Our Experts

Our Experts

Workshops and Mentoring led by Key Industry Experts

Profiles of our experts and their thoughts on our Business Support Programme:

Dilys Williams

Director, Centre for Sustainable Fashion

Dilys is a fashion designer, collaborator and facilitator of change. Directing the Centre for Sustainable Fashion to provoke, challenge and question the fashion status quo, through collaboration, and designing transforming solutions that balance ecology, society and culture. Dilys has been instrumental in the set up and development of the centre and its interrelated activities.

Her academic interests focus on curriculum with sustainability at its heart, working with undergraduate courses, and writing and developing the course structure and content for the groundbreaking MA Fashion and the Environment.

Her enterprise interests focus on her professional background and her desire for beautiful, desirable fashion that can sustain us. This draws on her work with both luxury and high street brands, including ten years designing collections with Katharine Hamnett using organically produced materials, and promoting awareness of issues surrounding ethical and ecological design and production methods. She believes that there are myriad ways in which we can engage human ingenuity towards a world in which we can all prosper and thrive.

1. Why do you think this programme is worth doing?

Designers aim to create better than what already exists, designers want to make things that are beautiful, cleverly made, offer something of delight. Something that has a place and a relevance. This is a great role, it drives us.

This programme enhances the ways in which designers can achieve this aim through an exploration of design in an evolving world, where changes impact on what we make and how we work. It takes you through concept, sourcing, making and communication processes and supports the development of your practice and the codes that you work by.

2. What do you bring to the table?

As someone who has an insatiable curiosity around how we can explore design in a changing world, as a collaborative designer with considerable experience in design for sustainability, and as a person who thrives on sharing with others, I offer the reflected knowledge and skills honed over a period of time working in the fashion business and in fashion education.

Dr Kate Fletcher

Reader in Sustainable Fashion, Centre for Sustainable Fashion

Urban by birth with an ecological spirit, Kate Fletcher’s work is both rooted in nature’s principles and engaged with the cultural and creative forces of fashion and design. Over the last 15 years, her original thinking and progressive outlook has shaped the field of fashion, textiles and sustainability and come to define it. Kate is one of the founders of the ‘slow fashion’ movement and instigator of directional sustainability projects, including Local Wisdom which has engaged hundreds of people worldwide with the ‘Craft of Use’ and ‘post-growth’ fashion and was shortlisted for the Observer Ethical Awards in 2010. She is also founder of the design for sustainability consultancy slowfashion.org where she works with companies, educational establishments and non‐governmental organizations to foster change towards sustainability. She is also a recognized and inspirational speaker.

Kate has over 50 scholarly and popular publications in the field. She is author of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys (2008). Readers call it “inspiring,” “beautifully written,” “the foundation for a radical new perspective” and “a must read” and it is in active use in commercial design studios and is the principle text in academic seminar rooms around the world. She is also co-author of the forth-coming Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change (2012).

Kate is Reader in Sustainable Fashion at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion where she has a broad remit spanning enterprise, education and research. Her strategic leadership permeates the Centre’s activities, including its role as co-secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion at the House of Lords, where she has guided its agenda towards the role of the user, local production and education and skills.

 

What do you bring to the table?

Knowledge and expertise in fashion and sustainability built up over 20 years of working with these themes with businesses big and small, non-profits and academic institutions.

Alex McIntosh

Business Support Manager, Centre for Sustainable Fashion

Alex works the Centre to promote sustainable practices amongst fashion design businesses. Alex’s previous experience includes: as New Business Manager for the Ethical Fashion Forum, conceiving and developing the business support offer through the London Development Agency funded New Entrepreneurs Programme and the Innovation competition; as Business Relations Manager for the Make Your Mark campaign, developing and delivering the Make Your Mark in Fashion initiative and the Enterprising Britain competition on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Alex also spent several years working in the film industry. Alex’s work is funded through the European Union Regional Development Fund.

