The cost of fashion: H&M Conscious review

Images of child workers

Fashion is a creative medium with an extreme price range. From Primark slave-made skirts starting at £3, to Alexander Mcqueen skirts at £3000 (on sale), we are simultaneously asked to aspire to the ridiculous and supplement our aspirations with the badly made copies. I am not afraid to agree with the common opinion held outside the fashion industry, that £3000 for a skirt on sale is ridiculous. But I am also going to say that £3 for a skirt is equally so. Yes, people may not have the spare cash to buy clothes and therefore £3 is an attractive sale. But it is also an irresponsible purchase if it is not brought second hand, and it is not hard to see why. How can a company’s supply chain cost so little? How can their shipping be so miniscule? How can their store cost nothing to run and their shop workers be paid and for them to make a profit, if a skirt is £3? Somewhere down the line, someone is being exploited so you can add yet another skirt to an already packed wardrobe.

Meanwhile a skirt that is brought for £3 is fast fashion and will sooner or later end up in one of our extensive land-fills as a forsaken textile. £10 ought to be the minimum spend on a skirt, and if you can’t afford that, why not buy second-hand? Should we try to change this culture of entitlement to constant new clothes that harm the environment and workers?

H&M eco dress

Recently companies such as H&M have been trying to clean up their act with H&M conscious range. Perhaps it is green-washing after all those factory fire deaths, but at least it is a start to making all H&M products ethical. Meanwhile are these products actually any good?

I review some for your pleasure today.

This €99 dress shows H&M's foray into digital printing, Mary Katrantzou style. Opting for an easy to wear, flouncy girly tulip shape, this will flatter most figures which it should, at the price of £83.81. This dress takes khaki colours onto a whole new level of sexy sophisticated wearing, with sparkle detailing and water-colour design. Easy to wear, very on trend, what's not to love? To be honest, the price. If I am going to spend that amount on a dress I am a label snob and would buy into a designer I resonated with rather than H&M which I associate with my fifteen year old self. However it is a cool dress and if only it was £40 I would be more tempted.

H&M Formal eco wear for men, apparently.

Do we finally have ethical clothes for men?

It did take me a while to realise this beautiful model was actually a man, score one for androgyny. Yet how many men I know are on the look out for some male eco clothes! Would they be excited about this? So far H&M have brought out only suits for the testosterone crew, which seems yet another thing to add to the huge list about how unfair male fashion is. However, from a person who knows little other than the best suits are always tailored, this does look rather nice. All in all the waistcoat is €34,95, jacket €79,95, trousers €49,95, shirt €39,95, shoes €39,95. €244.75 in total (thanks iPhone calculator), which is £207.18 (thanks Google). This to me, doesn't sound entirely unreasonable for formal wear - please do enlighten me if that is wrong.

The eco Miss Havisham lace dress met modernity

Ah the little lace dress rears her head again. Well, maybe we should accept that prancing around in a 'Miss Havisham meets her modern wedding day dress because online dating and therapy now exists',  is going to be around forever. The truth is I recently had a huge clear out of my late adolescent wear and I was still unable to detach myself from a flimsy lace dress made with the cheapest of polyester and machine made cream lace that I purchased years ago in Camden Market on a delicious whim. Needless to say I have full understanding now with the whole machine-made lace lovers that are still running around, and it comes as no surprise that mainstream swedish brands are still offering us these handmade lace fantasies. However what is less understandable is the price tag. At €299, it is the most expensive item on the conscious range which leads me to believe that is in fact actually hand-made. Which does not really make sense for a mass-produced brand - so what gives? There are no product details on the site, which is odd for any clothes, especially an eco-conscious range. As with the last dress if I am spending £253, I wouldn't think H&M, eco conscious range or not, is the place to do it. As much as I am loving the 'Miss Havisham meets her lover' dress, and am actively on the lookout for one to replace my adolescent lace obsession, this will not be it.

