In September 2008 I wrote about Leila Hafzi, whose ethereal, hand-worked gowns were made under fair-trade conditions in Nepal. Luxury and ethical in the same breath, years before any marketing department dared pair the two. A year later I wrote about Laura Dawson in New York, who used sustainable materials and kept her production close to home, the kind of quietly principled supply chain that would not make headlines for another decade.
Leila is still making them, out of Oslo and Kathmandu, a member of the Ethical Trading Initiative, still pairing the two words the industry kept insisting were opposites.
I loved her because she refused the false choice everyone else was still pretending was real: beauty or conscience, the gorgeous thing or the good one, but never both at once. The law has since taken her side. Fair-trade-by-hand is becoming mandatory due diligence under the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and the traceable, forced-labor-free supply chain she ran on conviction is now enforced at the US border under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
A bride in a Leila Hafzi gown was wearing the future. She just looked, at the time, like she was wearing a very beautiful dress.