It’s been a couple of years since Just hosted a fashion show, so when we decided, back in the summer, that it was time to revisit a familiar event we wanted to make sure it would be an evening to remember! So on Saturday 11 October, around a hundred and fifty people converged on St Martin’s House for an evening of ethical, eco and fairly traded fashion, complete with a market place filled to the gunnels with some of our favourite clothing companies!
Braintree, Nomads, Earth Squared, Traidcraft, Manumit, Shared Earth and Pachamama Knitwear all found their way down the catwalk, ably modelled by an enthusiastic team of friends of Just!
The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly the appearance of Year 5 students from Humberstone Junior Academy! They’ve been studying fair trade at school this term, with help from our very own Sarah Shepherd, and so we invited them to do a presentation during the show. The whole audience was blown away by both their knowledge and their public speaking skills! But just to prove that these children are not one-trick ponies, they then modelled Pachamama Knitwear’s amazing range of children’s animal hats and gloves!
We also took time during the evening to remember the victims of Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza factory collapse, back in 2013. £1 from each ticket went to the fund for survivors, and the audience were encouraged to think about how the impact our society’s obsession with disposable fashion has on garment workers in the developing world. We gave out postcards from Traidcraft’s Justice campaign, asking David Cameron, Ed Milliband and other party leaders to ensure UK companies are held to account when their actions result in industrial accidents.
The audience were then encouraged to browse the market place and snap up their favourite items from the fashion show!
Huge thanks go to all the volunteers who helped make the evening such a brilliant success, from those on the catwalk to those who loaded cars full of clothes, roller racks and mannequins – we really couldn’t have done it without them.