In conclusion, there are some great items in the H&M conscious range, and we really all should applaud their sustainable chat (although quietly request that they sort out their health and safety in their Bangladesh factories). However eco-friendly does not have to mean prices which are incompatible with previous branding and product values. I welcome that eco-friendly means generally a higher price, but as with the Alexander Mcqueen skirts, we need price perspective. I do hope that this conscious range is a success and that they manage to secure some new customers as well as introducing their old customers to new ways of thinking about clothes. And hopefully they will have justifiably good sales for the above items so most of us can actually buy them.

Global Kids Fashion Week: Should children wear designer clothes?

Alex & Alexa with their enthusiastic children & charity spokeswoman

In ONE weeks time London will be host to the first ever global children’s fashion week. It will be three days filled with fashion shows in Covent Garden. The first day will be for a media showcase and the other days will be for a ticket buying audience, proceeds going to charity 'Kids Company'.

In a recession, where the majority of young twenty somethings are job hunting and interning their youth away and the rest of the job holding population are facing larger gas bills, food bills, redundancies and pushed back retirement schemes, now does not seem like the time to invest in designer clothes for someone who will outgrow them a few months after purchase. Nevertheless this has not stopped AlexandAlexa.com pioneering the scheme.

Heralded as a playful performance of fun childish fashion, and definitely not a copycat of the adult versions on a mini body, children and stylish parents are urged to purchase a £100 ticket and attend.

Meanwhile, recession anxiety mongering aside, I wonder what the moral repercussions are for children, flaunting the latest designer clothes to their parents and parents flaunting their designer clothed child to others in turn?

I was a child at a private school with no uniform and designer clothes flaunting occurred regularly, especially in the changing rooms post P.E. When we were 8 or 9, the shrill designer clothes club would boast about their ‘maharishis’. I have never come across them since, but they were baggy trousers with embroidery on the ends (very impractical) and I was told they would cost £100-200 each. The queen bee of their gang had at least three pairs. I looked down at my baggy red gap jumper and floral leggings rather woefully. I loved reading stories and dressing up as an elf or a fairy, but I had yet to come across fashion or Vogue. My kind of childhood seemed to be disappearing, as the other children became more fashion conscious and looked at my outfit in disdain.

Mini Breakfast at Tiffany's

It is one thing to be a teenager, and have the freedom to discern your own stylish appetites, with more of a choice to rebel or conform to a fashion focused environment, but it is quite another to be an ignorant child suddenly facing feelings of shame for something they can’t control. Not to forget the large and unaffordable demands on the parent’s purse strings that occurs in this time-period. Most people do not buy designer clothes.

For people that do: can you put your child in designer clothes, allow them to enjoy the messy playtime rambles of childhood, then not get the stains out of their Paul Smith playsuit and still feel that the purchase was justified? Well-made clothes are one thing, cotton clothes are a good thing, but £230 for an every-day Burberry four year old dress is brought by someone who uses their hundreds like loose change.

These parents, who have this kind of loose change, are an elusive elite-breed, distributing their values to glossy magazines so the rest of us can consume their life-style without living it, with the actual loose change in our pockets. And while designer clothes for adults are just about acceptable, there is a wasteful nonchalance in designer clothes for a child that leaves a sour taste in our mouths, even if the children are indulging in their flair for fashion with the latest patterned skirts. While most parents want their children to shine outside and in, and a lot of children love to dress up, ought there be a moral monetary limit? Like no more than £50 per item, and even then that should be for an artic coat? When half the world is starving it seems odd to spend anymore on something that will be outgrown quickly.

'Kids cultivating a nautical look' - or is it their parents?

At Global Kids Fashion Week, children will either be the dressed up dolls of their parents or the parents will be their child’s dressed up wallet. The children may look like beautiful angels, but mess is a child’s best friend, and those yummy mummy’s princesses and princes won’t stay that way for long in their Zadig & Voltaire £88 blazers and Burberry £218 fur coats. How children, brought up highly conscious of their clotheshorse abilities, will turn out post-fashion-show – only time will tell.

Having said that, there are great discount sales going on for these clothes online. Which makes it seem almost worth it?

