Company distances itself from US fascist group as it halts sales of garment in North America
The fashion brand Fred Perry has pulled one of its famous polo shirt designs after it became associated with a far-right organisation.
The company has halted sales of the black and yellow top in the US and Canada, after it was adopted by the neo-fascist organisation the Proud Boys.
Continue reading...Photographer Jonathan Leder denies assaulting model and actor at photoshoot in 2012
The model and actor Emily Ratajkowski has accused photographer Jonathan Leder of sexually assaulting her during a photoshoot at his home in 2012, a claim he strongly denies.
Leder published a book of the photos in 2016. Ratajkowski claims this was without her consent, but Leder disputes this.
Continue reading...Family pay tribute to Habitat founder as ‘visionary who revolutionised the way we live in Britain’
Sir Terence Conran, the man who dragged Britain’s front rooms and parlours into the modern age almost single-handed, has died at the age of 88, his family has announced.
A designer, retailer and restaurateur who founded Habitat in 1964, Conran was at the centre of an aesthetic revolution that established England, and London in particular, as a European creative powerhouse.
Continue reading...Alexandra Zarini alleges Joseph Ruffalo sexually abused her from the age of six to when she was about 22
Alexandra Zarini, the 35-year-old granddaughter of Aldo Gucci, the man who turned a small Italian artisanal company into a global fashion brand, has filed a lawsuit in a US court alleging that her stepfather sexually abused her over a period of 16 years.
The action, filed in the California superior court in Los Angeles, describes years of sexual abuse from her former stepfather, Joseph Ruffalo, and complicity and a cover-up on the part of her mother, Patricia Gucci, and grandmother Bruna Palombo.
Continue reading...An investigation into working conditions in garment factories in Lesotho revealed widespread sexual abuse of women. Annie Kelly travelled to southern Africa to investigate
Last year, a report by the Workers Rights Consortium NGO revealed widespread rape, sexual assault and harassment at a number of garment factories in Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho.
The Guardian’s Annie Kelly tells Rachel Humphreys how she travelled to Lesotho to discover for herself what had been going on in factories producing jeans for top brands such as Levi’s and Wrangler. Sethelile Nthakana, a WRC researcher, explains how the factories would operate using casual workers chosen at the gates, who would then be expected to enter relationships with the bosses who had selected them.
Continue reading...From Chewing Gum to I May Destroy You, the writer and actor has carved out a groove as a true original. Who better to convince us all to shop secondhand?
Michaela Coel could be wearing anything she wanted, right now. As the star and creator of I May Destroy You, the BBC drama that became a water cooler hit even in a summer without water coolers, Coel is the hottest property in town. Any fashion designer would jump at the chance to dress her. But today she is enthusing over a time-pummelled black sweatshirt with faded insignia, sourced not from a Bond Street boutique but from Oxfam’s cavernous warehouse in Batley, North Yorkshire. “I’m here for it,” she murmurs approvingly, pulling it over her head.
She’s here for all of it. She’s here for the pale pink Burberry trenchcoat, another Batley treasure unearthed for our shoot by Oxfam’s senior fashion adviser, Bay Garnett, a nod to Coel’s neon bubblegum bob as Arabella in IMDY. She’s here for the dynamite 80s jeans and matching jacket in toffee-apple faux-leather, a rare Gaultier Jeans find. She’s here for the Fanta-coloured boilersuit (think Ripley in Alien meets Bananarama on Top Of The Pops), for the elegant 70s Jaeger mustard blazer with anchor-stamped gold buttons, and for a knockout pair of Versace high-waisted shorts, illustrated with classic Rita Hayworth film posters.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Third-party reports set out allegations at 18 Leicester suppliers
The fast-fashion retailer Boohoo has been selling clothes made by at least 18 factories in Leicester that audits say have failed to prove they pay the minimum wage to workers, a Guardian investigation has found.
Third-party audit reports produced over the past four years make claims of “critical” issues over record-keeping and working hours at the time they were written, suggesting that in parts of the supply chain workers may be paid as little as £3-£4 an hour.
