Carry Somers | |
|---|---|
 Somers in 2017 | |
| Born | 1966 (age 57–58) Seaton, Devon, England |
| Education | Colyton Grammar School, Westminster College Oxford, University of Southampton, University of Essex |
| Occupation(s) | Fashion designer, campaigner |
| Known for | Fashion Revolution, Pachacuti |
Carry Somers (born 1966) is a British fashion designer, social entrepreneur and campaigner. She is founder of Fashion Revolution and was previously founder and director of Pachacuti.
Somers was born in Seaton, Devon in 1966 and attended Colyton Grammar School. She has a degree in Languages and European Studies from Southampton University, and a Masters in Native American Studies Studies from the University of Essex [1] which presented her with the alumnus of the year award in 2009. [2] [3] Somers set up fair trade fashion brand Pachacuti in 1992 and founded Fashion Revolution in 2013. [4] [5] [6] In July 2022, Somers was awarded an honorary doctorate by Keele University. [7]
Somers is founder of Fashion Revolution, a global movement which arose from the Rana Plaza garment factory disaster in Bangladesh on 24 April 2013. [8] [9] Fashion Revolution is the world's largest fashion activism movement campaigning for systemic reform of the fashion industry with a focus on supply chain transparency. [10]
Somers organised roundtable debates at the House of Commons and the House of Lords on ethics, sustainability and transparency in the fashion supply chain including Ethical Fashion 2020:a New Vision for Transparency [11] in June 2015 and Fashion Question Time annually from 2015 to 2018 in UK Parliament and in 2019 at the V&A. [12] Somers speaks nationally [13] [14] and internationally [15] [16] [17] [18] about transparency, human rights and environmental issues in the fashion supply chain.
In 2020, Somers sailed 2000 miles from the Galapagos Islands to Easter Island and the South Pacific Gyre with eXXpedition, [19] an all-female round-the-world sailing voyage carrying out scientific research into the impact of plastic and toxic pollution in the ocean. [18]
In February 2022, Somers was nominated for a billboard campaign during New York Fashion Week highlighting women-led social enterprises in the fashion industry which are driving social and environmental impact, appearing on the Nasdaq billboard in Times Square and outside the United Nations. [20]
Somers worked with garden designer Lottie Delamain on a Textile Garden for Fashion Revolution which won a silver gilt medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May 2022. [21]
Somers founded fair trade hat brand Pachacuti in 1992. [22] Pachacuti was the first company to be verified under the World Fair Trade Organization Sustainable Fair Trade Management System, [23] [24] the first International certification of a fair trade, sustainable production process. [25] The WFTO Verification system guarantees practices, procedures and processes that demonstrate social, economic and environmental responsibility throughout the supply chain". [26] Pachacuti's products were labelled Verified Fair Trade by WFTO UK0001-2009 to 2012. [27] [28]
Pachacuti piloted the European Union Geo Fair Trade project from 2009–12 [29] which traced products from the straw to the Panama hat weavers. 60 social, economic, geolocalisation and environmental indicators tracked annual changes. The pilot project mapped the GPS co-ordinates of Pachacuti's 154 weavers' houses in Ecuador, the parcels of land where the Carludovica Palmata grows, and the co-ordinates of the associations who harvest and process the straw. [30] [31]
At London Fashion Week in September 2013, People Tree Ltd. and Pachacuti were the first companies in the world to launch the WFTO Fair Trade Guarantee System label. [32]
Somers appears regularly on television and radio in the UK and overseas. [33] [34] She has been a regular guest on BBC World Business News, [35] BBC Breakfast [36] and national and international radio. [37] [38] [39] Press articles and interviews include: Forbes How Two Entrepreneurs Became Unexpected Activists And Started A Fashion Revolution [40] Telegraph She Wears It well [41] El País [42] Vogue , [43] Newsweek How the Rana Plaza Disaster Changed Fashion Forever [44] and the Financial Times How to Spend It. [45]
Somers is a regular speaker at universities, events and conferences, both nationally [46] [31] [47] and internationally [48] [49] on Fashion Revolution, fair trade, entrepreneurship, sustainability and fashion. She has lectured on cruise ships in Latin America and the Caribbean on textiles, traditional dress, artisan handicrafts, indigenous peoples and fair trade.
Somers wrote the introduction to "Fixing Fashion" which looks at the impacts of consumer culture's addiction to disposable fashion, published in 2015 by New Society. She is co-author of the book Working Ethically, which aims to help business owners find an ethical strategy which will benefit their suppliers, community and environment. [50] She contributed to the book, published in 2014, "Sustainable Luxury and Social Entrepreneurship". [51]
Fair trade is a term for an arrangement designed to help producers in developing countries achieve sustainable and equitable trade relationships. The fair trade movement combines the payment of higher prices to exporters with improved social and environmental standards. The movement focuses in particular on commodities, or products that are typically exported from developing countries to developed countries but is also used in domestic markets, most notably for handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, wine, sugar, fruit, flowers and gold.