Why everyone should be interested in fashion. (Or at least fashion week)

Miyake, Paris

International fashion week is over. This means little to many, and a lot to very few. The majority of people may loudly assert that they know nothing of fashion and care nothing of labels, and care even less about what they put on in the morning. Although aware of the existence of catwalks, as it comes up in a trashy magazine urging the purchaser to 'get the look' by consuming the Primark equivalent, they will have no interest in actually watching a whole runway. If by chance they do catch a glimpse of a starving something flaunting the latest unaffordable odd-looking creation, they will be instantly turned off. They will think: that does not relate to me, perhaps that relates to an art student come fashion blogger living in Shoreditch or a fashionista/oil princess living in Chelsea, but those clothes are nothing to do with me, what I wear or how I present myself to the world. 

Of course this is wrong because these catwalks will filter down into the mass-made mid-range circuits in a years’ time, and in two years the very same public will be coveting those styles with a disinterested enthusiasm. They may have no flair or style to speak of, but if they shop in Primark, Topshop, H&M and Zara regularly, they will more often then not, be just as much of a clone to a mass-produced catwalk inspired style as a Shoreditch fashionista with huge glasses, an over-sized denim jacket with a vintage jumper and an ironic watch.

It is the Devil Wears Prada scenario – a young beautiful intelligent non-fashion orientated woman begins working to a fashion house – and believes that she has nothing to do with this whole fashion world (as if that would ever happen). Meryl Streep puts her straight. 

Meanwhile catwalk fashion is an elitist’s game, and many spend much to conquer it. However, I would like to contest that fashion is not only for the elite despite the elite price tag.

Catwalk fashion is art on a body, it is style inspiration and above all it is a story of humanity and culture. In my ideal world everyone would dress like they are on a catwalk, but that is because I intensely love art, stories and decoration. I do think that whatever your uniform, whether you covet basics: jeans & t-shirt combos, uggs or hot-pants with tights (so naughties) catwalks can inspire you and inject a moment of hedonistic excitement when you create your morning ensemble.

These are my favourite inspiring catwalk looks this season!

Prada's latest ready to wear in Milan

Prada celebrates woman's sexuality in the work space. Tight clothes are flattering, pencil/midi skirts are all the rage and off the shoulder has never looked so appealing.

For a great midi skirt for work try our Jigsaw skirt for £17

Valentino's latest ready to wear in Paris

Collars, collars, collars. They have been filtering their way down to the masses - and the must-have motif is here to stay. Valentino is now obsessed and I love how it can give a professional edge to a floaty dress or jazz up a basic high necked blouse. Fancy a collar? Try one of our collars handmade!

Chanel, New York

The Chanel catwalk was full of tweed ensembles with leather leggings meets shoes, and black feathers head-pieces - it shouldn't have worked - but it did. Karl Largerfeld transformed these motifs to make a gothic meets lady-like statement. Scary yet demure, how 'Devil Wears Prada' is that! Karl also reinvents off-the-shoulder- structured with layers so the illusion of a flattering off-the-shoulder exists, while still keeping warm during the winter months. This dress, with the right layers, will get you your off-the-shoulder fix. Team with black fake leather leggings for Karl inspired styling. 

Burberry, London

The pencil skirts reigns supreme during Burberry. As does metallic and brown. The earthy browns are just pink enough to challenge 'boring brown nausea', managing to be skin complimenting, flattering and dazzling us with it's shiny texture. Fancy a Burberry Mac without the Burberry price tag? We have that Burberry Mac here.

Antonio Marras inspired by Bloomsbury

Everyone that truly knows me, knows I am very much inspired by the iconic aesthetic of the Bloomsbury group, especially Virginia Woolf. Which is why I was so excited when I saw Antonio Marras and Cynthia Rowley's latest fashion offerings. The shapes, silk and prints were exquisite and made Bloomsbury 21st century wearable. If you fancy a bit of Bloomsbury style yourself, why not check out our collection?

Armani's latest Milan Catwalk

While we're on the subject of 1920s, be inspired by Armani's latest catwalk. Mohair, turbans and cloche hats. Fancy a 1920s hat yourself? Try our Sandra Philipps version.




















By Rosalind Kendal