Fair Fashion

by Holly Webb

  Izzy spluttered, halfway between tears and giggling.

  “You see! She does! You know it too!” Maya told her triumphantly. She elbowed Emily and gave her a glare. Couldn’t she see that this was more important than her squabble with Izzy?

  “She really does,” Emily said solemnly. “And she always smells like an accident in a body-spray factory.”

  Izzy snorted, her hand over her mouth. “Stop it!” she wheezed. “I’ll be sick.”

  “OK. But promise you’ll get the T-shirt. Unless there’s something nicer,” Maya told her firmly.

  Izzy nodded. “You try your stuff on.”

  Maya tried on her favourite thing first – a long T-shirt, with a belt to go round it that was covered in little embroidered birds and flowers. The label said it was organic cotton, and it had been made in India.

  “That’s pretty!” Izzy told her, as she came out. She was still sniffing a little, but she looked much happier, and she was sharing a chair with Poppy while they looked through a basket of bead necklaces. It was the friendliest Maya had ever seen her look.

  “It’s good with the belt,” Emily agreed.

  By the time they’d all tried on everything, Maya’s pile had gone down to the T-shirt and belt, and a cool printed scarf. Izzy was getting the T-shirt and skirt, and Poppy had stuck to the gypsy skirt. Emily was still trying to decide.

  “Do you want to try some bits on again?” Maya asked. “I really like this fashion show thing. We should all go shopping together always!”

  Emily sighed. “I don’t think it will help. I like all these. Maybe we can talk to the owner of the shop about Fairtrade clothes before we buy things, and then I’ll decide.”

  But Maya hardly heard her. She was staring at the clothes rails with an amazed expression on her face, which slowly turned into a delighted smile.

  “I think I’ve just had a stunningly brilliant idea!”

  “What? Is it a way for me to decide what to get? I’m not just tossing a coin, Maya.” Emily folded her arms firmly.

  “No, no, no! I think we should have a fashion show!” Maya sat down on one of the madly painted wooden chairs with a thump, frowning at her feet. “Just like we did now… Maybe not just the girls’ clothes, though, we could get people to wear the adults’ stuff. We could charge people to come in – just a little. We could send the money to one of the Fairtrade projects. And if everyone from school came, and their parents, they’d all see the gorgeous Fairtrade clothes, and they’d know about them then, wouldn’t they? People would buy them if they knew more about them, or at least sometimes they would.”

  Izzy nodded. “We hadn’t even heard of Fairtrade clothes – at least people would know there was something they could do.”

  Emily frowned. “But how could we have a fashion show? Do you mean we have to make clothes? We can’t.”

  Maya shook her head. “No. Let’s ask the lady out there. We could borrow these clothes. We’d look after them.”

  Poppy twirled her hair around her finger. “Do you think she’d let us?”

  “We can only ask.” Maya shrugged. “The worst she can do is say no.”

  “How are you girls doing?” The lady from the shop was leaning on the archway between the two rooms. “Your mum’s decided to buy a handbag,” she told Poppy.

  Poppy grinned. “She loves bags. She’ll have to hide it from my dad. Last time she came home with another one, he made her say if she bought any more she had to clear out one of the ones she’d already got.”

  “I heard that! Don’t you dare tell him, Poppy Jane Martin!” Poppy’s mum called from the other room.

  “Bags too…” Emily sighed at the pile of things she was holding.

  The shop owner nodded. “It’s a women’s cooperative in the Philippines, they make the bags out of juice cartons. You know, those foil pouch ones that are completely non-biodegradable, and just end up in landfill. The company actually started as an environmental project.” She smiled, spotting Poppy’s doubtful face. Maya guessed Poppy was a bit worried about what her mum was buying. “They do clean the pouches very carefully before they stitch them into bags. They don’t look like rubbish.”

  “Oh!” Izzy smiled. “I saw them on the way in, the cute bags with the fruit on? I didn’t realise they were drinks cartons.”

  “Exactly. Look, they’re through here.” She led the girls through to look at the display in the main shop, where Poppy’s mum was holding two bags and dithering.

  “Aren’t they lovely?”

  “They make gorgeous jewellery too, I’m just waiting for a delivery of that. It’s made out of recycled magazines.”