A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, illegal working conditions. The manual workers are poorly paid, work long hours, and experience poor working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, or uncomfortably/dangerously high or low temperatures. The work may be difficult, tiresome, dangerous, climatically challenging, or underpaid. Workers in sweatshops may work long hours with unfair wages, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage; child labor laws may also be violated. Women make up 85 to 90% of sweatshop workers and may be forced by employers to take birth control and routine pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave or providing health benefits. The Fair Labor Association's "2006 Annual Public Report" inspected factories for FLA compliance in 18 countries including Bangladesh, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Malaysia, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, China, India, Vietnam, Honduras, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and the US. The U.S. Department of Labor's "2015 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor" found that "18 countries did not meet the International Labour Organization's recommendation for an adequate number of inspectors."
The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, it is one of the original plate glass universities. The university shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Essex and the motto: "Thought the harder, heart the keener" is adapted from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon. The university comprises three campuses in the county, in Southend-on-Sea and Loughton with its primary campus in Wivenhoe Park, Colchester.
Caroline Patricia Lucas is a British politician who has twice led the Green Party of England and Wales and has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brighton Pavilion since the 2010 general election. She was re-elected in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 general elections, increasing her majority each time.
Ethical consumerism is a type of consumer activism based on the concept of dollar voting. People practice it by buying ethically made products that support small-scale manufacturers or local artisans and protect animals and the environment, while boycotting products that exploit children as workers, are tested on animals, or damage the environment.
Primark Stores Limited is an Irish multinational fast fashion retailer with headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with outlets across Europe and in the United States. The original Penneys brand is not used outside of Ireland because it is owned elsewhere by American retailer J. C. Penney.
Cafédirect is a UK-based alternative trading organization.
Traidcraft was a UK-based Fairtrade organisation, established in 1979. Its trading arm, Traidcraft plc, which sold fairly traded products, went into administration in January 2023.
Triodos Bank N.V. is an ethical bank based in the Netherlands with many branches in Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, and Spain. It was founded in 1980. The bank prioritises investment in environmentally friendly initiatives.
Veja is a French footwear and accessories brand founded in 2004. Veja's products are made with organic cotton and recycled plastic bottles.
Anya Susannah Hindmarch, is an English fashion accessories designer who founded an eponymous company, of which she is currently CEO. Hindmarch published her first book, If In Doubt Wash Your Hair in May 2021, a Sunday Times bestseller. In 2019, Anya Hindmarch became a Greenpeace Ambassador. Hindmarch is Emeritus trustee of both the Royal Academy of Arts and the Design Museum and a trustee of The Royal Marsden. She was appointed a trustee of the Tate in 2022 and is a non-executive director of Tate Enterprises Ltd. In September 2023, Hindmarch was appointed a member of the new Board of Trade.
Sustainable fashion is a term describing efforts within the fashion industry to reduce its environmental impacts, protect workers producing garments, and uphold animal welfare. Sustainability in fashion encompasses a wide range of factors, including "cutting CO2 emissions, addressing overproduction, reducing pollution and waste, supporting biodiversity, and ensuring that garment workers are paid a fair wage and have safe working conditions".
Safia Minney MBE FRSA is a British social entrepreneur and author. She was the founder of Global Village which she set up in 1991, and the founder and former Global CEO of 24 years of People Tree, a pioneering sustainable and Fair Trade fashion label. She is also a spokesperson and campaigner on Fair Trade and ethical fashion. She initiated World Fair Trade Day in 1999, which is endorsed by the World Fair Trade Organization and their members and celebrated on the second Saturday of May each year. Additionally, she wrote the books Naked Fashion:the New Sustainable Fashion Revolution, Slow Fashion, Aesthetics Meets Ethics and Slave to Fashion.
Fair trade coffee is coffee that is certified as having been produced to fair trade standards by fair trade organizations, which create trading partnerships that are based on dialogue, transparency and respect, with the goal of achieving greater equity in international trade. These partnerships contribute to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to coffee bean farmers. Fair trade organizations support producers and sustainable environmental farming practices and prohibit child labor or forced labor.
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Fashion Revolution is a not-for-profit global movement represented by The Fashion Revolution Foundation and Fashion Revolution CIC with teams in over 100 countries around the world. Fashion Revolution campaigns for reform of the fashion industry with a focus on the need for greater transparency in the fashion supply chain. Starting in 2013, Fashion Revolution has designated the anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh as Fashion Revolution Day and holds events each year. Between 2014 and 2020, millions of people around the world called on brands to answer the question Who Made My Clothes? The hashtag #WhoMadeMyClothes became the no.1 global trend on Twitter. They have faced criticisms specifically about the Transparency Index.
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Orsola de Castro is an upcyclist, fashion designer and author. She is the co-founder and creative director of Fashion Revolution, an activism movement which works towards a sustainable fashion industry. De Castro has been in the sustainable fashion space for more than 20 years, since founding upcycling brand, From Somewhere, in 1997.
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