Ethical clothing booms, but labor rights a worry

LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters Life!) - Hand-knitted jumpers, tie-dyed trousers or stiff woven shirts in a range of drab colours once sprang to mind at the mention of ethical clothing.

Now that frumpy image is disappearing as high-end labels make a catwalk splash at London Fashion Week with sleek clothes and retail giants cashing-in on increased consumer awareness with Fairtrade and organic cotton ranges.

"It's a very logical translation for the consumer from the way they think about the food they put into their bodies to the clothes they put on them," said Chris Sanderson of trend forecasting consultancy, The Future Laboratory.

British shoppers spent 43 million pounds ($83.45 million) on ethical clothes in 2004, up 30 percent from a year earlier, and around 340 million pounds on "ethically motivated" second-hand garments, according to the Co-operative Bank.

With demand for fashionable clothing with high "traceability" expected to rocket, retailers are betting it will prove a lucrative trend.

"Most businesses are beginning to understand they can make money out of an ethical consumer," Sanderson said.

Britain's Marks & Spencer snatches up around 30 percent of the world's Fairtrade cotton supply for its range which will be ramped up to 12 million items such as t-shirts and jeans.

Sweden's Hennes & Mauritz will roll out a small spring organic cotton collection, while fashion chain Topshop will up its ethical range in collaboration with People Tree, which supports community manufacturers in 20 developing countries.

Luxury brand Noir has helped reinvent ethical clothing with its sleek fabrics and sexy designs receiving rave fashion show reviews, and a chunk of its revenue funding drugs and micro loans for African cotton growing communities.

"When I was given the opportunity to start my own brand I said why don't we do it in a corporate social responsible way," Noir Chief Executive Peter Ingwersen said. "But I wasn't very impressed by what I saw, fabrics so thick you could smoke them."

Edun, the label run by Ali Hewson, wife of U2 singer Bono, has also raised the profile of socially conscious fashion with its goal of boosting "long-term sustainable employment" in countries such as Lesotho which produce its tops and jackets.

EXPLOITATION

Despite the wave of upbeat publicity for ethical clothing, critics say there may be other lurking moral issues for consumers who buy high street ethical clothes.

While retail giants keenly promote their Fairtrade cotton products, some labor rights campaigners say those clothes often also come from factories in countries like China, Bangladesh and Cambodia where wages are low and workers rights hard to monitor.

"There are so many different issues within ethical. Buying something made of organic cotton doesn't mean there hasn't been exploitation all the way down the production line," said Sam Maher, a spokeswoman for campaign group Labour behind the Label.

"There isn't a single high street company where we could say we believe you could buy their products knowing that they haven't been made in sweat shop conditions."

Even the launch of very small ethical ranges can help give major retailers a "green halo", when they may only make up a fraction of the millions of garments they sell each year.

"It's a case of trying to put the rhetoric and the reality together and making sure consumers aren't misguided by marketing spin from these companies which are now claiming to be green," said Luke Upchurch, Consumers International's spokesman.

Marks & Spencer highlighted its membership of the voluntary Ethical Trading Initiative and said all of the factories it uses operate to the company's "core standards", regardless of the ranges being produced.

"We're very clear that Fairtrade must not be a fig leaf for other things in the supply chain," said Katie Stafford, M&S's sustainable development manager.

"We put Fairtrade on top as a message saying now you can even help cotton traders, which are six or seven stages back in the supply chain."

Safia Minney, founder of People Tree which has teamed up with Topshop, says most major retailers have yet to put social compliance ahead of cost and timing when weighing up how to satisfy consumer demand for dirt-cheap, fast-changing fashion.

"There isn't yet the kind of play off there yet," said Minney, whose company uses organic cotton and funds a number of social and environmental projects.

"To manufacture to ethical standards should absolutely be the norm, what we're looking at now is much more consumer awareness and pressure to make a difference."

(Additional reporting by Rachel Sanderson)