  “That sounds amazing.” Maya stroked one of the bags admiringly. “Oh, look, lunchboxes!” Anna had been complaining that Maya’s lunchbox was falling apart, but Maya really liked it. But she would love a new one like this. “Sorry, I’m putting the T-shirt back.” She had enough money for a lunchbox as well, but she knew she got a lot more allowance than the others, and she didn’t want to make it too obvious.

  “They are great,” Emily agreed.

  Maya beamed at the shop owner hopefully as she picked up her lunchbox. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered having a fashion show?” she asked. “Tara,” she added, noticing that the lady had a pretty embroidered name-badge pinned on her dress.

  Tara smiled. “Are you all volunteering to model?”

  She didn’t sound as though she was taking them very seriously, and Maya tried not to sigh. “No, thank you. We’re interested in Fairtrade clothes. We’re trying to get our school to switch to a Fairtrade uniform as well. We were wondering if we could organise a fashion show, to – er –” Maya tried to remember the phrases she’d seen on the websites she’d looked at. “To raise awareness,” she added quickly. “Not just the children’s clothes, the ladies’ stuff too.”

  “My mum could model her bag,” Poppy suggested, with a giggle, and her mum pretended to bat her with it.

  Tara was looking more interested now. “I’ve actually been thinking about something like that.”

  “We could ask if our school would let us use the hall,” Izzy put in. “We could send letters home to all the parents about it.”

  Tara was smiling. “I’d really like to try and raise some extra money for one of the groups we buy from. What gave you girls the idea of doing all this?” She sounded a little surprised, Maya thought. As though she wasn’t used to people their age wanting to organise things.

  “We’re studying Fairtrade.” Maya saw Emily blink at her, but she didn’t want to say it was a school project. Studying sounded more serious somehow. “We’ve been doing some research. And then we saw your shop. It was luck, really,” she admitted. “We actually want to do something, not just write about Fairtrade stuff.”

  “Could you let us borrow clothes from the shop for a show?” Izzy asked. “If we sold tickets, you could give the money to the group you were talking about.”

  “That would be amazing,” Tara agreed. “They’re trying to raise money to build a school. They’re the ones who make these T-shirts.” She stroked the blue T-shirt Izzy was carrying. “All this printing is done by hand, you see. It’s a group in Bangladesh – they want their workers to be able to survive in their own villages, instead of having to move to the cities, which are really overcrowded.”

  “We should put lots of their clothes in the show then,” Maya suggested. “I don’t know if our school would let you sell clothes there. But we could ask. And even if they don’t, you could put a leaflet on all the chairs.”

  “If your school will let us use the hall, I’d love to do it.” Tara looked shell-shocked, but really pleased.

  Maya and the others looked at each other happily. It was actually going to happen!

  “Now we just have to get Mrs Angel to agree…” Emily pointed out.

  “If we’re going to talk to Mrs Angel, we need to look really organised,” Izzy explained. “And we need to be able to answer any questions she�
�s got. So I looked this stuff up on the net. It’s sort of a how-to-put-together-an-event info sheet.”

  “Wow… Show producer… Backstage manager… We haven’t got enough people for all of this,” Poppy said worriedly, leaning over their table to stare at the list Izzy had printed out.

  “I think a lot of the jobs can be put together,” Izzy explained. “And Tara will do some of it, won’t she? We don’t have to do all this bit about finding outfits. And she mentioned getting her daughter to find models at the sixth-form college. But we have to decide when we do the show – not the date, that’ll be up to Mrs Angel, I suppose, but what time. If we want parents to come, it’s got to be after school, or in the evening.”

  “Evening, definitely,” Poppy said. “My mum couldn’t come if it was after school, not unless she got an afternoon off work.” Poppy went to after-school club most days.

  “Yes, but if we have it in the evening, we might need more than just the fashion show,” Izzy explained. “It says so here. About an hour and a half altogether, with an interval. And when you go to a concert or something, people always have a coffee in the interval, don’t they? So we might have to organise that too.”

  “That’s a lot,” Maya said thoughtfully. “But I suppose people might not come for just, say, twenty minutes of clothes.”

