Gucci vs. the UN

[saintjohn]

Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons?

Now charity staff hit at cult of celebrity

Workers for children's charity Unicef say celebrity campaigns and fashion company deals are hurting its image

Dan McDougall in Islamabad
Sunday November 26, 2006
The Observer

The new vogue among the biggest catwalk labels is to adopt a charity to tell the world you have a heart. Last week Gucci joined Prada, Armani and Jean Paul Gaultier to become the latest label to embrace philanthropy by launching an exclusive Christmas gift collection in conjunction with Unicef, the United Nations children's fund.

But the motivation for alliances between high fashion and charity is being increasingly questioned by international pressure groups involved in the daily fight against sweatshops and, perhaps most embarrassingly for the UN, by their own front-line officers.

The Observer has learnt that, in a series of memos to the UN headquarters in New York, senior Unicef ground staff in South Asia have expressed their resentment at the charities' love affair with glamour and celebrity, fearing that the association is not only demeaning the UN 'brand' but also portraying its workers as hypocrites.

Unicef staff in Pakistan and India have focused their fury on the alleged working practices of the French conglomerate PPR (formerly Pinault-Printemps-Redoute), which owns Gucci and whose Asian suppliers have, over the past decade, been embroiled in damning links to sweatshops in Mumbai and Karachi.

'The association with Gucci has been the final straw for field officers,' one long-term Unicef worker in Pakistan said last week. 'The feeling, and it is a unanimous sentiment, is that we are selling the Unicef name down the river. The need for fund-raising is paramount, granted, but not at the cost of integrity.'

Read the rest here.

[barstar diana]

half those labels use cheap third world labor...