Fashion

F2F: In what way can the textile-apparel industry benefit from maintaining fairtrade ethics? Abhishek Jani: Until now Fairtrade's primary focus has been on the cotton farmers, who are often the hidden link in the textile-apparel supply chain despite the need for companies to address sustainability issues at the level of cotton production and ensure farmers get a fair deal. Nearly 70% of farmer suicides in India take place in the cotton producing regions. Over the past couple of years, we have...

The fashion community worldwide is not known to get into political wrangles. But the New York Fashion Week this time did – it booted out the daughter of Uzbekistan’s dictator who had planned to unveil her spring fashion line at the event. The organisers of the New York Fashion Week cancelled the show of Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzebekistan’s authoritarian leader Islam Karimov, after intense pressure from groups like the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). According to HRW, “Her father...

This should come across as good news to one and all – Adidas has joined Nike and Puma in committing publicly to eliminate all discharges of hazardous chemicals throughout their supply chain and across the entire lifecycle of their products by 2020. The move from Adidas comes after a relentless detox campaign waged by environmental organisation Greenpeace International on the issue since July this year. Adidas acknowledged that Greenpeace had directed its campaign towards sporting goods companies...

An undercover reporter has found that clothing on sale in high street stores is being made in Britain in dirty, dangerous and appalling conditions. Workers are frequently threatened over production targets and have to work for a pittance. An investigation by Channel 4's Dispatch programme found that top fashion chains are producing clothes in factories where workers are treated like slaves. According to the reporter who worked at a clothing factory in Leicester for three months, employees are...

Some people haven’t the faintest clue as to how they should go around making opulent style statements. Especially, if done with an inordinate amount of insensitivity and tastelessness. Worse still, if they have the nerve to defend it as callously. So when Vogue India carried a 16-page photo shoot of decidedly-not-rich people strutting $10,000 Hermès Birkin bags, $5,000 Burberry umbrellas, or $100 Fendi bibs, the magazine was asking for some censure. This came in the form of three articles – in...

There’s a beeline for India – from publishers of magazines and newspapers to manufacturers of garments and textiles. Not quite without reason – its ever-growing affluent section is bigger in numbers than many European nations put together. If you care to look beyond the obvious, you will realise those making this beeline have not just been taken in by speculative hype alone. Numbers scream realities, and the numbers indicate that the Indian fashion market is huge, it is growing, it is vibrant...

For a book priced at an astronomical Rs 1 lakh (that would be $2,250 or thereabouts), it ought to be your unfettered right to know what on earth lies between the blazing covers. But Ritu Beri isn't telling you. You need to buy the book to find out as much, that has been her repartee all this while. What the blazes! Anyway, don't you tax your brain too much about the issue, having read those eulogising agency news items; this blog will actually vindicate your ill-founded fears. The book is not...