Survey Update

I have now finished designing the questionnaire for my thesis. My thesis question,

How are fashion companies currently communicating to consumers the environmental and social impacts of producing a cotton garment at the point of sale? has required two main research methods - case study, and survey.

The aim of the survey is to find out what the public know about sustainable textiles, and their priorities when shopping. Choosing the sample was difficult because ideally, it would be representative of everyone in the country, but that's too much work just for me! I chose a sample of 18 to 30 year olds because they are the most likely to shop regularly and buy fast fashion, but also they are part of a generation which is having to think more sustainably and will have to change their habits as time goes by. I'm hoping to get a good couple of hundred responses at least. I'm really interested to see what answers people give, because as this has been my life for the last year, its easy to forget that not everyone thinks in the same way as me, or even cares!

Social Labelling Conference

Last week I went to an ethical fashion conference held at Northumbria University. It was focused on social labelling which is very relevent to my MPhil thesis question, 'How to communicate the environmental and social impacts of producing a cotton t-shirt to the consumer at point of sale'. There were representatives there from FAIRTRADE, People Tree, Workers Rights Consortium and many more, but what was really interesting was to find PhD students studying such similiar topics to me! It becomes easy to think that I'm the only one doing research in my field, but that is of course not true, especially as it is such a current issue. Having said that, we were all approaching it in different ways.

I picked up on a lot of new information and will have to spend time going back through my literature review to add these details. What really struck me is the amount of work going on to help the conditions for workers globally, and the number of barriers that they face. I also realised that if I want to start my own label in the future, there is a lot of support out there to help me find an ethical way of manufacturing products. I'll update the blog as I go through my notes and the conference papers.