Green is the New Black. Eco-Fashion Show July 2008.

In June 2007 I opened my boutique on Catherine Hill in Frome selling my collection of vintage, retro and second-hand clothing. Beautiful things I had collected over the years.  I've always been obsessed with clothes and wanted to constantly have new things to wear. I worked hard in well paid jobs and travelled the world shopping incessantly and at times un-necessarily in flea markets, antique markets, Romford Market, Temple Street Market in Kowloon, Portobello Market, Brick Lane Market......you get the picture....I was a shop-a-holic, credit-carded to the max and I got myself into mega debt through my constant need for new clothes and with the glitzy boutiques and high-end stores of London on my doorstep I was never adverse to paying excessive amounts of money for over-priced designer clothes.  Somehow or other, the times changed, my feelings changed and I became addicted to second-hand shopping. Frugal fashion.Vintage and Retro styling.

Casa Georgette in Global Village

The clothes kept piling up, in boxes and boxes.  When Brian and I moved from London to Frome, I had a big sort-out and jokingly said to Brian "I've got enough gear to open a shop". Several months later, I was trading in the boutique "Love Arts......the art of recycling".  The premises had previously been a cafe that had been closed down for several months, when I first peered through the window I was greeted by a scene of many dead flies and broken and abandoned cafe equipment. I couldn't wait to realise my vision of turning the mess left behind into a unique and quirky fashion boutique.  I opened part-time while I continued with my BA(hons) degree in Creative Arts at Bath Spa University.

I decided that my shop would only sell vintage, retro and designer clothing and that I would not be offering second-hand high street merchandise as I wanted to keep the image of the shop more as an exclusive boutique in a kind of 1960s/Portobello Road/Camden/Carnaby Street style.  Shortly after I opened, I became one of the top 100 finalists for the HSBC Unipreneur of the Year awards which recognises students who have started a business while studying for a degree.  I was in my early forties.

Brian, my husband was a Green Party campaigner and he came up with the idea during a local Frome Green Party meeting that we should organise a Green Fashion Show.  A friend of ours Mandy Griffiths, who works in the wholefood shop in Frome was also at the meeting. Mandy also collects second-hand clothing - I was gob-smacked when I saw her collection - a whole room full which she would sell at festivals throughout the Summer.  Mandy is also known as the Vegan Fairy. She loves glitter, is passionate about fashion, often wears fairy wings and floats around doing amazing things as an eco-warrior and campaigner with expert views on absolutely everything to do with protecting our environment and all kinds of ethical and animal rights issues.

Vibrant Visions by Tass Cutting

We chose to suggest the fashion show idea to Martin Dimery of the management team at the Cheese & Grain, a popular community music and events venue in Frome. The building was in a bad state of repair at the time and needed the funds to be done up and provide better facilities of lighting, green room and general re-decoration. The team there were already working hard to make improvements and a new cafe was coming and the PA system was being replaced. We thought it would make sense if we could use our fashion show to raise some funds for the Cheese & Grain and ask if we could hold the show in the week of the Frome Festival in July. I bumped into Martin in the street and casually mentioned about the fashion show idea. He asked me to send a proposal over to him.  Mandy and I got together and created a proposal and decided we would call our fashion show "Green is the New Black, presented by Mandy and Mandie" thinking if Trinny & Susannah can do it, then so can we!

Mandy Griffiths with her eco-knowledge had opened up a whole new way of thinking to me. I will be forever grateful for how she inspired me to lead a more sustainable lifestyle.

In my years as a wholesale and retail buyer for teenage girls and ladies high street fashions, I had visited umpteen factories all over the world.  I hardly remember considering whether the manufacturers I visited were providing decent wages for their workers. Or whether working conditions were clean and safe enough. At times I saw staff in Indian factories eating their curry lunch from foil containers which were balanced on top of piles of freshly made white tee-shirts! No wonder garments arrived in the shops with strange yellow stains on them!  I never wondered if the workers had a union to represent them and if I saw young children working in a factory I just thought they were there to make a living for their families. I had started to work in the fashion industry (London 'rag-trade') when I was fifteen years old and from about the age of eleven had helped in my dad's green-grocers shop in school holidays and at weekends. So to me, child labour was normal. At times I would be horrified to see streams of indigo blue dye running from pipes at the denim factory out into the environment but sadly, due to my naivety and having started this work at a very young age, I did not question then whether the denim fabric production and stone-washing process was causing any harm to the environment, its people, animals and nature. Our future.

Working in the fashion industry wasn't as glamorous as one might expect.  Conditions I had to deal with on factory visits abroad were not always good. The weather extremes could be very hot, stuffy and with all kinds of smells. Or there could be torrential monsoon season downpours. Sometimes the food was really bad and I would get upset tummy or develop a rash.  We had to walk up and down what seemed like hundreds of steps at some factories when we were there checking the production line but the factory owners would always make us feel welcome and I was fortunate to usually be going back to a 5* hotel at the end of a very long day which would sometimes have lasted from around 8am until midnight. Once in Hong Kong, I was so tired and jet-lagged that my boss found me asleep underneath a rail of clothing in the office of our agents! All part of the fun! Although we got paid a high salary, we well and truly earned it.

