But on a personal level I am excited as I designed these sandals. It’s great to see your work get recognition and its great to be associated with such a cool brand as Where, which is genuinely ethical. The founder of Where who came to my final year Cordwainers exhibition, was interested in my ethical collection and my design work.

Topshop has for a while now had a buyer only for Fair Trade products, and in clothing had stocked products from People Tree some time ago already.

But this broadens the scope of the amount of ethical fashion on the high street even more which is fantastic.

Where not only uses eco friendly materials but also produces in communities in a equitable and sustainable way.

The Shoewawa blog also covered the Where sandals, as did the Evening Standard.

The most striking example of what I found was BarkCloth or Bark Cloth (“Textile from the Kings”) from Uganda, which is the commercial name for one of the oldest textiles known to man. It represents the continuation of an almost forgotten African craft. There are also other forms of bark cloth that have been produced elsewhere like Asia. Another item that has been misnamed “barkcloth” is a soft, thick, slightly textured fabric so named because it has a rough surface like that of tree bark.

Using Bark Cloth helped me gain interest in my collection.

In Uganda farmers collect the fibrous bark of the Ficus natalensis tree, which they crush, work and flatten into a non-woven textile. Each Bark Cloth is made from the bark of just one tree. This means that every Bark Cloth is unique with it’s own particular story, look and texture.

Originally used to make burial shrouds for royalty, bark cloth can be dyed, fireproofed, coated and laminated. Applications thus far included furniture, lighting, interior design and clothing. This is largely thanks to the marketing efforts of an Afro-European family (Barongo-Heintz).

The manufacture process is totally environmentally friendly (Eco-Certified), it is produced by an Ugandan community under Fair-trade conditions. The Barongo-Heintz’s follow closely the production process and has very close relationship with the community of workers.

Bark Cloth Challenges

The Barongo-Heintz’s were very excited about my use of the material in footwear as it had not been done before. I did a number of tests with the material and it does present some challenges. It is not naturally water resistant. Also because the material is not that strong shoes have to be hand lasted or one has to use a strong backing material. good news is that Oliver Heintz is experimenting with use of latex to make Bark Cloth water resistant.

I was also concerned that the Bark Cloth natural aesthetic could look too ‘hippy’ for my collection, which was a high end fashion shoe range. This however depends on how you apply it. An innovative shoe shape design goes a long way to escape the tie-die fashion tag.

I however used it successfully in my collection which included both shoes and handbags. I combined the Bark Cloth with vegetable tanned leathers sourced from local South African tanneries.

UNESCO has declared Bark Cloth an intangible, cultural world heritage material. Bark Cloth has also been winner of 2005 IF Material Award, winner of the 2005 Materialica Design Award and Nominee for the 2007 Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Spanish shoe designer Laura Villasenin has incorporated Peet Pienaar’s graphic finesse and quirky slogans in her new range of shoes and bags.

Having long wanted to make a range of eco-friendly, fair-trade shoes that did not conform to the ethnic or hippy cliché, Villasenin was inspired by Pienaar’s work, which she came across while on holiday in South Africa. After communicating over e-mail, they agreed that Pienaar would do the graphic details and packaging for Villasenin’s shoes, in return for which, Villasenin would assist Pienaar in designing sneakers.

Based on her ecological ideals, Villasenin decided to explore the South African manufacturing alternatives too. “The idea was to source materials from within southern African countries and use vegetable tan leathers to make it as eco-friendly as possible,” she explained. For the handbags, however, she used the much-lauded Ugandan bark cloth. The multifunctional aspects of her designs – knee-high boots zipping down into anklets and large handbags folding into purses – also adhere to green design principles.

“This is a high-end product rather than being mass-produced because you can’t compete with China on that anyway. In Spain and Italy, they’ve already positioned themselves in terms of high quality,” said Villasenin who previously worked at ethical footwear label Terra Plana in London. After completing the project with Pienaar, she returned to Spain to take up a position with Camper.

Pienaar was thrilled to try a hand at footwear design. His limited-edition leather sneakers sport a unique lace-up structure with gold alphabet beads. He also has an experimental distribution plan, which entails an inflatable shop that will travel around the country.

“It’s so exciting to think that one can actually design sneakers because one tends to think that they only do it in China. But unless you’ve studied shoe design, there’s a big gap because you can’t communicate with the factory. Even if you know what you want, unless you have the terminology it’s impossible to get there with the factory,” said Pienaar.

“The work on display in London’s most prestigious shopping arcade demonstrates the huge breadth of talent that is cultivated at London College of Fashion. The collections on show reflect the international student base with strong environmental themes using traditional skills. Highlights include beautiful half-knit, half-leather bags by Laura Queening, who uses a Nepali women’s co-operative to produce her creations and has already won the Emap Students Accessories Designer of the Year 2007. Laura Villasenin’s incredible shoes were inspired by African culture and constructed unusually from Ugandan bark- cloth.”

Read more about the Cordwainers exhibition here.