Leona Mani is a fair trade visionary. Realising that makers of ethical and fairly traded luxury products had little exposure to consumer markets (in contrast to, say, fair trade foods, which are widely promoted) she set up a website, bestfairtrade.com, to showcase the fantastic range of stylish fair trade fashion and accessories available today. Her latest venture Ethical Just Got Fabulous has been wowing the fashion media by bringing the website to life, staging glamorous events featuring a pop-up ethical department store.

We ran Our Green Gauge over Leona to see what inspired this fair trade fashionista.

What has had the biggest impact on your eco-awareness? It was seeing how people are treated in sweatshops in India. After working in Hong Kong I spent three years in India working in the garment industry and you really need to see the way that people are treated and the conditions they are working in to understand the need for change.

But I found a company which took a fair trade approach to garment manufacture – quite unusual for that time in the 1980s when The Body Shop was really the only overtly ethical brand – and working for them opened my eyes to the possibilities of trading and manufacturing ethically in the fashion business.

What difference has that made to your life? It set me on a path that has led to where I am today. I realised that in fact there are a lot of small companies which trade fairly but struggle to find markets. There’s a big difference between agricultural fair trade (tea, coffee, cocoa, cotton), which is well organised with schemes and endorsements, and manufacturing which doesn’t have anything similar. And so I set up bestfairtrade.com where you can search the directory for anything from jeans to a piece of furniture, knowing that they have been produced ethically. I also quickly came to realise that a lot of people think fair trade means basic or unfashionable. That’s a perception that needs slaying. It is possible to find luxury products without compromising on either ethics or quality.  And it doesn’t always mean more expensive.

What is your biggest fear for the future? It’s that nothing changes. We could eradicate poverty in the next generation. It’s achievable and could be done by changing consumer behaviour and increasing awareness. 

And you hope for humankind? Educating kids. The sooner you can get the message to people the better. Ethical business models could easily become the norm if children were given the tools to understand good business practice. The organisation Think Global has started to work with schools to introduce these issues into the curriculum.  It’s great to see change happening at this level.

Who is your green hero? William Wilberforce. I was lucky enough to be involved in the event management of the 2007 Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act and it is inspirational to see how Wilberforce changed a nation’s attitudes. For that generation it was slavery; for our generation it is the 1.4 billion people still living in poverty.

Do you have an eco-villain? Apathy

And where do you sit on our Green Gauge (where 10 is deep green and 1 is a hint of apple)? I’d place myself somewhere between six and seven.

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