Front Row fashion returns this year to St Mary-in-the-Castle, Hastings on Saturday 21 November. 'Front Row Recycled' will be showcasing the best in vintage, recycled, re-worked & customized fashion and accessories. To find out more visit Front Row Recycled.

Last year's event was a great success! To find out more about Front Row please check out photos from last year's Ethical Fashion Show and an interview I originally did with Maika Crampton after last year's fab event. Maika is a local Designer and Creative Director of Front Row.

Can you give us some background to the Ethical Fashion Show 2008?

The event in 2007 at the White Rock Theatre was a sell-out success. Sarah and I were involved as designers at the time. Shortly afterwards Adam and Maresa from Hastings Environment Network (HEN) said they wouldn't be able to organise another show. So I decided to go for it and got Sarah Farrier, Jane Dodson and Katie Cooper on board. Front Row was born.

Why does Hastings need an Ethical Fashion Show?

I think Hastings deserves an annual event like Front Row to help put Hastings on the map as being a environmentally conscious, vibrant, forward thinking town and with London close by and McQueen and McCartney just around the corner, I'm convinced it will actually work...(ha ha). This year's Front Row Ethical Fashion Show 2008 was amazing and with almost 400 guests collecting their goody bag and sipping a free glass of fair trade wine a complete success. Our aim was to show how we all can be creative with clothes and that it is environmentally friendly and more ethical to check out charity shops, to buy vintage and recycled clothes.

Can you tell us about the designers involved?

We had a range of small designer labels like Hartman (Sarah's label), Mermangelle (Elizabeth Smith), Hit the Sack (Sally Winter), La la Rookh (Anna Winston/swimwear) and Winnie Carlson. We combined handmade and recycled custom made pieces with  vintage garments to create an individual style and included local vintage shops Little Treasures, The Wardrobe and The High Street Retro Shop. The show also featured Get Cutie, Lulie-B and the TRAID charity shop all based in Brighton as well as From Somewhere (based in London), Howies, Edun and Junky Styling. We also added Paper Couture for a bit of drama at the end.

Was it hard to organise/get off the ground?

The most wonderful thing about the whole event was that everyone involved gave their time, their creative input and their heart freely.

Do you have any plans for future events?

Of course, we will do another one and we promise it will be even bigger and more glamorous!

Terry Russell