Continue reading...Largest US childrenswear retailer blames Covid for move, as employees say they are struggling to buy food after wage cuts
The largest childrenswear retailer in the US has cancelled millions of dollars worth of clothing orders from suppliers in Ethiopia because of the coronavirus pandemic, pushing companies into debt and leaving employees facing pay cuts.
The Children’s Place (TCP), which has more than 1,000 stores in the US and 90 around the world and had a turnover of $2bn (£1.5bn) last year, cancelled orders from Ethiopia in March and delayed payments by six months for orders completed in January and February, suppliers told the Guardian.
Continue reading...Covid-19 has exposed the fragility of supply chains, which rely on the labour of black and brown workers. The deep inequalities won’t be fixed by injecting funds at the top
Is the UK governed by parliamentary democracy or big businesses? It is a question that should concern us all, yet it is becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between the two, as the government hands out multimillion-pound contracts to private firms with dubious track records, and ministers revolve between roles at big banks and government. Last week, the line between UK aid and private businesses was called into question, as the Department for International Development (DfID) announced the decision to direct £4.85m of taxpayers’ money towards the work of large retailers including M&S, Tesco and Primark.
The DfID funding is intended to support large companies to fix vulnerable supply chains and ensure that “people in Britain can continue to buy affordable, high-quality goods from around the world”. These aims, along with the fact that UK brands have been entrusted to deliver them, set off alarm bells for labour rights campaigners like myself, who advocate for better working conditions in the global garment industry.
Continue reading...Brands including Primark, Zara and H&M accused of failing to protect workers at factories in Asia from ‘union busting’
Some of Europe’s biggest retailers, including Primark, Zara and H&M, are failing to stop Covid-19 being used as a pretext for union busting, human rights activists are warning.
Millions of garment workers in some of the poorest parts of Asia have lost their jobs since coronavirus shutdowns hit the retail industry worldwide.
Continue reading...Staff on DeGeneres’s talkshow have denounced its ‘toxic’ environment. The host may not be to blame, but she has always been spikier than her public image
What on earth is going on with Ellen DeGeneres?
Kate, by email
Things are not well in Ellen land. Things have been worse, but let’s catch up on the current situation first.
Continue reading...The footballer is recognised for his activism in the magazine among 40 ‘faces of hope’
Marcus Rashford’s inspirational, policy-changing campaign against child poverty has garnered him accolades aplenty. Now it has also propelled the footballer on to the front cover of British Vogue’s September issue.
The Manchester United striker, who forced a government U-turn on the granting of free food vouchers for the poorest families over the summer, headlines a special edition dedicated to activism.
Continue reading...Academics analyse whether hair and hearing loss may also be linked to coronavirus
From hearing loss and rashes, to being tall and bald, as the Covid-19 pandemic develops, a host of new symptoms and risk factors are being linked to the virus. We take a look at the evidence.
Continue reading...The disparity between the fees paid to black influencers and their white counterparts has come under scrutiny after a group of campaigners spoke out
At the start of the pandemic, Vanity Fair asked whether the influencer era was over because people were tired of glossy, edited lives on social media and wanted something more “real”. Instead, it seems the world of influencers is adapting to reflect changes in the rest of the world. In recent weeks, the focus has been the shocking pay disparity between white influencers and influencers of colour.
In June, a group of influencers of colour shared an open letter on Instagram that called out Fohr, a marketing agency that work as a middleman between brands and influencers. Women including Valerie Eguavoen spoke out. “I cannot be silent when I see clear evidence of pay disparities between Black women and other creatives who work with you,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “I cannot be silent when you refuse to address racism form [sic] individuals on your team adequately. Enough is enough.” (Fohr replied on Instagram, apologising for its conduct, writing: “We HAVE to do a better job listening to, promoting and working with black influencers.”)
Continue reading...From Nicola Sturgeon’s tartan to Michael Gove’s fog, politicians find masks to match their personality
Nicola Sturgeon set the template for face mask diplomacy almost three weeks ago with a £10 tartan mask, which raised money for Shelter Scotland. Her endorsement sparked staggering sales and promoted Scottish culture, charity and business in one photo op, while making a clear message about public health. In other words, she played a blinder.
