Ethical Fashion Collective-founder honoured with Green Gown Award

London College of Fashion (LCF) alumna Charlotte Rebekah Instone, whose Ethical Fashion Collective was rewarded with the Green Gown Sustainability Champion Award. For the 11th year in a row, the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) has awarded 16 environmental game-changers from over 40 British universities and colleges at the Green Gown Awards. The competition has fourteen different categories in which participants can submit their entry, including ´Food & Drink´, ´Carbon Reducation´ and ´Sustainability Champion´.

Instone, a graduate of LCF´s Buying and Merchandising Bachelor programme, is the founder of the Ethical Fashion Collective. The non-profit organisation hosted the Ethical Fashion Show, on May 2015, which attracted around 700 attendees and showcased clothing from over 30 brands including People Tree, Komodo and Ruby Rocks, and raised over 8.000 pounds (12.000 US dollars) for charity.

“University of the Arts London (UAL) is a place to explore, research, teach and learn practices and processes that contribute to the furthering of societies and cultures,” said the university's Vice-Chancellor Nigel Carrington. “We seek, through the arts, to enable community and individual engagement in practice. Winning this Green Gown Award recognises our commitment to social and ecological design and amplifies the impacts of our collective ambitions towards a sustainable future.” The UAL was also nominated in the category continuous improvement, which was partly due to the work of its Centre for Sustainable Fashion.

Currently, Instone is working on setting up a new social store: Know the Origin. This online store, which will launch in spring/summer 2016, is set to bring together sustainable brands which are transparent about where their items are made. Proceeds from the store will be used to benefit trade union leadership programmes in Bangladesh as well as workshops on ethics in the United Kingdom.

In total, 877,513 students and professors entered the Green Gown competition. Apart from the LCF, other universities and colleges which won a Green Gown Award included the University of Wales, Nottingham Trent University and the University of Cambridge.