I’m always interested to know about fashion company’s responsibilities in ethical, environmental, social issues and am always on the look out to see how they do it. Obviously a large corporate company which is renowned for their work into this area is M&S with their ‘Plan A’ scheme. Their previous Head of Sustainability at M&S, Mark Sumner now works in the School of Design at my university, so I am keen to ask him more about his time at M&S and how they worked.
I also was recently looking at menswear and womenswear designer Christopher Raeburn on their website, where I came across a video about sustainability. One of the ladies in the video mentioned that she believes the bigger the retailer, the bigger the responsibility they have towards sustainable fashion, so I think its great that Christopher Raeburn, who is on a smaller, more exclusive scale is incorporating this in his collections. Having worked with Christopher Raeburn it was so interesting to see the choice of fabrics and remade fabrics (especially for example, their decommissioned parachutes being used as the basis of a bomber jacket), and loved seeing how they thought about their fabric choices for the development of their products.
Here’s a link to an interview with Mark Sumner and a link to the video on Christopher Raeburn’s website: http://urbantimes.co/2012/06/mark-sumner-of-ms-there-is-no-plan-b-when-it-comes-to-sustainability/
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