Sturgeon also sparkled a trend of sorts, with Jackson Carlaw, the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, wearing an even toastier-looking tartan face mask to pour himself a patriotic pint a few weeks later.
Continue reading...Model and activist signs six-figure contract to publish Transitional, ‘a manifesto for how I see society changing for the better, bringing us all closer’
The first book by Munroe Bergdorf, a manifesto on gender by the black transgender activist and model, has been bought for a six-figure sum after a bidding war between 11 publishers.
Bergdorf’s Transitional will be published by Bloomsbury in 2021. Exploring six different facets of human experience – adolescence, sexuality, gender, relationships, identity and race – the book will draw on Bergdorf’s own experiences, including growing up in a mixed-race family, going to an all-boys school and starting her transition at the age of 24. In it, she will argue that transition is an experience every person faces in every phase in life, “and that only by recognising this can we understand times of change”.
Continue reading...Black Lives Matter, lockdown, and how Amina Muaddi is set to become the next high-heel superstar: RiRi’s closest collaborators on Fenty’s dramatic first year
The first and second times that Jahleel Weaver met Rihanna, they bonded over shoes. In 2007, when Weaver was a student in New York with a part-time job at the cult downtown Jeffrey boutique, he sold her a pair of Christian Louboutins. (The classic, “Pigalle” pointed-toe court in bronze, with graffiti on the side.) Four years later, Weaver was assisting stylist Mel Ottenberg, who was dressing Rihanna for a recording of the chatshow Good Morning America. “So this was, like, 4am, and she complimented me on my shoes,” remembers Weaver. “They were Raf [Simons] for Jil Sander brogues, black with neon-pink soles. One of my favourite pairs of shoes of all time.”
Continue reading...Employers are avoiding paying maternity benefits and purging union members as orders plummet during Covid-19, say activists
A few weeks ago, Kalpona Akter’s phone started vibrating. She watched with mounting dread as message after message poured in. First there was the garment worker who had been sacked for demanding personal protective equipment for his colleagues. Then pregnant women and union members started calling for help, saying they were also losing their jobs.
As Bangladesh’s garment sector reels from the economic impact of Covid-19 and the shock of £2.4bn of cancelled or suspended orders inflicted on the industry by overseas fashion brands, a wave of job losses has swept across the country. Moreover, during lockdown hundreds of thousands of workers were not paid for work they had already done.
Continue reading...Working from home has been a chance to do away with uncomfortable, unnecessary underwear. And many women have no intention of returning to underwires and constriction
It was after a shopping trip, the first time for weeks that Louise Kilburn had ventured out during the lockdown, that she realised she wasn’t wearing a bra. “I’d completely forgotten to put it on,” she says. Kilburn, a university lecturer, had been shielding since the last week of March. She was still busy teaching online, although not usually by video, and had created a more comfortable work wardrobe of pyjamas, loungewear “and, more importantly, no bra”. Her bras were somewhere, she says, with a laugh, under a pile of pre-lockdown clothes – lost enough that she had to buy some bralettes, a more unstructured style, to try out. She had, she says, “mislaid my boob cages”.
Lockdown has changed a lot of things about the way we present ourselves to the world, and for many women, ditching their bra has been a particularly popular one. “I just don’t see bras making a comeback after this,” tweeted the Buzzfeed writer Tomi Obaro in May. Her tweet has been “liked” more than half a million times. The feminist satire website Reductress ran a headline last week reading: “Bra furlough extended.”
Continue reading...Front of magazine’s ‘Madness’ issue attacked as attempt to glamorise mental illness
Vogue Portugal has been criticised for insensitive treatment of mental health on one of its latest magazine covers.
The image – one of four covers created for its July/August “Madness” issue – features model Simona Kirchnerova crouched in a bath flanked by two nurses, with one pouring water over her head. The cover has been criticised both for attempting to glamorise mental illness and for the use of the outdated term “madness”.
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