  “Exactly. We can say it’s a whole evening out.” Izzy nodded. She looked really excited, Maya realised, and now she wasn’t staring at her feet whenever she wanted to say something. Emily had stopped scowling at her all the time. She wasn’t exactly being friendly to Izzy, but at least she wasn’t muttering behind her back.

  “How’s your project going, girls?” Mr Finlay asked. “Ready to show me anything? Mrs Angel says you can go and see her tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow!” Maya squeaked.

  “Tomorrow’s fine.” Emily glared at her. “Please can we just have a bit longer to plan things before we show you? Even just ten minutes to make it all into a list?”

  “All right. But I do need to see what’s going on. I’ll come back in ten minutes.” Mr Finlay looked distinctly worried.

  “He thinks we’re going to get him into trouble with Mrs Angel,” Maya whispered.

  Poppy nodded. “We probably are! We were only supposed to be doing a project – a big poster or something. Like the others.” She glanced around at the rest of the class. Most of the other tables had started making stuff to stick on to big wall displays.

  Izzy laughed. “Not a fashion show, and a campaign to change all our school uniform. But we can make a display too – with all this stuff on it. Explaining how we came up with the ideas.”

  “What are we going to use for the rest of the time at the fashion show, though?” Emily asked, glancing round at Mr Finlay. “We need a plan before he comes back.”

  “What about your dance school?” Maya suggested. She’d seen Emily dancing in the Christmas play, and she knew she’d done loads of dance exams. “They do shows, don’t they? Would they do some dancing at a fashion show?”

  Emily nodded slowly. “Most of the people in my ensemble group were in Year Six here last year. I bet they would. Katie Hodge, she’s one of them. And Maria, and Ellie-May. And I can ask Miss Sara if any of the others can do it too.”

  Izzy was scribbling down notes. “Fashion show … clothes provided by Tara Nelson at Daisy… Models from Littlemoor Sixth Form College… Publicity by … us?”

  The others nodded slowly. No one knew exactly how to go about doing publicity though.

  “It can’t be that hard,” Maya said hopefully.

  “OK. We need to use the stage blocks to make a catwalk. There’s some shapes we can do here, look.” Izzy riffled through her papers. “Mr Finlay always does the lights for the school play, doesn’t he?” she added thoughtfully.

  “And we need somewhere for people to change, it says here,” Poppy pointed out. “The staffroom’s behind the hall.”

  “What’s the staffroom got to do with your project?” Mr Finlay sat down next to Poppy, and eyed them worriedly.

  Izzy passed him the list, and Emily pulled out the petition she’d found, asking for Fairtrade uniform.

  “Whoa. This is what you wanted to talk to Mrs Angel about?” Mr Finlay muttered, scanning through the list. “A fashion show… Fairtrade clothes, that’s a brilliant idea. And the school uniform…”

  “The cotton for our sweatshirts might be picked by children in Uzbekistan,” Maya pointed out. “Lots of the cotton that’s used in factories in India is. And we don’t know where these are made.” She held out her sleeve, looking at it worriedly. “We don’t want to change the sweatshirts.” She bit her lip suddenly, trying not to laugh, because Poppy was making a face. “We only want to find out if the people who make them could do a Fairtrade one. Or if we can get them from someone who does.”

  “Do you think Mrs Angel will let us?” Izzy asked anxiously.

  Mr Finlay frowned. “I hope so. But this is all very ambitious, girls. Do you really think you can organise something like this?”

  “We’ve already got the woman who runs the Fairtrade shop to say she’ll provide the clothes,” Maya explained. “And that would be the most difficult part, if we were asking lots of different shops for them. So it’s only the other bits. We don’t know if Emily’s dance school can be involved yet.”

  “Perhaps we could put up all the other Fairtrade displays for people to look at while they have coffee in the interval,” Mr Finlay suggested. “Fairtrade coffee! And biscuits made out of Fairtrade ingredients!”

  “Good one!” Emily sounded impressed. “Um, sorry…”

  “I’m pretty sure she’ll say yes to the fashion show, the sweatshirts might be more difficult.” Mr Finlay frowned. “Of course, at the fashion show you could do a little presentation about it – get people to sign the petition.”