1. Why do you think this programme is worth doing?

I think running a small fashion business can be very lonely, you’re often out there on your own navigating a difficult path through planning, design, development, production, sales and marketing. I think you can often end up questioning why you are doing what you do, what values lie behind your brand and what is truly unique about you. Exploring sustainability offers an opportunity to re-assess what you do and why you do it and re-invigorate your design process; yes there are challenges but there are also opportunities, with the help and guidance of CSF you can tap into and be part of an emerging movement and market in fashion.

2. What do you bring to the table?

I have worked with a whole variety of fashion businesses big and small with a particular focus on brand development and communications strategies; I have also worked with businesses in the beauty sector and various other creative sectors; my focus for the last five years has been on helping businesses to develop meaningful sustainability strategies and communicate the benefits of their work in this area and I am also an accredited environmental auditor. I’ve run my own business and I understand the difficulties and the thrills of being an entrepreneur.

Jules Hau

Director, Foundation Wholesale and PR Agency

Jules has been an influential driving force in the evolution of the ethical fashion industry within the UK since 2004, most noticeably her work in sales, highlighting her passion and drive in getting ethical fashion out on to the high street and into a mainstream arena, and launching the ethical and sustainable fashion sales events called ‘Fashion Made Fair’ in 2004.

Jules has worked in the fashion industry for over 12 years, focusing on brand development and sales. Having worked on the development of numerous mainstream brands including: Paul Frank, Dickies, GSUS, Stone Island, Tretorn and Evisu; Jules made a conscious decision to use her experience in the fashion industry to help build ethical fashion brands.  Jules then worked at Fair Trade pioneers People Tree as Business Development Manager, working with the marketing and design teams to increase sales seven fold during her time there.

Jules set up Foundation in April 2008. In two years, Foundation has increased in staff numbers, added a second department (PR) and grown their client list to include some of the UK and Europe’s most fashionable and well respected ethical fashion and lifestyle brands. The Foundation team see themselves as an extension of their brands and work as partners with both the fashion brands and their accounts.  Much more than just a sales agency, Foundation plays a key role in brand development by working on range planning, lookbook shoots, web development and social networking.

1. Why do you think this programme is worth doing?

I think that the programme gives companies a great insight into sustainable fashion and the current ethical fashion market.  It gives them time outside of their business to think bigger and longer term, away from the day to day running of the business.  Building a sustainable fashion business is not just about working with more sustainable fabrics and this programme plants seeds of thought covering all aspects of the company and product, opening up potential to develop companies in much more exciting and varied ways.  It is also great place to meet other people who are concerned about people and planet in the fashion business and to work with the Centre for Sustainable Fashion and other experts who really care.

2. What do you bring to the table?

After nearly 15 years of experience in the fashion business, I bring practical and honest information direct from my experience of working with a large number of brands at different levels of the market.  Having worked with ethical and sustainable brands for over 6 years I have hands on experience building sustainable brands and improving quality, increasing sales and increasing brand awareness.  Through this I understand the challenges that companies face and also the simple ways of making young fashion businesses more successful.  My company, Foundation works closely with some of the leading ethical and sustainable fashion brands and companies on Sales, PR and Brand Development which enables me to bring you insight into the current market and hopefully help you to sell your products into the UK fashion market more easily.

Claire Hamer

Sustainability Consultant and Co-founder, EI8HT

Claire is a sourcing and emerging-market linkage consultant within the fashion and apparel industry. Following ten years as a Buyer with three of the leading fashion retailers in the UK, Claire founded her consultancy EI8HT.

EI8HT works with businesses, government agencies and industry stakeholders to develop sustainable sourcing strategies, trade development programmes and project manages innovative product initiatives that address supply chain challenges.

Claire is a trustee of SOKO, a clothing production unit in Kenya, a member of the Vectra International network and an associate lecturer at a number of Universities in London.

