Harry Potter Star Emma Watson Endorses Fair Trade Fashion

by Amanda Kloer · 2010-08-30 07:00:00 UTC
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Emma Watson, the 20-year-old British actress who rose to fame as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, is apparently more like her on-screen character than other young starlets these days. In addition to finishing up two films and being a student at Brown, the young actress recently traveled to Bangladesh. Why? She wanted to get some hands-on experience with how her Fair Trade clothing line is being produced.

Watson has used her acting career to launch into the world of fashion, first as a model, then a designer, and now, as an advocate for eco-friendly and Fair Trade fashion. As part of that, she's endorsing a collection from People Tree, a U.K.-based firm that sells Fair Trade fashions produced in developing countries where trafficking and labor abuses in the garment industry are rampant. But slapping her name on some Fair Trade t-shirts wasn't enough for Watson. She recently visited Bangladesh herself last month to see how her clothing was made, and she even learned how to naturally dye fabrics and work one of the textile machines. Her visit doesn't just show that Watson is a woman of substance, but also begs the question of how someone with two other full time jobs has time to check up on her factories when international corporations with staffs of thousands claim they don't.

Watson started working with People Tree to give back to the community, eschewing the binge-drinking, panty-flashing, rehab-hopping patterns of her peers. And doing so has made her look cool in a sea of hot messes. Incidentally, workers' rights was also the chosen platform of Watson's most famous character, Hermione Granger. Granger founded the Society to Promote Elvish Welfare (S.P.E.W.) at Hogwarts to address the lack of fair pay and poor working conditions suffered by the house elves of the wizarding world. It's an admirable stance, and one Emma Watson has obviously taken to heart.

Thank goodness, though, she came up with a better name for her project.

Photo credit: ursulakm

Amanda Kloer is a Change.org Editor and has been a full-time abolitionist in several capacities for seven years. Follow her on Twitter @endhumantraffic
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