Over the last two years, The Helena Kennedy Centre within Sheffield Hallam University has been at the forefront of exposing corporate and financial institution complicity in the crisis in the Uyghur Region and identifying the risk that crisis poses to our international supply chains. Now they have launched a series of issue briefs and supply chain updates. The series is intended to keep everyone up to date on what is happening in the Uyghur Region and to help us all understand a bit better how supply chains are changing in response to the crisis. We share this and our work in this area through our ‘Cleaning Up Fashion Report.’

For this week's Informer,, we spent some time with Lottie Jackson who was up until recently Fashion Roundtable's newsletter editor. Now Lottie has published her first book with Penguin and we couldn't be prouder. See Me Rolling is a playful, illuminating memoir, but it is also a clarion call for greater diversity and inclusion. Lottie powerfully explores the ways in which we undervalue and underrepresent disabled people in our society, and demonstrates how negative stigmas about 'abnormal' bodies seep into all aspects our lives, from travel, work and education, to fashion and social media. In this dazzling debut, Lottie reveals why we must strive for change and redefine what it means to be disabled in every facet of life. She has a voice that needs to be heard.

For this week's podcast, our Slow-fashion Policy Lead Meg Pirie is in conversation with Ruth Rands, founder of knitwear label Herd. We first met Ruth at one of our initial roundtables focused on wool and Herd is one of our most cited case studies, because of their localised business model and best-practice processes, with provenance at its heart. Through her label, Herd, Ruth has shown what is possible here in the UK, sourcing everything within 150 miles. 

Fashion Week came to a close in Paris last week, where our Fashion Director styled London-based designer, Feben Vemmenby's show. If you haven’t heard of the label Feben yet, then it’s certainly worth taking note. A recent Masters graduate of Central Saint Martins as an Isabella Blow scholar, her work reclaims feelings of displacement. Creating an aesthetic vision imbedded in community, her approach explores visual codes of Black life from all corners of the globe. Hear from our Fashion Director, Karen Binns on styling the show. 

An Op-Ed not to be missed by CEO Tamara Cincik. Tamara explores why we need a manifesto for creative wellbeing not more International Women’s Day platitudes.

“Who else is bored? Bored of the neverending pendulum swing between riding a tide of adrenalin infused empowerment, and a continuous news cycle which highlights the endemic structural issues women and girls face. I know I am, and I know I am not alone.”

The best sustainable textile innovators at LFW proved it is possible to make fabulous fashion with better materials—so why isn’t everyone doing it?—asks Clare Press, our Global Sustainability Expert.

Mulberry has closed its iconic Bond Street store, citing the axing of VAT-free shopping as a major factor in its decision. Here at Fashion Roundtable, this is a big concern and we have already presented MPs with questions to take to Parliament.  Our recent Treasury Report, powered by ACS, focused on key issues around VAT and is linked below. Click through for more.

Children’s early years have been in the news recently, thanks to the Princess of Wales’s launching of a campaign emphasising the long-term benefits of investing in the first five years of a child’s life.  In a report for her Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, she warned how the roots of adult problems, such as mental health issues and addictions, often trace back to those years.  We at Fashion Roundtable, and the Fashion Roundtable Education Committee, suggest that we should be looking beyond those first five years, too. A poignant OP:ED by Fiona McKenzie Johnston.

Last week Traid and Hemingway Design launched Charity Super.Mkt, bringing together for the first time, Britain's charity retailers and creating a physical department store in former Topshop space. We hear from CEO of Traid Maria Chenoweth on the new concept.

In honour of the late Dame Vivienne Westwood, The Vivienne Foundation launched last week. Since the start of her career in the 1970's, Vivienne has been renowned not only for her eponymous label, but also in utilising her platform for activism. The Vivienne Foundation exists to honour, protect and continue the legacy of Vivienne's creativity and activism.

Activist Group ‘Pregnant Then Screwed’ made deadlines over social media this week, as the Education Select Committee has launched an inquiry into childcare and early years education. Given so many of the fashion industry are women, as well as freelance, to delve further into the issue of access to good quality, affordable and accessible childcare, and the impact this might have on your career, decisions to have children, and your hopes for your family, we interviewed Employment Law Specialist Sarah Russell. In this Q&A she answers our questions on paternity leave, freelancing and childcare, and discrimination, with a fashion industry focus. 

Fashion Roundtable’s Slow-fashion Policy lead and writer, Meg Pirie, talks with a local guild who are at closure, with the Welsh Wool Museum and the Heritage Craft Association on why skills are more important than ever. With comments from the Welsh Government on introducing the ARTS back into their curriculum.

Fashion Roundtable’s Slow-fashion Policy Expert for Wales and Writer, Meg Pirie, shares an in-depth piece featuring iconoclastic stakeholders in the woollen industry. With insight from Deborah Barker, Fibreshed; Maria Benjamin and Zoe Fletcher, The Wool Library; as well as comments from Andrew Hogley, CEO of British Wool.

Writer, Meg Pirie, in conversation with Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham about Welsh wool, the climate crisis and the importance of localism for the next generation.

In a world which feels uncertain, unstable, and all too frequently it is, there is something very powerful in recognising the timelessness of sustainable values, craft skills, nature and provenance. These are core to our work at Fashion Roundtable and what I found refreshing was to see them in action from education through to business via the work of The Princes Foundation.

I am often asked where the idea for a soil to skin, vertically integrated yarn and knitwear brand came from - and perhaps HERD would never have come into being without these unconventional roots - but it actually came from seaweed of all things, in my prior brand where we sourced wild, naturally occurring seaweed directly from harvesters around the U.K, Ireland and Northern Europe.

The VAT RES allowed the UK to be the number one European destination for global tourists looking to purchase fashion items and reclaim their tax. This was stopped when the UK left the EU and currently Paris, not London is their tax-free tourist destination of choice.

Micro influencers are all too often happy to get paid in free clothes, which cost pennies to make, and their recommendations often come across as more authentic to their followers, because they are less obviously advertising and are more engaged with their audiences to boost their follower numbers.

Unfortunately it seems Iran is not ‘on brand’. Iranian women are seen only through the lens of an oppressed regime and have a history of negative portrayal by the western media. As many have always suspected, the message of diversity we have seen the fashion industry peddling in recent years is often little not more than virtue signalling in a world where Iranian women don’t matter. To be fair, this isn’t unique to the fashion industry - Iranian women have been invisible under a cloaked veil for over forty years. But that’s why it is so important that the fashion industry looks beyond the stereotype of Iranian women.