Last night an exposé by BBC Panorama aired probing the practices of fast-fashion giant Boohoo, who last year made a reported £1.7bn worth of sales. The majority of the filming occurred in their Manchester headquarters, where journalist Emma Lowther spent 10 weeks.

The evidence garnered showed increasing pressure to cut prices in order to save money and the unscrupulous practice of amending prices after the stock had already been made. Lowther exposed a number of occasions where suppliers were left out of pocket due to discounts being applied which were not initially agreed.

We unpick the evidence.

Eden Loweth, Creative Director Art School: “This important paper highlighting and dissecting the impact of Brexit to our industry is a vital next step in recommending and realising real and important change within government policy. The effects of Brexit to emerging and small businesses like myself has been huge; Fashion Roundtable’s dynamic and fast response in highlighting these issues once again shows how important their work is to our industry.”

This week the UK’s leading sustainability charity, WRAP, launched the ‘most ambitious ten-year programme for clothing and textiles in the world’, with established high-street brands such as M&S, Next, ASOS, Boohoo and Primark having signed up to this vital agreement.

On Wednesday 20th January, Fashion Roundtable CEO Tamara Cincik hosted a meeting via Zoom to bring together key voices from the sector. The aim of the meeting was to work on a coherent strategy that will advocate for the sector post-Brexit, whilst navigating the pandemic and beyond. We heard from a selection of representatives from the fashion and textiles industry.

We are currently collating names of signatories for our open letter to the Government regarding Brexit and the UK fashion industry. Please sign by emailing Sarah at Fashion Roundtable with confirmation of your name and job title.

Photographers, stylists, make up artists (and so on) perform virtually identical roles and the sector also relies heavily on international talent. The UK fashion industry makes over 10 times what film does for the UK economy, but this is severely at risk if we are not operating on a level playing field.

Compare and contrast the body-con dresses, capes and stilettos favoured by the Trump women, with the Converse, jeans and jacket combos sported by Kamala Harris. This stark contrast illustrates the power of sartorial politics— by decoding our clothes, we can see the true values at the heart of a narrative.

‘If you don’t hear what you know needs to be said, you have to make space for a new conversation’.

Power words from Fashion Roundtable CEO & Founder Tamara Cincik.

The EAC report is also wrong on the point that "Short lead times means that wash tests and wearer trials are often not feasible, with implications for garment quality". This is nonsense. Every single fabric has to be tested and approved. We make up to 10,000 garments a week and we have had to test every single fabric and if it fails the tests then quite simply we can’t use them.

 The role of the CEO in a brand is very important in making conscious transformations in the company. The barriers between CEO and shop floor create dominant social structures in house, which in turn hamper conscious structures of societies. Communication barriers and no personal involvement of the top team with shop floor pushes them to engage in practices that does not support transformative power of the organization in a positive way. All shop floors can hear is the economic growth driven voice of the CEO and they work towards luring customers to spend and consume unconsciously. Although one can argue that brands priorities are in keeping up with trends and current lifestyles of consumers, isn’t there a way they can use it towards transforming lifestyles? While sales driven autonomous corporations and economic growth driven governments think that fostering conspicuous consumers to buy more and more seems like a victory to them, it is not. 

INSTITUTIONS - ARE WE INHERENTLY SELFISH AND THEREFORE IS POLITICS INHERENTLY SELFISH?

Expectations for London Fashion Week, the stepping down of Alibaba’s Chairman and decisions made on the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market - the news of this week reflects anticipation and speculation on the changes happening across the industry.

Caramel Rock, a London based fashion and creative arts training centre and registered charity is pleased to announce that as the new academic year approaches they will again be launching our 12-week NVQ Level 2/3 Fashion Garment Construction course.  Starting on 25 September, three days per week, the course aims to help young people gain a foothold into fashion and the creative arts sector. 

Read their full press release here.

In August 2017 Amazon released a report detailing how a team of programmers developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system that was able to generate new images of products from the input of product category (male or female tops, bottoms or shoes) and user style, determined by analysis or a number of images associated to the user such as online purchase history. One year later, and the potential of designer algorithms remains a trending topic.

The Design Council’s recent design economy research has supported the message that a more diverse workforce will lead to a more diverse output and wider audience appreciation. The Design Council has added depth to this understanding by uncovering further statistics and underpinning their message with both the positives and negatives of a diverse design workforce. The Design Council explains that a more diverse workforce will be able to understand the needs of an increasingly diverse population.
 
Using both the full Design Economy 2018 report and their article on the link between diversity and business performance, Fashion Roundtable looks to break down their findings and view them from the perspective of the fashion industry.

Retail roles were once ‘a golden ticket’ offering stability, flexible hours and proper holidays. Now huge job losses are hitting female employees hardest. Article by Poppy Noor, originally published on The Guardian.

The authentic Romanian fashion brand, Bihor Couture, is taking a stand against cultural appropriation. They are looking to preserve the beauty and importance of their traditional clothes which are so important to their culture, and call-out fashion powerhouses like Dior for taking inspiration without giving credit.