1. Why do you think this programme is worth doing?

Navigating the challenges of creating a successful sustainable sourcing strategy is not something you can do alone. This innovative course creates a framework for you as an emerging brand or designer to influence the future of the fashion industry and create a model for your business that focuses on the triple bottom line – People, Planet, Profit. You won’t be disappointed!

2. What do you bring to the table?

I understand the pressures of trying to survive in today’s market whilst planning sustainable sourcing strategies for the future. Within my 10 year buying career, I have spent the last 5 years working with leading fashion retailers to develop more sustainable supply chains, and have extensive knowledge and understanding that the role of material sourcing has in the search for business models that minimise negative, and maximise positive environmental and social impacts.

Melanie Frame

Director, Empowerment Consultancy

Melanie has been working in the fashion industry for 20 years, mostly in the private sector. She is a specialist in the technical field across factory, supplier and retail sectors. She has worked for companies such as All Saints- as former Technical Director- and Topshop. She has worked across the world, including various countries in the Far East, Europe and Africa.

Melanie set up Empowerment Consultancy Ltd in 2010, with the aim of helping businesses to strategise and set up their ethical and technical processes.

1. Why do you think this programme is worth doing?

The programme enables designers and brands to establish key tools to capacity build and grow sustainably.

2. What do you bring to the table?

I believe I have invaluable experience in capacity building and enabling suppliers, brands and designers to look at sourcing and production processes.

David Hawksworth

Director, GIVEN LONDON

David has spent his career working in the brand communications and media industry, where he has worked with almost every customer group and category for major global brands such as Philips & adidas/Reebok.

David is as happy in the world of insight and strategy, as he is with creativity and ideas. Much of his past work involved developing ideas that make a real and positive contribution for people. These range from using communications to allow some of the world’s most famous footballers to show aspiring players the things that helped make them great, to the idea for a green taxi company to be the first private hire service in London to take bookings on twitter. David writes in his own blogs and the industry press, and takes part in projects to use media and communications for social good.

Becky Willan

Director, GIVEN LONDON

Becky’s professional background is in corporate social responsibility, but what makes her different from most CSR practitioners is that her understanding of environmental, social and ethical issues is matched by an extensive knowledge of brands and marketing.

She started out at The Body Shop, where she devised and implemented the company’s climate change strategy in EMEA and worked on a number of internal and external sustainability-led projects. She later joined Clownfish, a sustainability and communications consultancy, where she headed up the strategy team and worked with clients including Unilever, Kraft, Vodafone, Tesco and SCA. Becky left Clownfish at the end of 2009 and co-founded Given London with David.

1. Why do you both think this programme is worth doing?

Sustainability principles are becoming simply the best way to run a business on any measure.  But this isn’t based on a checklist of things to tick off a list or do’s and don’ts.  It’s a way of thinking.

As such, the programme is best thought of as a way of accessing some amazing tools and processes to use and follow, in order to make sustainability something that can help with every part of running a successful, differentiated and marketable fashion brand.

I would recommend the program not because it tells you what you need to know to be more sustainable, but because it will help you to run a more successful and strategic business.  Nobody can tell you how to run your company but every business (including our own) should always be hungry for this kind of outside help.

2. What do you bring to the table?

The program in general is about using sustainability to become a better business.  The module that we run as Given London is specifically about marketing, so you could think about this as using sustainability to build a better fashion brand.

As fashion businesses grow, they need to spend a lot of time and effort thinking about their brand because it will become the most valuable asset that they have.  Branding and marketing are often mystified and made more complicated than they need to be.  Our perspective on a brand is based on the culmination of what people know and understand about everything that you do – your take on style, your belief in what you do, where the inspiration comes from, the principles about how you do things.  It’s all part of this ‘brand’ idea.

Sustainability thinking in marketing is simply about making your brand story as real, authentic, trustworthy, and positive as it can be for the people you design for.

Given brings together a really strong understanding of both sustainability and mainstream marketing to give you the processes and the tools that you need to build a brand with substance.  If followed, it should help you, on a practical level, to communicate relevantly, coherently and in ways that get you noticed.