Ethical Fashion News: Safia Minney Launches Indilisi: Championing Slow Fashion, Artisan Craft, and Regenerative Cotton

Safia Minney MBE, a trailblazer in sustainable and ethical fashion, launches Indilisi — a new fashion brand where sustainability meets artistry.

Indilisi - Artist Jacket

The brand debuts with a timeless collection made from 100% GOTS-certified organic cotton, handcrafted at a Fair Trade project in rural Bangladesh in collaboration with changemakers and leading names in the industry.

Indilisi champions slow fashion as part of a Just Transition for the textile and fashion sectors. Supported by advocates such as Brett and Scott Staniland, Shayla Sakora, Caryn Franklin, Kate Osborne, and Fair Trade groups in Bangladesh and India, the brand places people and planet at the heart of its design and business ethos.

Indilisi - Artist Jacket and Platzo Trousers, worn by Caryn Franklin

Rooted in craftsmanship and social impact, the collection is designed for longevity, encouraging a deeper appreciation for the natural world and the hands that make our clothes.

Each garment is handwoven, hand-embroidered, and hand-tailored in partnership with Swallows, a Fair Trade-guaranteed social enterprise in Bangladesh. Swallows supports rural women artisans through fair wages, education, health initiatives, and women's rights programmes.

Indilisi - Daisy Dress

“Our artisans are highly skilled in traditional techniques, from handweaving to embroidery. Each piece reflects their craftsmanship and care,” says Santo Haque, Handicrafts Manager at Swallows.

The collection is available for pre-order in the UK from 9th April, with shipping beginning 30th April at indilisi.com.

Indilisi - Men's Boxy Jackets and Scott Trousers

Beyond clothing, Indilisi also provides access to premium surplus fabrics. 

Designers, makers, and brands can purchase high-quality, GOTS and Fairtrade-certified organic cotton surplus fabrics by the metre at indilisi.com/collections/fabric. These traceable fabrics originate from the pioneering Chetna Organic project in India, where farming practices are organic and regenerative, and fabric production runs on 70% renewable energy.

Safia Minney, Founder of Indilisi, People Tree, Fashion Declares, and author of Regenerative Fashion, shares her vision:

“Indilisi brings us back to the roots — celebrating women, heritage textiles, and organic farming. Regenerative Fashion Futures research shows we must promote crafts, support organic agriculture, and uphold Fair Trade for a Just Transition. Sometimes, the simplest answers — reducing raw material use, extending product life, and ensuring livelihoods — are the most powerful. Indilisi is a bold step toward post-growth fashion, centering slow design and sustainable materials like organic and regenerative cotton.”

Brett and Scott Staniland echo this sentiment:

“Indilisi is more than just another fashion brand. It supports artisanal communities, honours craftsmanship, and offers a real solution — a place where people can buy traceable surplus fabric and step away from the cycle of constant newness.”

Mayamiko: “We love making clothes, but protective masks have to come first”

Mayamiko the London fashion label that directly supports the Mayamiko Trust through their artisanal, fairtrade, sustainable and ethically-made collections have to stop their deliveries for online orders because their warehouse partner in London, following government direction, has closed down for the time being.   Therefore they are currently not able to ship orders or receive deliveries, as the first priority for them is to look after the health of employs and vulnerable adults.

During  the lockdown in the UK, the Malawi government has also enforced a series of measures in preparation for the Covid-19 virus spreading, and while their sewers and makers are still able to work, with all the necessary precautions, they have diverted their entire production to making protective masks for the local community and health workers. Mayamiko are donating them and their teams continue to be paid a full salary.

Mayamiko normally hand pick  textiles from the local fabrics market in Malawi, and work with a local cooperative of women traders to source the most exclusive prints.  They only produce a very limited number of pieces to minimise wastage and each garment is made on demand so they don’t waste fabrics by over-producing.

Paola Masperi founder of Mayamiko says: “We love making clothes, but right now, masks have to come first.”

In the meantime, Mayamiko is helping us to make the best of this phase of social distancing and share with us a new simple skill of making a zero-waste scrunchie in ten simple steps with a bit of scrap fabric and some elastic, led by two lovely ladies Brenda and Jane. Perfect accessory if you want to put up your long hair while doing work-outs at home.

Click HERE for the online tutorial.
So get rummaging, find what you need and let’s get this scrunchie party started!

Note: there are lots of ways of making scrunchies, they picked what they felt was the easiest for beginners. They used a sewing machine, but you can also hand-sew your scrunchie if you don’t have a machine. If you are hand-sewing, you might like to use a contrast colour thread, so your handy work becomes more of a feature.
Paola says, "We look forward to when we can go back to doing what we do best: clothes that give you joy, and empower women."  
Mayamiko urge you to share your creations with them on Instagram and tag @mayamikodesinged

Elegant, ethical and eco-friendly shopper baskets from Lola & Mawu

Hand-crafted baskets are all the craze.

The Bulga baskets from Lola & Mawu are hand-woven by female weaving cooperative in the Bolgatanga area, Northern Ghana.  The elegant shoppers are made from natural straw and finished with PU leather handle.

