We, Rani Patel and Lucy Jones, opened the label, rani jones, in early 2008 with the awareness that a business has a responsibility to understand how it impacts upon everyone it works with, and also that it has an obligation to ensure this impact is a good one. Doesn’t sound too difficult!
Both of us had worked in fashion for many years before deciding to open the label together. In the early stages of discussing the label and the values we envisaged rani jones being built upon, we both felt that alongside progressive design, sustainability was of equal importance. We decided that rani jones would pioneer fashion forward, edgy design manufactured in a sustainable way. So, from day one, we have tried to build sustainability into every decision we make and everything we do.
We realised very quickly that sustainability meant three main things to rani jones: positive social, environmental and economic impacts. By social we mean things like human rights, workers rights, community development and positive imaging for women. By environmental we mean things like energy consumption, packaging, recycling and chemical usage. By economic we mean things like treating our suppliers well and supporting the local economy.
What we have learnt is that sustainability is not easy, supply chains are complicated and often incorporate hundreds of people and processes. And sustainability certainly isn’t immediate in its entirety. But with a lot of hard work and a firm conviction, we have started on our journey of creating progressive design sustainably.
The most important thing
As a fashion label, we think the most important thing we need to focus on is fabric sourcing. We want to make sure that raw materials are grown in a way that respects the environment and that the fabrics are manufactured in a way which is fair to those that carry out the manufacturing.
We are really proud to report that 99.4% of the materials from our second season, Autumn/Winter 09, are sourced from sound social, environmental or economic sources.
This is great news and something we have worked really hard to achieve. However, it is not that clear cut. Our materials meet at least one of our requirements on sustainability - social, environmental and economic, but not necessarily all of them.
As we put together our collections, we are actively choosing suppliers that support our sustainability approach. What we have found is that as a small business, our buying power isn’t that strong and it’s difficult to get high quality materials that meet our sustainability requirements. So, at the moment, if they meet one requirement, we look at their potential to meet the other ones and make the choice on that basis. We’re hopeful for the future and we can see which partners are keen to develop the sustainability of their business.
We’ve learnt that sourcing fabric sustainably is not always a black and white process. For example, do you chose the local London supplier who sources the wool from Lancashire and it has the best of British wool quality standard, or do you source from New Zealand, totting up those carbon miles but with a certified organic standard attached to the material? Each of these questions we are considering as they arise and trying to make the right choice. We are pretty sure we haven’t got it perfect yet, but we are trying our best.
We are developing a supplier code of conduct which outlines the specific sustainability standards we expect from our suppliers, and hope to use this as part of our negotiations for Autumn/Winter 10 with our suppliers.
To learn more about some specific fabrics that we use, please click on the links below:
The next most important thing
As a fashion label, we think the next most important thing we need to think about is how our garments are actually manufactured.
In order for us to have a positive impact on the UK economy where we can, we have kept all production of our clothes in the UK. Although this costs us more, we are happy with the extra costs as it comes with the knowledge that all those working on our garments are in a happy and safe working environment. We know this. We’ve been there.
All the other important things
We also need to think about lots of other things like how we run our business and how we work with other people. We have thought long and hard about what our business stands for and what we are committed to. We think the following values explain exactly the type of business we are:
- Honesty (operating in an open and accountable way)
- Quality (producing high quality goods for our customers)
- Responsibility (sustainable business activities)
- Progression (producing progressive design)
We make sure we think about all of these things every time we make a business decision.
There are other ways we have to think about sustainability too; like how we treat our employees and how we market our products sensitively to portray a healthy image of women. All of these other issues we have thought through at length and tried to figure our how best to do them according to our values.
If you have any questions about how we go about sustainability, what it means to us and how it all works in practice, please get in touch and we would be happy to talk it all through!
ETHICAL FASHION FORUM
rani jones is a member of The Ethical Fashion Forum (EFF). The EFF IS A trade association for the fashion industry, led by businesses, for businesses, and focused on social and environmental sustainability.