  “I found a video all about cotton picking in Uzbekistan, but I don’t know how we’d show it.” Maya looked hopefully at Mr Finlay. She knew he was good with things like that.

  “Laptop and projector, Maya, no problem. You could have the whole presentation on the screen, with photos of the factories and things.”

  “Will you help?” Maya asked hopefully. “We wondered if you might be able to sort out lights.”

  Mr Finlay nodded. “Yes, if we’re allowed to do it I’ll definitely help – I should think Mrs Angel will say you need some staff involved anyway.” He saw Emily’s disappointed face. “Don’t worry. No one will take over your idea, girls. You’ll still be in charge.”

  “I don’t know if our uniforms are Fairtrade or not…” Mrs Angel murmured the next morning. Mr Finlay had left the rest of the class with Miss Grace, so he could explain to Mrs Angel that he would help too.

  “I think they probably aren’t, then,” Maya said politely. “They’d make a thing of it, if they were Fairtrade, wouldn’t they?”

  Mrs Angel nodded. “Yes, of course.” She smiled at Mr Finlay. “This wasn’t what I was expecting when you told me your class were doing projects on Fairtrade.”

  Mr Finlay smiled proudly. “I know. They’re thinking big.”

  “There is quite a lot that could go wrong, though.” Mrs Angel looked down Izzy’s list. “However, if you can sell enough tickets in advance to cover paying Mr Sampson to keep school open for the evening, you can have your show. Mr Finlay, can you go through the diary with Mrs Brooker, and find a good date? About three or four weeks away, perhaps.”

  “And we can do a presentation about Fairtrade cotton, and ask people to sign the petition?” Emily asked hopefully.

  Mrs Angel nodded. “That kind of thing has to be decided by the governors, though. Get lots of signatures and we’ll see.”

  “Thanks, Mrs Angel!”

  The girls hurried out of the office, and hugged each other in the corridor. Maya even felt like hugging Mr Finlay.

  “I’ll email Tara tonight and tell her we can do the show!” she said excitedly. “Then she can get her d
aughter started on finding models.”

  “Let’s go and get a date set then.” Mr Finlay went into the school office, and started explaining to Mrs Brooker, who was surprisingly enthusiastic.

  “I’ve seen that lovely new shop,” she told the girls, who were clustering round the door. “And this is the uniform catalogue. See if you can find anything about Fairtrade.” She passed them a thick catalogue, marked with sticky notes here and there, and they leafed through it.

  “It doesn’t say anything about where the cotton comes from,” Maya muttered. “Nothing about Fairtrade at all.” She sighed. “So we’d have to find someone who could make jumpers with the school logo on.”

  “I’ll put it on my list,” Izzy said, and Maya laughed.

  “You sound so organised! But I suppose we need to be.” She gave a little shiver. She could hardly believe that Mrs Angel had said yes. Suddenly Izzy’s list looked very scary.

  “This is so exciting!” Tara sounded delighted. Maya had decided to phone the shop as soon as she got home from school, rather than emailing. “Tuesday the nineteenth. Just over three weeks. Right. I’ll get Leah finding some models. But what about the girls’ clothes, Maya? Will you and your friends model those? It would be nice, seeing as it was all your idea.”

  Maya gulped, feeling suddenly stupid. They hadn’t even thought about that! Of course, if they were doing a show at school, all the girls would want to see the clothes for them too. “I’m not sure…” she faltered. “We might have to do back-stage stuff. But we can find people, definitely.”

  They agreed to meet up at the shop again on Saturday, and Maya put the phone down, feeling worried. Who should they ask? She loved the idea of modelling, but she had agreed to do the presentation about Fairtrade cotton with Poppy, and they were going to introduce the fashion show. Izzy was so organised she was going to be the show producer, and Emily was excellent at bossing people around, so she was being backstage manager, which as far as Maya could see was shoving everybody into the right place with all their stuff – something Emily was used to doing every day. Maya and Poppy were in charge of the publicity too. But the girls had all agreed that they’d help with everything. They’d told Mr Finlay he was the technical coordinator, and he’d pointed out that they ought to do a programme. It had gone on the List. It definitely had a capital L by now.