Lola & Mawu's Summer collection of Shopping Baskets are beautiful alternative to plastic bags.  They also all the boxes for ethical consumers as they are fair-trade, sustainable, and vegan.

The baskets come in a multitude of designs and various sizes, with a choice of classical natural straw or bold designs with bright colours.

Made in Ghana, these eco-friendly Bolga baskets are patiently handwoven by all-female artisan collectives. Each shopper takes three to five days to complete.

According to Lola & Mawu, an ethical décor and lifestyle brand based in London, the baskets are fair trade, and every purchase provides vital income to the makers.

Lola & Mawu is committed to working with artisans to create homeware and accessories that combine traditional techniques with modern tastes.

The name of the brand is a symbol of the partnership between Lola, who founded the company, and Mawu, the African goddess of creation.

Lola & Mawu also has a collection of Bolga baskets, made exclusively for the brand, which come in a range of fabulous colours, which can be used as planters or for storage for your craft projects, knitting, newspapers, toys or even fruit and veg.  The baskets are 100% straw and cruelty-free! (The tags are faux leather).  

Consumers’ increasing awareness of sustainability, ethical fashion and sharing economy

Some of the industry's visionaries on sustainability, ethical fashion and fair trade joined up to discuss Sourcing and Design and the Next Chapter on Fashion and Sustainability at Bloomsbury Gallery in London on September 4th  while ethical footwear brand Po-Zu’s launched their new SS19 and AW18 collections.

Photo from Pu-Zu. 

The discussions highlighted consumers’ increasing awareness of the harmful consequences of their purchasing decisions, and the growing shift towards vegan fashion that is not just cruelty-free but also plastic-free and environmentally-friendly. 

Sven Segal, Founder and CEO of Po-Zu said: "Everything starts with awareness. Most people are completely unaware of the issues with the footwear and the fashion industry.  My speciality is shoes and I can tell you there are tonnes of really nasty chemicals put into ordinary shoes. There ought to be a list of ingredients if you buy online on the product page much like with food."

On the next chapter for the industry, Safia Minney, MBE, Founder of People Tree and Managing Director of Po-Zu commented: "I see the work of the pioneers informing the agenda. The problem with ethical fashion and footwear brands is that we have to run so fast and compete on an unlevel playing field because we are competing with sweatshop fashion and fashion that is highly polluting and exploitative."

Caryn Franklin MBE, British fashion commentator, Professor of Diversity in Fashion and former Fashion Editor and Co-Editor of i-D Magazine: "It is a case of joining up the dots. If we are looking to be empowered and emboldened by our choices and to feel that to a certain extent we have embodied cognition: that we are feeling good about what we are wearing so therefore we have confidence and self-belief..."

Caryn continued: "If you know that something has been made by somebody in despair, then it has absolutely nothing to contribute to  life and your experience of yourself, because that information, you can't un-know."

On the vegan revolution, the plant-based economy and cruelty-free fashion, Bel Jacobs, freelance fashion journalist and former Style Editor at the Metro said: "The very fact of the matter is that sentient beings are suffering."

Bel added, on the next steps for the industry "I think social media is putting forward stories about what is going on behind the factory walls in a more efficient and devastating way than ever before and I think consumers are going to react to that."

Tamsin Lejeune, CEO of Common Objective and Founder of the Ethical Fashion Forum remarked: "The entire fashion and economic system is dysfunctional. We need tax breaks for ethical fashion pioneers to level the playing field, so they can compete."

Last but not least, on the sharing economy, Zoe Partridge, Founder of wardrobe rental concept, Wear the Walk said "It is about changing people's mindsets and how they consume."

Tesco announces commitment to detox its textile production

One of the UK' top supermarket chains which is counted among the world's largest retailers, Tesco has joined some 80 international brands and suppliers committed to the Green Peace Detox campaign to become toxic-free since the campaign began in 2011.

A glimpse on Tesco's F&F AW2017/18 collection.

© Lucia Carpio 2017 

Tesco has today (July 14th) announced they will immediately begin the process of eliminating hazardous chemicals from the supply chain of their garment brand F&F, and will release a full list of their suppliers.

According to the Tesco Detox commitment, the retailer's own fashion brand F&F are committed to knowing where their fabrics are produced and that the garments are legal, safe and free from harmful chemicals, wherever in the world their products are made, and ensuring that they are manufactured in a way that protects the workers in our supply chains and safeguards the environment. 

See also  the detailed list of substances that Tesco will eliminate.

To date, the companies and brands that have committed to detoxing now represent 15% of the worldwide textile production, according to the Greenpeace campaign.  They include M&S, H&M, Benetton, Levi Strauss, Aldi, Lidl and Tchibo.

The Greenpeace Detox Catwalk website features all the brands and suppliers who have made this commitment and tracks their progress.

Kirsten Brodde, Project Lead of Detox Campaign, Greenpeace Germany, said:
“The Detox standard is the new industry baseline - in only six years, forerunners of the textile sector went from total denial and opacity of their supply chain to transparency and the banning of all hazardous chemicals. Tesco’s commitment shows the rest of the industry that using hazardous chemicals is not an option anymore.”

“Tesco now has the opportunity to match the progress being made by other retailers and Greenpeace will monitor it closely to ensure they follow up their commitment,” said Brodde.