Green Fashionistas - Succeeding With Style

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Following your passion is key to entrepreneurial success. But often, in life, we're taught that our passions are the frivolous, throw-away activities 'just for fun' that mean nothing in the 'serious' world of work. This is simply not true. Your passions are your currency to happiness. And the fuel to any business success. Without passion, your business will go nowhere. For creative entrepreneurs, this passion, and sense of fun is essential.

In December 2007, I took the plunge and finally committed to boycotting high street fashion unless sourced from ethical companies - as an experiment, for six months. A big influencer for me, was the hell that is Primark, Oxford Street, London. The much-hyped mecca that promised so much - the seduction of glittery, on-trend bargains, slashed prices never before seen - was in reality, predictably shocking. Stampeding shopaholics! Mind-numbing 45 minute queues! Too-many things to buy! Critically though, is the uncompromising reality of the human and ecological cost behind such low prices. And how that makes you feel.

I'm a girl with principles, who's campaigned to raise funds to help alleviate the plights of child labour in the pouring rain, in suburbs half the UK has forgotten. I've snapped-up Naiomi Klein's No Logo in its hey-day, armouring myself with facts about the rise of sweatshop culture, and supported activist mag Adbusters through Buy Nothing Day. But still found myself in Primark, years later, buying - very pretty - shoes. Shoes most probably made in a sweatshop. Shoes that - inevitably - fell apart within weeks of purchase, on the way to the tube, in the sodding rain. Life gets busier, and busier; fighting the allure, and easy-access of high street fashion, can eventually feel too difficult - and pointless to continue. I never stopped caring, I just felt bewildered: if I couldn't buy from the high street on a quick lunchtime shopping-spree, then where else was I supposed to go shopping, to buy new clothes? Based on a boat in Cambridge, trekking to London every time I needed a new coat to shop at TRAID, just wasn't always practical. Even when living in London, where time is the greatest luxury - buying nothing only works for as long as you want nothing.

Times have changed. With the likes of supergirl-model Lily Cole pioneering green, the eco-fashion world, has grown and evolved and - thank god - even mainstream journalists are now regularly publicising labels, retailers, and ideas to buy fashion without supporting sweatshops. So much so, that after reading an article in Elle last Autumn written by a canny writer who'd decided to stop buying clothes for six months, I realised that it wasn't actually that difficult to make the plunge - particularly if done as a learning curve. And then did it.

It's been a brilliant decision, one that I'm fully passionate about. It's forced me to really research alternative retailers, designers, and fashion media - locally and worldwide. I'm now not only armed with the facts, but am also armed with real choice: I don't have to buy there, I can also buy here. There are books to help me: Matilda Lee's Eco Chic, and Tamsin Blanchard's Green Is the New Black, are excellent. And friends - I've been hostessing Clothes Swap parties - coined 'Swishing' by sustainable communications consultancy Futerra, that have showered upon me a whole array of clothes I just would never have bought before. Kimonos, leopard-print woolens, polka-dot vests, hand-made cardis, white boots, an amazing paisley-print and fake fur-trimmed coat, and stunning jewellry. These girlfriends - including make up artist Natalie Barden, textile designer and artist Freya Zinovieff, designer-maker Githa St John Ives, and graphic designer Jane Norman - have excellent taste, which certainly helps. Our little, intimate girly- nights have led to plans to customise and recycle choice garments, to sell at a festival this Summer - just for the fun of it. I've even been contacted by a retailer in Portugal interested in my fledgeling recycled clothing designs.

I've discovered some excellent vintage boutiques, at prices that really rival Primark's. Cambridge's RSPCA boutique on Mill Rd offers quality, high-end labels and vintage for very low prices. 'As a charity shop, we just couldn't compete with Tesco-style prices, so started putting aside all the designer-finds we were donated with plans to open a retro, high-end boutique', said haute coutre designer Andrew Martin, deputy manager for the shop. I now wear some truly innovative and creative designers, with favorites including Naturally Bohemian http://www.gemma-eve.co.uk/, whose recycled clothing is to die for, and Nancy Dong's Kailia Footwear http://www.kailiafootwear.com/ - who I do PR for. I've even been invited to fashion production workshops at the London College of Fashion, by their sustainable fashion department (check Facebook group Green Is The New Black); to write a column for an ethical fashion magazine; and model in a fashion show at London club Egg, organised by Brighton-based Red Mutha (currently being filmed in a new series of Wife Swap!)

It's not all been easy. Some designer boutique owners become distinctively, self-righteously sniffy - embarrassed with their lack of information - when asked if they can provide ethical manufacturing credientials for their clothes. Other high street stores just don't have a clue about the conditions their stock is manuafactured in. Because they don't have to. Marks and Spencers, for example - ironically pioneers of fair trade - crumbled at questioning about where their shoes were manufactured - demanding 'well, why do'ya want to know??', where's Next, however, proved the diamond in rough, with one very young sales assistant making phone call after phone call to find out which of their 'Italian range' of shoes were made from material made in Italy - and, therefore, ethically sourced.

Four months on from my pledge, and with two months to go, I can't imagine going back - mainly, because I've learned that with so much choice out there, I really don't have to.