OP-ED: Why zero waste culture must continue in a post-COVID-19 and Brexit society

By Fiona McKenzie Johnston

Put you hand up if you haven’t got a sourdough starter in your fridge, or aren’t growing your own tomatoes.   Chances are you’re contemplating letting down the hems of your children’s clothes, and home dying less-than-perfectly-white t-shirts because replacing wardrobe staples this summer is not going to be as easy as popping into Topshop in your lunchbreak.

The COVID-19 crisis has seen us all adopt the ‘make do and mend’ mentality our grandparents espoused in times of rationing, because self-sufficiency – or ‘cottagecore’ (the hashtag trending on Instagram and TikTok) - is no longer a “woke” trend but a genuine need. There was even a run on hens in those mid-March days when lockdown loomed but wasn’t yet enforced. However, as the tales of the flown-in fruit pickers and fast-tracked extension visas for EU-origin NHS workers demonstrate, we are not yet fully equipped to look after ourselves as a nation. When we finally find ourselves in a post-pandemic world, and are once again thinking about Brexit, it’s important to remember that the zero-waste approach must apply to people too – in all sectors.

Many of us have been pleading for an end to ultra-consumerist, throwaway culture for a while; the plastic pollution and CO2 emissions are deadly for our environment. But so are flights - whether to a yoga retreat, to the ever-diminishing Great Barrier Reef for a diving holiday (which, full disclosure, I’d love to do), or to an extravagant fashion show in a stunningly original and gloriously Instagrammable location.  And so is shipping clothes from China and South Asia to sell on the British High Street.

Happily, since 2011, the UK garment manufacturing industry has been experiencing renewed growth as several retailers have either started or increased sourcing from UK suppliers. Sometimes the reasons are ethical (witness Phoebe English – currently spearheading a PPE initiative with the Emergency Designer Network - and Huit Denim) sometimes they’re for speed (Boohoo, Asos and Misguided). A few companies, such as Burberry and Barbour – also currently providing PPE – have always had factories in this country. But even before leaving the EU, the sector has been working at capacity due a shortage of garment workers.  Brexit poses further threat: many UK citizens do not currently have the skills (or interest) to take up machine technicians or garment manufacturing roles. And – like fruit-picking which the government initially assumed any furloughed person could do – it really is skilled, and involves working to quota, i.e. fast. Case in point: I tried to take part in a PPE scrub hub, assuming that eight years of sewing lessons at school culminating in a GCSE in weaving, a decade at Vogue International looking at clothes, a pattern cutting course at Central St. Martin’s and the annual necessity of producing World Book Day costumes for two children would be sufficient preparation for persuading my sewing machine to make masks, even at a snail’s pace. It wasn’t. If the British fashion industry is to thrive it needs to attract and retain skilled workers from other countries, including the EU.

The government has stated its intention to impose a points-based immigration system as soon as the Brexit transition period ends. As they stand, rules for securing a visa include having a job offer with a minimum salary of £25,600 a year. Someone who is paid the minimum wage seven hours a day five days a week 52 weeks a year would earn £15,870. As, at the time of writing, the BooHoo site has 36 items retailing for £3 or under, I think it’s fair to assume their garment workers would not meet the salary requirement. But it’s not necessarily any better at ‘luxury’ brands. I’ve been informed, unattributably, of a junior designer with a first-class BA in fashion design working for a British brand for £18,000, of a junior designer still only earning £24,000 six years into a job for a major British brand, and of an MA graduate working on a wedding dress for another major British brand – images of which were beamed around the world – on a zero hours contract. It is theoretically possible, within the government visa rules, to make up salary deficiency with skills recognition – but to that extent?

Two things need to happen if the reshoring of British garment manufacture is to develop, and if we’re going to be able to retain British-trained talent (for we have some of the best fashion schools in the world) to work at British labels and so protect London’s reputation as a fashion capital. In the short term, the government needs to consider its visa requirement rules for the industry, in order to provide time for the industry to adjust to a new normal – to which ends Fashion Roundtable has been consulting with the government.

Long term, responsibility lies with the industry itself. Major adjustments must be made, in sustainability and accountability, which could potentially translate into freeing up some of the budget that has historically gone on what have been almost non-optional, hugely expensive fashion shows (showing in the BFC show space can be done on approximately £50,000, not including the price of collection and if the designer has secured sponsorship, a regular no frills show in London in the designer’s choice of venue is about £250,000; at the other end, the 2016 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in Paris reportedly cost US$26.7 million) and Champagne-fuelled continent-crossing press trips for journalists and influencers. That budget could be redirected towards the supply line, and salaries that reflect the skills of those that make the clothes. Given the extent of empathy, care and collaboration that so many major fashion brands have shown during this pandemic, both in funding hospitals and in making PPE, I have no doubt that this is already under consideration. I would also like to make it clear that, as a journalist who has twice wept at the beauty of a fashion show, and who has enjoyed many of those press trips, I’m not arguing for an end to that beauty, or magic, or frivolity; they do not need to be the price paid for sustainability. We just can’t have them at humanity’s cost. And while there are designers who have long recognised this and applied it to varying degrees, they have, up to this point, been in the minority. 

So long may the ‘make do and mend’ mindset last. For that sourdough starter is the beginning of what could be a tide-turning wave in which we, as a global fashion community, embrace what is known as ‘responsible capitalism’, and create a demand for goods which require labour to be recognised and rewarded. And all this within an innovative, progressive industry that could contribute even more than it already does to the British economy. It’s all part of the ‘new normal’ that Fashion Roundtable is aiming to achieve.