Who made your pants?

It was this thought that catalysed Becky John to give up her well-paid job at the University of Southampton to work fulltime unpaid for a year and a half (so far) to set up an ethical underwear workers’ co-operative.

The hard work and dedication are set to start paying off as Who Made Your Pants? is about to go from being a start-up project into an active business.

It all started in May 2006. Becky, from St Denys in Southampton, was becoming increasingly aware of the conditions in sweatshops to make items such as mass-produced underwear.

“I’ve always loved pretty underwear and I was becoming more and more concerned about where things came from and how they were made,”

she explains.

“I thought ‘how can I wear the beautiful things that I love if someone might have died to produce them?’ I found out about the awful things that happen in sweatshops - forced contraception, forced internal examinations, children being fed amphetamines - and I thought ‘how can I feel lovely wearing these things?’.

“I buy most of my clothes in charity shops because that way I know my money isn’t going to an unethical producer but I don’t want to buy my underwear second-hand!”

Becky wasn’t impressed with the ethical alternatives that were available, which she found were mostly basic cotton, and came up with the idea of setting up an ethical underwear social enterprise (which doesn’t have shareholders and ploughs all profits back into the business), making pretty underwear.

Another factor that prompted her to take the leap of setting up Who Made Your Pants? was the fact that she was coming to the end of more than two years counselling for traumatic events in her youth.

“I hadn’t realised how bad I felt until I started feeling good. I thought ‘if I can share this good feeling with other women I will’. I was feeling really strong - it was a major turning point for me.”

In June 2008 Becky left her job working as a business manager at the university. She had saved up enough money to cover her bills and mortgage for three months, thinking that was how long it would take to begin to receive funding from a bid she had put in earlier in the year for social enterprises.

“That just doesn’t happen – it doesn’t work that way, as I’ve learnt!” she laughs.

“So it has been entertaining and terrifying wondering if I was going to be able to pay my mortgage.”

She has made ends meet with occasional freelance work and lodgers while setting up the business.

She knew she wanted to work with refugee women in Southampton, offering them a first step on the employment ladder with English language classes and training in how to use sewing machines and make delicate underwear.

There are now 25 women attending classes at Who Made Your Pants?, with a waiting list to get involved.

It has brought together women from a wide range of backgrounds who, as well as learning English and a trade, as also making friends.

There’s a lively atmosphere in the sewing lessons.

The women know how important it is to learn the craft – the business goes live in less than a month – but there are opportunities for fun.

Samia Zelgay, 40, is one of the jokers. The women now have a common language in English but they are still learning and visual jokes are easiest for everyone to share.

The former office worker from Afghanistan entertains her friends by stuffing sample knickers down her top to give herself an exaggeratedly curvy figure.

Batol Ibrahim admits that she found learning to sew very difficult to start with but it’s getting easier now.

The 29-year-old from Sudan has been dependent on her husband’s income since she arrived in the UK and is looking forward to making some money of her own.

She says that it’s her aim to ‘make perfect pants’ and that the pink ones are her favourite.

The underwear is, indeed, very pretty.

Becky set out to fill a gap in the market for ethically-produced synthetic underwear - which is environmentally friendly too.

“I wanted to use synthetic material without using virgin products and getting into oil and petrol dependency,” she says.

“We buy material which is a waste product from large lingerie companies at the end of the season. For me, using a waste product is better than taking something virgin - we’re diverting it from the waste stream.”

Becky hopes that as well as offering ethical, environmentally friendly knickers, Who Made Your Pants? will encourage people to think about where their other purchases come from.

“For me the name is really important. I hope that people will think ‘if they can be open about the conditions their clothes are made in and how much everyone’s being paid then why can’t other companies?’.

“Personally, I think we are encouraged to buy more than we need so people sell things that aren’t good quality and are made in bad conditions to satisfy this permanent hunger. I think it would be better and more appropriate to have fewer things that are better quality. I also think it’s really important in the light of resource scarcity that we keep skills in this country. Manufacturing is in decline in Britain. What happens if we’ve got no skills left when we can’t keep importing things because of the scarcity of oil and so on?

We’re still going to want these products and I think it’s important to have these skills locally.”

Supporting a social enterprise which is helping to reduce the country’s waste output and carbon footprint, trading ethically, educating women with language skills and a trade and helping to develop the local manufacturing industry - there’s lot more to a pair of Who Made Your Pants?

knickers than something pretty to wear under your clothes.

●Who Made Your Pants?

officially begins trading on December 1.You can place advance orders for knickers and gift vouchers. For more information, visit whomadeyourpants.co.uk.