So by the time it got to 2008 and we were dreaming up our fashion show, I was thinking differently. With Mandy's eco-influence, with my husband constantly talking about climate change, the environment, ethical policies, hatred of how he thought Tesco were trying to take over the world and every other green issue you can think of, I gradually started to think more deeply about everything and about the consumer choices we make. I'm hoping that this means that I'm evolving into a better version of myself, a more considerate person since I was that bling and excess loving young women of the 1980s. I'm not Vegan. Not even Vegetarian. I have tried and failed at both. I still shop in high street retailers sometimes but every day, I try to act in a more sustainable way and would say that around 90% of my clothing is now vintage, retro or second-hand.

Holly Hatt & Karlos Moir

Creating the Green is the New Black fashion show was our way of giving something back. I felt guilty about my past excessiveness and ignorance but then was in a fortunate position to be able to use my experience, to learn from others and to be able to help educate others about shopping more ethically.
It was time to become "Fashion Conscious with A Conscience".

The fashion show became the Event Management module for my BA(hons) Creative Arts. I chose the slam poet Lucy English to be my guiding tutor and when I did my bidding presentation at Bath Spa University I was delighted to learn that I had received an award for £250 for us to use to enhance my creative enterprise project. The £250 was paid to the Cheese & Grain for us to use the venue, have security staff and pay for a caretaker for the night.  Mandy and I wanted the fashion show to be a community event, involving members of the community as volunteers. It was a brilliant challenge to find models and helpers from all walks of life, from grandparents to toddlers, so many lovely people got involved.

We sold the tickets for £5 each. We sold 200 tickets. We sold pitches to stall-holders for £15 each for them to sell their sustainable fashion related merchandise at the show.  The event was a sell-out success. Lucy English suggested that we ask slam poet champion of 2006 Elvis McGonagall to be the compere for our fashion show and we thought that was a great idea and would attract more publicity during the Frome Festival.

Mandy and her mum giving their anti-fur talk.

Annabelle MacFadyen & Stina Falle. Gypsy Punk.

Although I had been to many different fashion shows over the years, I had never been responsible for organising one from beginning to end, I felt quite nervous and it was down to just Mandy and myself to make the event successful. Mandy was great at remaining positive and instilling faith when we had wobbles that everything would go according to plan.  All the clothing was vintage, retro or second-hand and was kindly lent to us from various Frome boutiques including Poot, Hayley Noad, Truly Sopel, Absolutely Fabulous, Nova (Dandy Lion), Bea & Evie, Alexandra Cunha, Roundabout, Cream and Fifi Devilles. Also students from Bath Spa University presented Kiro Clothing.

While we were in the organising process, we found out that another fashion show was going to be happening at the Cheese & Grain in May and was being organised by Anne Dimery as a charity fundraising event on behalf of the Gateway Club for adults with learning disabilities.  I received a letter to ask if I would like to be involved then went to a meeting at Stroud & Swindon Building Society of which Anne was the manager. I just couldn't say no to a fashion show for such a worthwhile charity. So I got involved. I offered some planning advice - not that it was needed as Anne and her team seemed to have things sorted and had ladieswear boutiques offering clothing for the show and had enlisted models who were also pantomime actors from the Merlin Theatre pantomime club.

Not only did I agree to put my Love Arts merchandise into Anne's fashion show but I also volunteered to do a 'Charity Shop Challenge'. No menswear shop had come forward and Anne wanted to include menswear on her catwalk. So I took on the role of creating the menswear looks for the catwalk.  I visited all the charity shops in Frome, Street and Clevedon to find five outfits for five fellas.  I went to a rehearsal, met the blokes once, noted their measurements then went shopping. I borrowed some items from the Barnado's charity shop in Frome and the rest I purchased.  It was fun finding the clothes but it was difficult as my experience had always been in teenage girls and ladieswear, although I had previously done some styling for bands and even styled Huggy Bear of Starsky & Hutch (Antonio Fargas) for the MOBO Awards in 1999. I turned up on the night of the actual show with the clothes I had selected for the blokes - and as if by magic, it all fitted and they were all really pleased with their outfits! Pheww!

Kiro Clothing by Bath Spa University Students.

Anne's fashion show was a great success and raised loads of money for her charity. For Mandy and I, it helped us to learn more about holding such an event at the Cheese & Grain in Frome. We found out about the layout of the venue and its suitability for our Green is the New Black Show. We learned tips about music, visuals and rehearsing and the general running of such an event. We were able to involve students from Frome Community College, who filmed our fashion show for part of their Media 08 project. We got renowned visual artist VJ Ultra (Check Dem Visuals) on-board to create unique visual backdrops for our fashion show as well as having musical performances from Leander Morales and singer Ruby Brown. Tass Cutting of Vibrant Visions showed a magnificent glow-in-the-dark collection of UV Art and upcycled clothing. Mandy and her mum gave an anti-fur talk too.  All in all, the evening was a fantastic success.

Themes for the show included Gypsy Punk, Hoochie Coochie, Granny's Garden, Queen of the Faeries, Global Village, Eco Warrior and Cosmic Disco. See photos xx