Western Fairtrade, Indian Signature

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: If London is emerging as a leading ethical fashion centre in the world, it’s partly due to the fact that the city’s fashion stores are able to source fairtrade products from India and its neighbourhood.

It’s borne out by high street dotting stores with names like By Nature, Green Baby, Eka, Arthaa, Namaste, Bombay Bedspread Company and the Chandni Chowk chain that source products ranging from textiles, garments and accessories to home furnishing right from Auroville to Delhi.

Celebrities like Paul McCartney’s daughter Stella McCartney and Bono’s wife Ali Hewson are also adorning the fairtrade marketplace. Even Amitabh Bachchan made it a point to visit an Oxfam shop in Westbourne Grove, London, which is known for selling fairtrade products along with clothes and books, on the eve of the International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA) awards earlier this year.

The demand for fairtrade products is increasing among consumers in developed countries and Indians are just tapping into this growing market, says Shyam S Sharma, president, Fair Trade Forum—India.

Fairtrade requi-res employers to provide healthy working conditions to workers, including paying them fair wages, ensuring gender equity at the workplace, avo-iding child labour and protecting the environment during production, trade and other income generating activities.

Mainstream and niche media cover Indian stories regularly. The reasons are obvious. Indian fairtrade products get covered mainly because a lot of the stuff comes from the country and surroundings, explains Adam Vaughan, editor of newconsumer.com.

Store owners are engaging in the alternative trade for reasons varying from the personal and the political to the business. When Jill Barker had a son, she started looking for natural products. Unable to find anything easily, she started her own company Green Baby in London 1999, stocking it with baby garments produced under a fairtrade label in Karnataka.

“I spend a lot of time with my supplier in South India and also have a production manager who makes sure that standards are maintained.”

Today Green Baby retails organic washable nappies, disposables, baby basics, furniture, gifts and toys. It boasts of celebrity customers like Liv Tyler, Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts.

Similarly, Annabelle Randles started By Nature in London two years ago out of frustration of not finding ethical products that she would have liked to buy for herself. Stumbling upon suppliers dealing in organic cotton and fairtrade toys and recycled photo albums helped her connect with their Indian manufacturers.