March 2017 – THE CONSCIOUS EDIT

The best sustainable shopping spots in London

March 14, 2017 2 Comments

The growing interest for sustainable fashion, local produce and handmade crafts has subsequently seen a growing trend of independent boutiques across London with this as their main focus. If you’re looking to avoid the high street with all its fast fashion there are loads of great markets, pop-up shops and established boutiques that offer you a more sustainable shopping alternative.

Here’s a guide to some of my favourite sustainable shopping spots in the capital:

Broadway Market and 69b, Hackney. The market on Broadway Market by London Fields in Hackney is open on Saturdays, offering locally produced food as well as vintage clothing and crafts. On the same street, at number 69b, there’s also a shop with the same name, selling sustainable fashion from environmentally and socially conscious brands.

Here Today Here Tomorrow, Dalston. Fashion shop that sells its own brand of Fairtrade products, mainly wool clothing made by artisans in Nepal.

The Third Estate, Camden. Camden boutique selling vegan fashion from Fairtrade UK and international brands.

The Keep Boutique, Brixton. This boutique has, since opening in September 2012, been selling sustainable fashion for women and men who want fashionable clothing that has a story and that will last.

Columbia Road Flower Market, Shoreditch. On Sundays, the flower market on Columbia Road is open between 8am and 2pm – make sure you get there as early as possible as it’s crammed at lunchtime! Get there early, have a coffee in one of the small coffee shops and go for a wander down the street looking at people and beautiful flowers. There are loads of great boutiques and stalls with local arts and crafts as well as vintage bits and bobs (I always find gorgeous glasses and cups there).

Brick Lane, Shoreditch. Sundays are also good days to head to Brick Lane and the many markets around the street and Spitalfields. You’ll also find excellent vintage shops such as Absolute Vintage and Beyond Retro. On Commercial Street, parallel to Brick Lane, there’s also As Nature Intended that sells sustainable and organic groceries as well as beauty products.

Content Beauty & Wellbeing, Marylebone. If you’re in Central London, Marylebone is always a good place to go for a nice stroll, and whilst you’re there, head to Content Beauty & Wellbeing. It’s small but has got an excellent selection of organic and natural beauty products and they also offer treatments following the same principles.

Selfridges, Oxford Street. At the moment, there’s also a focus on sustainability at Selfridges on Oxford Street with their windows showing fashion labels using sustainable materials. They’re running the campaign Material World questioning the effect different materials have on the environment and have got a selection of sustainable labels across the store.

This piece was first published in Swedish on sustainable lifestyle site Continuation Magazine.

Conscious fashion, Conscious living

Using our purchasing power to support women

March 8, 2017 No Comments

True sisterhood extends past your closest friends and family. It reaches across your professional life where you’re able to support and mentor other women to gain self esteem, do well, get promoted. It should also extend across your way of living and consuming. Today, on International Women’s Day, and on all other days, we should choose to consume media/movies/music/services/products that respect women.

When looking at fashion for example, one can see that the garment industry is one of the most female-dominated industries in the world, with women making up 90% of the workforce in countries like Cambodia. But even though many of these women work for some of the world’s most profitable companies, they work under dreadful conditions for very little pay.

Employment is key to female empowerment but the exploitation of women that is often the case in the industry is not the solution. Instead, we should support brands that truly make a difference to women’s right to make a decent living.

T-shirts with feminist slogans are all the rage at the moment, but if the woman who made it wasn’t paid fairly then that defeats the purpose. Buying any t-shirt, but one that is produced ethically with the (most likely) female garment worker being paid properly for the job, is most definitely a better way to truly support the female movement. Or take a look at brands such as Lawrenson that both use feminist slogans and ethical manufacturing processes.

Here are a few other brands doing great things to support and empower women through their work:

Raven + Lily. Fashion and home accessories designed in Austin, Texas and hand made in countries like Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Kenya and Peru. Over 1,500 marginalised women are employed at fair trade wages, giving them access to a safe job, sustainable income, health care, and education.

Krochet Kids. Each item is hand made by women in Uganda or Peru, with a note added to each item telling the buyer who made it and what the impact has been for the maker. The women also gets education and mentoring to ensure they can plan for a sustainable future for them and their families.

Sseko. Their slogan is ‘Wear Sseko, send a girl to college’ as they employ high potential women in Uganda to support them achieving their goal of getting a college education. All products are designed and ethically made in East Africa.

FashionABLE. An accessories brand with a strong belief in job creation rather than charity. They work with women in Africa as well as the US who have overcome extraordinary circumstances, ranging from prostitution to homelessness to addiction to a lack of opportunity.

Conscious living

Minimalism vs Living Lagom

March 6, 2017 No Comments

There are trends in all aspects of living – fashion styles; diets; types of classes to take at the gym; types of coffee; places to go for holiday; what social media app to use. Most of these often promote a rather stressful lifestyle where it’s important to always keep up with the latest. But some make us re-evaluate our lifestyles and consider how we can truly make a difference to our lives, as well as the planet and people around us. The trends of minimalism and living ‘lagom’ are two of these.

The minimalist way of living has most recently reached many through The Minimalists Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus (see their documentary Minimalism on Netflix and read their books), encouraging people to live more with less. And the idea of living ‘lagom’ is currently mainly a campaign by IKEA, with a focus on the Swedish word meaning ‘just the right amount’, not too much, not too little.

Neither of these approaches tell you to get rid of all your stuff, but to consider what you need, and what you don’t need. In general, in the Western World, we don’t need all the stuff we surround ourselves with and we don’t need to constantly be buying more stuff. The current ‘normal’ is not sustainable. But following a minimalist lifestyle may be too much hard work for some, and if you’re one of these people then living ‘lagom’ could potentially be the middle ground you’ve been looking for.

Ultimately, living with less stuff should make room for other things in life. Experiences. Love. Freedom.

English designer William Morris once said that you should “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. A great way of thinking as it doesn’t encourage excessive buying but it also allows you to surround yourself with the things you love, whether that’s your book collection, the art on your wall or your favourite cushions on your sofa.

Being more conscious of what we have in our home and our life is key to both these ways of living. Asking yourself the question of whether something adds value to your life. If it does then by all means keep it, but if it doesn’t then it’s probably one you should sell on eBay or give away to someone who can make better use of it. Letting go of stuff is a process and we don’t have to answer to anyone else, only ourselves. But the likes of de-cluttering expert Marie Kondo are there to help you if you get stuck.

“A home does not need to be planned down to the smallest detail or contrived; it should be an amalgamation of the things that its owner loves and feels at home with.”

– Josef Frank

I’m about to do a big move (more on this at a later stage) and I’m seeing this as a great opportunity to start new. De-clutter. Think about what I really want and need. What is important, and importantly, what isn’t?

I’d like to aspire towards minimalism but think it’s more likely I’ll end up at ‘lagom’. But I’d like to think that as long as your own ‘lagom’ is a healthy middle ground between enjoyable and sustainable you’ve landed somewhere just right.