on March 3rd, 2011, initiated by Baroness Lola Young from Hornsey at the occasion of an official Question session, was hence not of little interest due to several factors, some of which turn up in the protocol mentioned in different 5-minutes-statements during this session.
- The Government is among the largest non-retail purchasers of clothes and textiles in the country and spends £691 million on wearing apparel alone.
- With other textile-related expenditure, the Government spends a total of £1.186 billion a year on these items.
- In the government procurement processes, ethical specifications for clothes are not a core requirement in public procurement. Current standards only suggest that government procurers may award extra points in the bidding process for ethical production principles. It goes without saying that this does not incentivise bidders to meet higher ethical standards to win government contracts.
- Sir Philip Green’s October 2010 review of government procurement, focused entirely on the cost aspect as in ‘saving money’, and neglected the potential that greater centralised purchasing could have on driving up ethical standards.
- Most of the statements referred to aspects in ethical fashion related to production conditions (as in labour conditions and environmental impact) overseas.
- The power behind government process was pretty much the only time that any buying behaviour was mentioned as being of relevance.
- The potential impact of labelling requirements driving up ethical standards was not even mentioned. One imagines what may ideally happen if retailers were suddently required to e.g. clearly state which parts of a garment or accessory were produced in China/Bangladesh/Campodia etc., or where the raw material was sourced from.
- Like most of the time, terms such as ‘encouragement’ and ‘incentives’ where habitually woven into the different speeches. It was however blissfully forgotten that some of the most effective ‘encouragment’ in fact is not incentives, but rather non-neglegible ‘punishments’.
- Only one person among those speaking – funnily enough it happens to be ‘Master of Apprentices’ Alan Sugar – mentioned the problem that a) most of the UK fashion related jobs are in retail, which leads to b) the sad situation that there is an evident lack of skills which would allow to produce at the quality – and not only quantity – level required. In any case, what remains in the UK as ‘real’ textile industry is c) invariable part of the SME sector, and therefore lacks the capital investment power required if manufacturing infrastructure was to be put in place again.
- It also happens that with well over 2/3 of all jobs, the SME sector is what makes the UK’s economy tick – a fact that was mentioned bareley twice. It’s worth mentioning that in this, the UK is by no means an exceptional case …
In the more recent past, the UK government has gone to some lengths and addressed the clothing related problems and their impacts: "The 'Sustainable Clothing Action Plan', a DEFRA initiative from the previous Government, was a key development bringing together well known high-street brands to improve the sustainability performance of clothing across the supply chain". (Source)
And mentioned plan did indeed produce a few useful things – among them the public commitment of Marks & Spencer’s to ‘Plan A‘, the Forum for the Future’s ‘Fashion Futures‘ report, and the Centre for Sustainable Fashion’s ‘Shared Talent India‘ database for instance. Looking at the complete list of the plan’s ‘projects’ though, raises the question if private and independent initiatives were not just simply brought together under an umbrella so as to make believe that the government is actually actively doing something. I don’t have the answer, and I’m not even sure that I’m asking the correct question. To me however, the list reads rather too extensive and varied, and in places even too practical, for a result of bureaucratic process.
The newest child of the UK government in this respect is the the DFID’s ‘Responsible and Accountable Garment Sector‘ (RAGS) challenge fund, mainly aimed at not-for-profits, and officially part of the ‘Clothing Action Plan’:
"Funded by UKaid from the Department for International Development (DFID), the RAGS Challenge Fund has been set up to support projects aimed at improving conditions of vulnerable workers in the ready-made garment production industries. The fund is aimed at workers in low-income countries in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa that supply the UK market."
That when talking about consumerism we’re dealing with a chicken-and-egg problem – is it cheap prices that fuel consumerism, or is it consumer demands that fuel ‘cheap’ industry practices – is a commonly accepted insight. However, all-solutions-are-business man Alan Sugar unexpectedly tied consumerism, or rather: cheap prices, eloquently together with a lack of appreciation for acquired goods, and to some extent also a lack of ‘culture’. In fact, he fingerpointed fairly bluntly the one key problem most UK/European fashion and accessories brands are struggling with: "Compared with the past, when a young woman's decision to buy a dress took perhaps a couple of weeks to build up to, bearing in mind the large financial commitment, by today's standards the price of clothing has tumbled-so much so that a dress that once represented a week's wages now costs the equivalent of a round of drinks on a Saturday night."
Or in other words: We consumers value objects, for which we had to make a sacrifice of some type or another, higher than those that are acquired without a second thought. For a reason the luxury sector is doing well: By far not all of its sales is down to high-net-asset individuals.
Considering where increasing fuel prices – and therefore rising prices for fibre raw materials, production and transport – will take us, one part of the problem will solve probably itself through price increases. Because with petrol being the basic commodity the fast fashion industry comfortably relies on, peaking prices will it make impossible for infamouse London-Oxford-Street-like retailers to sell anything for cheap. And hence, the price gap between the cheapies and the others will close unexpecedly a little bir futher. Maybe we can then talk about quality again.
