Terms like "ethical fashion," "fair fashion," "vegan fashion," and "sustainable fashion" are widely misused.I've long been interested in the clothes we choose to wear—who and what we don—to express our individuality or to look fashionable.
As I moved into consulting to transform the industry and into the NGO space, I found that social justice movements working to change the industry often operated singularly. I worked for an animal protection organisation that wanted only to address the ethical crisis of wool but not its methane emissions, and equally in an environmental space that did not care to acknowledge the moral bankruptcy of a wool industry profiting from a cycle of breeding, exploitation and ultimate slaughter..
I coined the term ‘total ethics fashion’ to highlight the need for fashion to consider people, our fellow animals and the planet ahead of profit at all times. This was required because ‘sustainable fashion’ is so often viewed only as relating to fashion’s emissions, deforestation, waste and other environmental factors, ‘ethical fashion’ often considered only about human rights, and ‘vegan fashion’ viewed as a fringe notion to protect animals.