Not Made in China

Ruth Carruthers caught up with pro snowboarder Gilly Seagrave to talk about fair trade fashion, snowboarding and the environment. 

After a busy season in Morzine passing on her freestyle tips to Europe’s next generation of female snowboarders, designing this summers range for Eka knitwear, and a board test in Austria, I managed to catch up with Gilly when she stopped in Cambridge for a couple days before returning home to Sweden to prepare for her summer camp.

Originally from the Cambridge area I let Gilly find us somewhere to grab a coffee, so we ventured down the windy streets of Cambridge to find Clowns, a family run Italian café Gilly is fond of.

“I haven’t been here in about ten years, I hope it’s still here,” she laughed on the way there, it was, and a great place to find a cosy corner to drink coffee and vent our environmental frustrations. 

Back in 1998 and working in a snowboard shop Gilly had a big decision to make, to do the good thing, go to university and pursue her interest in fashion and art, or to concentrate on snowboarding.  Good job that in the end she didn’t need to choose!
 
Gilly has been riding as a pro snowboarder for many years now, she is a co-founder of Our Camp, one of the most popular snowboard camps for girls in Europe, and in 2004 started up her very own knitwear company Eka (Sanskrit for one). 

Not only are all the pieces artistically designed by Gilly but they are all also fair trade.

Although Gilly likes to crochet hats and accessories herself the popularity of Eka means she has to employ outside workers to help, so the entire Eka range is hand made in Auroville India, where they are “made by individuals that are paid a fair wage and provided with health insurance and a pension.

“Charging an average of £20 a hat, Eka’s prices are on a par with other brands, but Gilly makes less of a mark-up.

 “I know I could be making more money,” she explains.  When she first started out there was pressure for her to go to China with her range, but Gilly stayed true to herself, and admits she “would not be able to sleep at night” if she knew her garments were being made in China or elsewhere in India with poor working conditions.

Luckily a friend of hers recommended finding workers in Auroville and she’s never looked back.

Fair trade items are not only good for workers; fairtrade is good for the environment too.  In Auroville, proceeds from trade go to develop the town and surrounding landscape in an environmentally friendly way.

Gilly is clearly passionate about environmental matters, she is vegetarian and likes to cycle when she’s home in Sweden, but most of all she is fully aware of the environmental impact snowboarding
is having on the environment too, something she has noticed most snowboarders never stop to think about.

With snowboarders crossing the globe by plane every five minutes in search of an endless winter these are fun times, and it’s easy to get caught up in it all.  But with global warming rearing its ugly head winters are getting shorter and sooner or later snowboarders are going to have to realize the way they live their lives is having an impact on the white playgrounds on which they rely.
 
Gilly found last season really warm, and has noticed a difference in the snow cover and glacier size in recent years at many resorts.  She admits that when living with seven other people in a house when your doing a season in the Alps, “it’s hard not to nag fellow house mates for leaving the tap running, or their charger plugged in overnight.”

But it seems her environmental thoughtfulness is rubbing off and she has noticed many of her friends such as pro snowboarder Jenny Jones are making themselves aware of environmental problems and doing all they can to reduce their impact, but in the mean time we just “need to wait for other snowboarders to get educated,” she adds.

Gilly doesn’t like to harass, and is not one of those in your face, activist, environmental types. She believes the “best way to make change is not by force, it’s by desire.”

Therefore by making “ethical fashion gorgeous” people will buy it regardless, “the fact it’s fairtrade is an added bonus,” she explains.

Boasting hats finished with ribbons and crochet flowers the Eka range is certainly full of ethical items of desire, and Eka’s not the only one doing it. Gilly loves designers such as Camila Norback’s range of eco luxury clothing too.
 
She’s not your typical baggy jeans, scruffy snowboarder type, sporting white skinny jeans and a nautical themed scarf the day I met her, it is clear Gilly has her own style. 

She may keep up with fashions, but she is concerned about what she buys on the high street.  “Made in China labels are everywhere, I’ve had to put clothes I want back on the rail when I notice they are made in China,” she explains.

Many high street stores are now selling a few fairtrade and organic items in their stores.

“Do you think this is this just a lip service?” I asked.  “It’s a start,” she replies, “But people still need to be wary regarding the other items in the shop, even if it’s not made in China how can a company afford to charge £3 for a skirt, our society can afford to pay more than this.”

She further points out that “excessively cheap clothing stores make everything else on the high street look expensive,” when you think about it it’s true. 

But she urges people to put themselves “in the shoes of the person making that item of clothing, I would be looking for more than £8 to make a dress, wouldn’t you,” she exclaims. 

Whether cheap clothes stores are ethically sound or not, what saddens Gilly is the fact that items of clothing designed only to last for a couple months “takes the worth out of second hand clothes shops”.

Charity shops now reject cheap clothing, unable to charge a beneficial price for it and find it difficult to sell on. Gilly loves second hand shops, and encourages people to buy there in order to “cultivate their own style and cut down on waste” by reducing the amount of new items we are buying from shops. 

Gilly believes there is a “lack of education, people don’t think about where their clothes are made, and there is a real need for people to know the whole story, then we will see change.” 

One way she hopes we can achieve this is to work with fashion, the media and the snowboard industries to raise awareness of fair trade and environmental issues, producing environmental slogan t-shirts (made from organic cotton of course) such as those by designer Katharine Hamnett, and use devices such as MTV to grab people’s attention if that’s what will work. 

She’s a busy person, and when I met Gilly that day I told her the interview wouldn’t take long, “an hour tops I said.”  But it’s great to meet someone who is on the same page as you and we ended up talking for hours, so I quickly ask her what the future has in store for Eka and for Gilly. 

She is looking for the Eka range not only to be fair trade but 100% organic by 2010.  Furthermore she doesn’t expect to change the world, but recommends that you “start with yourself, make yourself feel better knowing you are doing everything you can for the planet and the people on it, and maybe, hopefully, one day it will make a difference.”

Check out the Eka range and Auroville at www.ekawear.com and www.auroville.org