Made with care

“You’d think the biggest challenge would be taking the whole family to India. I quit my job; we took the two kids out of school and enrolled them in an Indian one. We spent 36 hours on a train up to Rajasthan, 40 hours on the way back.”

Matilde Ferone is an activist, born and trained. She loves nothing more than travelling, collaborating and giving back to the world. She has packed up her family - her husband and two beautiful daughters Blue 8 and Maya 5 - more than once to step away from the high life of London, to really live: cultural lessons, spiritual epiphanies and grassroots connections the central focus.

“The biggest challenge instead has been finding the best way to market my project and its products. I’m a one woman show, so working out how to best manage my time, as well as maintaining self-belief in my mission definitely trumps living in India, or anywhere for that matter."

Matilde is the founder of Matik Boutique – a London based boutique and project working closely with women textile producers in India and Ghana to reframe fair trade in terms of fashion.

“I have always been interested in the role of women in development. Research and practice show that by investing in women, we can break the poverty cycle. Women tend to be more effective at saving money, they are more likely to invest in their children and they are generally more responsible,” Matilde explained.

When Matilde and her family were in India earlier this year, sourcing and connecting with women’s collectives for her project, she met Lakshmi Bai, a Quilt Maker from Rajasthan who said: “ This job has given me the opportunity to give my daughter a better future. Whatever I could not enjoy as a child, I ensure that my daughter gets. She will get the best education possible. I used to worry a lot about how I would do it but now I have courage and money. I will work more and earn more money and make her a doctor." 

“That’s why I am doing what I am doing,” Matilde added. “To empower these women to have a say in the lives they and their children live.”

Wear it #insideout (Featured on Alternative London)

I am stoked to be writing for Alternative London; a tour group in London's East with a social conscious, unearthing London's cultural, creative and community gold, and the gold I speak of today is big. It's revolutionary. It's Fashion Revolution Day in fact. 

Today we remember the innocent victims of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh last year, which highlighted the critical need for landmark change within the fashion trade.

We're talking fashion and creating a global movement to turn the industry upside down and inside out. To expose its falls, broken kinks and defunct systems that is more concerned about the dollar amount than the wellbeing of its workers and the state of the environment.

But most all, we're talking about sustainability. A lifestyle and way of thinking that honours social and environmental values first and foremost. I talk with fashion boutique 69b from Hackney in East London on what is means to be ethical and sustainable in an industry which thrives on competitiveness, greed and power plays.

Read on for the story here …

Who made your clothes?

A simple question but one that customers, retailers, and even the brands themselves have difficulty answering.

This very enquiry reveals a lot. It bares the story of a fashion supply chain that is broken because there is a lack of awareness of whom is the face picking the cotton, preparing the leather, dying the fabric, collecting the seeds.

It exposes an industry that is premised on serving the customer with cheap and evolving choice at the expense of the health, wellbeing and quality of life of its workers. A trade where we are more concerned about the dollar amount and the value for money than the human narrative behind the article.

This is at the heart of what 69b stands for; a local women’s fashion boutique on Broadway Markets in Hackney, East London, which prides itself on delivering directional, ethical and sustainable fashion.

Started by Merryn Leslie - stylist and fashion editor for big names such as Vogue, Missoni, US Harpers Bazaar, Michelle Lowe Holder and Sandy Dalal - she wanted to do something much bigger in the fashion industry. She wanted to make a difference so decided to launch 69b, which exclusively stocks designers engaging in sustainability.