While I am diving into future pursuits, I felt like sneaking back into the near past … my heart skips a beat when I see these beauties.

This time last year I was recovering in snowy Germany after a hot December spent in Ghana working with Global Mamas on making my award winning ‘Design 4 Life Ghana’ dresses a FAIRTRADE reality for retailer TOPSHOP. I slept for ten days, tugged inside the blaze of African sun and pure joy of Ghana’s people. I snug away holding onto visual feasts and touches of conversation that will grip me for a life – time – since preserved and cherished as my muse.

Juliana, a Batiker with her workshop outside her home on top of a banana tree plateau and Florence, a Seamstress with her workshop inside an old shipping container by the roadside in Cape Coast, joint forces to produce my coffee bean dresses. We worked long hard days exchanging gifts of knowledge, stories and future dreams while refining methods for printing & assembling dresses. The knowledge exchanged laying strong foundations for potential future projects. I drifted inside a haze of a shared dream taking shapes of reality while listening to gripping life stories and feeling the drenching warmth of hope and beautiful gratitude to Natures gifts. I returned to Europe for a dip in the snow and flew again to Ghana beginning of February’07 to add final touches to production methods. We were exhausted and excited by the work and future prospects. My haze only lifted when dipping forks into spicy African stews and eventually when the dresses arrived at TOPSHOP’s flagship store in OXFORD CIRCUS in April. I stood bewildered in front of the window display, people passing & reading our story. Drifting inside the store about midday the first order of dresses had virtually flown out the store. Our Ghanaian ladies had earned themselves 13times the average wage and most of all more orders!!! Most delightful, Juliana, the Batiker, has now expanded her workshop and doesn’t need to fetch water in buckets anymore. She has been able to lay a water pipe providing fresh water access necessary for the batiking process.

There has been much talk the past year between myself & other ethically minded movers thinking about how to shape up a fashionable future. With all this future talk I have turned to producing more work with my Batiker.

The air around me remains filled with the colourful life of an African township, the breeze of the ocean & the substantial knowledge of the impact a few pretty dresses can make in ethical ways.

January 2008

Well…I am super pleased and the smile in my belly is growing by the day! I have just returned from Paris as a winner of the Tabeisa – Design4Life Ghana competition run by the Ethical Fashion Forum www.ethicalfashionforum.com – check out my last Blog. My CHOOLIPS coffee bean & fish scale designs have been awarded ’Best Global Commercial dress & print design’. Admittedly I much love this title and I am so touched I don’t dare open the bottle of champagne that came with it just in case the bubbles may wash away the feeling of a dream come true!

My eyes are filled with future…Besides having won over a versatile selection of eagle-eyed judges…see for yourselves www.design4lifeghana.com, it appears that TOPSHOP were particularly impressed on the final judging day. In fact so much so they agreed to stock the winning designs in selected stores in the Spring /Summer collections 2007.

‘Melanie and I could not believe the amount of effort that went into the winning designs and the designers attention to detail. Coupled with how amazing the quality of the fabric and the printing technique done by the Women in Progress team, we are really excited about selling the product in Topshop, we think it will fly of the shelves as its perfect for our customer’ Clare Hamer: Top Shop Buyer & Melanie Frame: Head of Quality Control Top Shop

This directly impacts on Women in Progress, the Ghanaian company that made my prints reality, by creating major positive changes to their lives & business. It is also a major achievement for ethical fashion. It is an opportunity for fashion which owns a pulsating conscience to set foot into TOPSHOP and therefore into mainstream fashion. As a designer I only see a future in sustainable business that takes into account our environment plus the working and living conditions of all individuals in the production chain. This will bridge cultures and resources thus function globally and enable the production of innovative & commercial fairly traded products. Producing ethically will enable fashion to contribute paramount steps towards a mutually respectful, healthy and pulsating future for our planet and our children. Ethical fashion sounds like the NEW GOLD to me.

And it doesn’t stop there. Shortly, I will be travelling to Cape Coast in Ghana to visit Women in Progress. Tabeisa, the organisation behind the competition www.tabeisa.com will be administering the trip. I will be teaching classes for Women in Progress passing on all knowledge about the production of the winning designs. In exchange the women will let me into their precious Batik artistry, share a glimpse into their lives & history and let me savour African sun.
Where will it lead from here? My eyes are set on collecting African textile traditions in Cape Coast for these to be absorbed into my first kimono collection ‘Kimono – fly in African skies’. It will speak of ethical trade and ancient techniques as much as contemporary fusions of African, Japanese and British textile traditions and much much more…Enough!!! I will write more as and when there is more to tell…

October 2006

The past two months have been filled with so much joy and never ending days, with nights and sleeps so deep the memory of them remains at the bottom of the sea. There has been so much work and woolf-like hungers from having the opportunity to bring together my love of Africa & textiles in some dress designs that are set out to make a difference…an ethical difference for African business women & overall for fashion. What happened was that at the beginning of September I was short- listed for a competition called Design for Life Ghana – www.design4lifeghana.com for which I had submitted 3 dress & 3 print designs. The prints were going to be Batik produced in Ghana by Juliana Mustapha @ Womeninprogress – www.womeninprogress.com

So…over the past month I have seen my prints come to life & created the dresses I had dreamt up. All three dresses celebrate & highlight Ghana’s rich natural resources and its local textile traditions. There are coffee beans & fish scales that playfully combine African traditions of dressing in vibrant fabrics. The fabrics are printed in colours plucked from Ghanaian landscapes and simply wrapped, folded, tied, tugged & pleated. My designs take these elements and celebrate them in a marriage of silhouettes, colour schemes & print layouts popular in the UK. The silhouettes mirror much of fashion seen in the 50’s colonial Africa and will be no strangers to a Ghanaian eye and certainly not our local wardrobes. However the detailing reaches beyond uniting the spirit of Africa & UK culture by displaying Far Eastern Origami traditions, which echo the African wrap, fold, tie, tug & pleat playfulness.

At the end of this week all three afro- brit creations will be setting foot onto a Parisan catwalk @ Ethicalfashionshow – www.ethicalfashionshow.com

I am tingly all over with excitement for all things to come. But most of all I am at peace having stepped a little closer to where my future visions are carrying me. Please enjoy for now. There will be more to see upon my return next week…

October 2006