Over 30 international models and celebrities have stepped up to be photographed in EJF’s 2010 summer collection of designer organic cotton t-shirts by Jenny Packham, Richard Nicoll, Ciel and Alice Temperley in support of the charity’s work ending forced child labour in the cotton industry.
The organic cotton t-shirts will be available in stores internationally and will be available from EJF’s own website for men and women for only £30 for SS10.
Cover girls and catwalk regulars including Noemie Lenoir, Noot Seear, Lui Wen, Arlenis Sosa, Lakshmi Menon, Constance Jablonski, Poppy Delevigne and Devon Aoki, have been photographed in the exclusive t-shirts for the ‘Pick Your Cotton Carefully’ campaign – with most taking part in photo shoots organised by New York based fashion photographer Eric Guillemain.
They join a stellar line up of existing supporters including Lily Cole, Coco Rocha, Elise Crombez and Sophie Ellis Bextor who have also modelled EJF’s eco-chic t-shirts. Other designer supporters include Giles Deacon, John Rocha, Betty Jackson, Christian Lacroix, Luella, Allegra Hicks, Zandra Rhodes and Katharine Hamnett.
They are designed around the theme of “childhood, lost innocence and hope” and highlight EJF’s newly released and highly anticipated report called “Slave Nation” on their campaign to end forced child labour in the world’s 3rd largest cotton exporter, Uzbekistan.
An estimated 1 million children, some as young as 10 years old, were dispatched to Uzbekistan’s cotton fields during the recent harvest. Uzbek child workers are often subjected to squalid living conditions paid little or nothing and illnesses including hepatitis and even deaths are all reported.
EJF’s t-shirts are made with organic and fairly traded Continental cotton from Turkey and printed with organic certified inks. The money raised from the sale of the t-shirts helps EJF’s work to eradicate forced child labour and the use of dangerous pesticides from cotton production.
Alice Temperley says: “I wanted to make this T shirt for the Environmental Justice Foundation, to help those poor innocent children with no way out, no dreams of their own and in order to highlight the chronic and severe exploitation across the industry.”
Juliette Williams, Director of EJF, says: “In the past few years there has been a huge international effort to try to resolve the problem of state-sponsored child labour in Uzbekistan and we’re thrilled with the support EJF has been given to bring change to this industry. But there is still some way to go and the time is now to really turn up the pressure and stop this madness.”
Buying a t-shirt or making a donation online is a positive step shoppers can take to support EJF’s work from www.ejfoundation.org – helping them protect the environment and defend human rights of vulnerable communities around the world and fashion an end to forced child labour.
www.ejfoundation.org
White Gold – the true cost of cotton from Environmental Justice Foundation on Vimeo.
