Fair Trade Clothing

The first products to carry the fair trade certification were coffee and chocolate, which were chosen due to their significance in colonial history and global trade.  Next came sugar, rice, and other agricultural products.  However, fair trade clothing has been slow to emerge on the scene, and still has not gained anywhere near the kind of prominence that fair trade coffee has in the United States.

There are at least two reasons for this delay:

1. The most well known certification in the United States for fair trade goods is Transfair USA.  Currently Transfair only certifies a relatively small number of products, all of which are agricultural commodities.
2. No major retailer chain has begun to carry fair trade clothing, thus this industry does not have the benefit of products like fair trade coffee, which can be purchased at any Starbucks.

Nonetheless, the textile industry is one of the world’s biggest offenders when it comes to protecting worker rights, providing adequate pay, or adhering to basic environmental and safety standards, and so fair trade clothing is a notion that is in desperate need of greater exposure.

One of the first fair trade clothing lines was offered by People Tree, which grew from Global Village, an environmental campaigning NGO was founded in Japan by Safia Minney in 1991.  People Tree uses organic cotton, and recently opened a store in the Oxford Circus of London.  People Tree introduced the concept of designers in high income nations working directly with producers in low income nations, to a mutual benefit.

One of the more famous attempts at fair trade clothing in recent years was the clothing line “Edun,” created by U2 singer Bono.  Working under the “trade not aid” philosophy popularized in the 1960s, Edun works with several countries, mostly in Africa, to produce a clothing line that is said to adhere to “fair trade principles.”  The clothing line was highly criticized in the media, which could in part be due to the high profile nature of Bono, and also the fact that Edun for whatever reason did not choose to work with a certifying body such as Fairtrade which might lend more legitimacy to the clothing line.

There are several fair trade clothing lines in the United States, which operate as members of the Fair Trade Federation.  Rather than certifying products, the Federation uses a strict membership criteria which means that the quality of the working conditions and adherence to other fair trade principles are independently verified.  Some of the better fair trade clothing lines in the U.S. include Avatar Imports and Fair Industry.

Wear fair trade!  It is better for people and the environment, and you can feel good wearing clothing that is produced with quality of product, as well as quality of life, in mind.