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Tamsin Lejeune leads a roundtable discussion at the Houses of Parliament on fashion sustainability, cleaning up the industry and how MySource can help to achieve this.

Engaged in conversation were leading British fashion designer, Roland Mouret,  Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey OBE, who continuously advocates ethical fashion at political level and Hilary Alexander OBE, former Fashion Director of The Daily Telegraph as well as representatives of H&M, Vivienne Westwood and several world leading suppliers.

Tamsin Lejuene, CEO of Mysource.io ( 2nd in from left) wears Kitty Ferreira’s peace silk 2-tone Shirt

Tamsin’s had 10 years experience building The Ethical Fashion Forum, of which we are members and  currently reaches a network of 220,000 people in 141 countries. She knows a thing or two about how unethical the traditional fashion business model can be, as well as having first hand experience of working with suppliers in India and running her own ethical womenswear brand.

“Our goal is that Mysource will become a fundamental tool for all fashion professionals, whether or not they have any interest in sustainability – helping them to build more efficient supply chains, create market-targeted products and services, and grow their sales base. Once on the platform, users gain commercial advantages through more sustainable practices – including more profile and higher search rankings on the site.”

Building on the current SOURCE platform model (of the Ethical Fashion Forum), Mysource will adopt clever matching algorithms to notify you of suppliers or business connections based on your profile and requests, as well as a benchmarking system which will allow for higher visibility and rankings based on social, environmental and commercial criteria.

Sounds like a much needed development for this toxic fashion industry. What I like about this service is that those not currently practicing sustainability within their supply chains can easily use this service and who knows, maybe they will want to engage more in better business ethics over the longterm, taking sustainability from niche to norm.

More and more consumers are looking for products made in a sustainable fashion, however Tamsin cites that bottle-necks in developments stem from businesses seeing ” sustainability being perceived as a cost rather than an opportunity.”

There are indeed businesses who have proven to cut costs via more sustainable production methods such as Miroglio Textiles, an Italian textile mill. When I had the pleasure of meeting Gianluigi Giachino at a sustainability debate and dinner hosted by WRAP and HGA, a few weeks ago, he spoke of the savings made by introducing waste reduction systems and closed loop processes within their textile production.

Mysource is currently crowdfunding with an extended deadline of 8th December.

Not long to go now to invest from as little as £10 and to be part of a fashion revolution of change, of which Jane Shepherdson CBE , CEO of  Whistles and Amber Valetta, supermodel turned Ethical Fashion Entrepreneur of Master and Muse are backing.

I’d also recommend watching True Cost, a movie that sets a backdrop as to why the industry needs to change, from farming through to finished garment and pertains to social injustices, poverty, elitism and racism within our societies.

A change is needed at the root.

#dofashionbetter