Vicki Woods

Last week, Asda slashed the price of a 1.5kg roasting chicken to [pound]2 and purred with pleasure as shoppers snapped up the cheapest chicken in Europe (and possibly in history). Buying it two or three at a time, they were. Asda said their [pound]2 chicken is "iconic"; I say it's unethical. And revolting.

Though I'm a keen carnivore, I'd go vegan before I ate a [pound]2 chicken. But I can say that, because I can afford to swan around farmers' markets with [pound]100 cash in my pocket, buying gently bred bits of slow-reared, prettily prepared butchery.

Cheap fast-fashion is just as unethical as cheap fast-food, but since we don't have to eat our [pound]2 wear-and-chuck T-shirts, there isn't the same instinctive revulsion. Only a nagging worry at the back of the head. I've only once bought a pack of three [pound]2 T-shirts, and I fretted about them. I know enough to know cotton is bad, bleach is vicious and [pound]2 a piece doesn't leave much over for Daljeet to take home. You often see Daljeet on ads for Fairtrade clothing. She'll be dyeing something organically and laboriously by hand in Bangalore and smiling for the camera. Daljeet looks scarily thin, but she does look older than 12, phew. She isn't using any killer bleaches or environmentally vicious dyes, more phew. But you have to worry about who does.

Jane Shepherdson, the former queen of Topshop's fast-fashion empire, is worrying full time. She is embracing ethical fashion in a big way. "We can't carry on buying [pound]2 T-shirts and not ask where they come from." Shepherdson, who was until last year the most powerful woman in retail, is a sinner who has been saved. If anybody was responsible, over the last decade, for making a [pound]2 T- shirt a must-have, it was her. She spent her working life at Sir Philip Green's Topshop, starting back when it sold piles of downmarket tat.

When Shepherdson became brand director in 1998, she powered it into a "British icon" (officially! it's on that daft website), by selling cheap and fantastically fashionable instead of cheap'n'nasty. In nine years she made Topshop the fashion wonder of the world. In her first year as brand director, it made [pound]9m profit. (Last year, [pound]110m.)

It's not surprising that Shepherdson took the growth of ethical fashion head-on. "Ethical fashion" is a complex beast - some bits more ethical than others. Secondhand shops are ethical insofar as they recycle the heinous clothes mountain. So is "reworked" fashion (like Green Tory Cameron's Terra Plana trainers) because they use bits of old clothes to make new ones. "Eco fashion" doesn't use bleach or vicious dyes. "Fairtrade" means Daljeet gets a shorter working day and a slightly bigger basic wage, plus some or all of the above. It's all very admirable, really, truly.

I've admired ethical fashion for some time, but I could never bring myself to buy any. Not for me. Organic cotton clothes for a friend's new sprog, yes. A crunchy frock in vegetable-dyed fabric so thick you could roll it up and smoke it, no. I went to a Fairtrade Fashion Fair and despaired, came home and dug out an old jacket to wear when I was feeling ethically guilty. Recycled Chanel doesn't quite cut it though.

Shepherdson was ahead of the curve on ethical fashion. She started selling "vintage" in Topshop, which made a small dent in the clothes-mountain. Last year she launched a People Tree concession in Topshop. People Tree is as ethical as fashion gets, acting as partners to textile workers and artisans with traditional skills. They act more like an NGO than a fashion company, by paying a rural farming community in advance for its crop. Or funding welfare schemes. Clare Short should wear their stuff. I stare hard at what she wears but I don't think it's People Tree. Sienna Miller did wear their stuff. All that silky, floaty, scarf-y, boho-wear she made modish went well with People Tree's floaty little silk tea-gowns and scarves. Sienna became quite famous for being ethical as well as lovely and celebtastic. She said: "We can all make a difference, even if it's just choosing to buy organic knickers instead of designer-label ones."

It was seriously clever of of Jane Shepherdson to get ethical. Other retailers gritted their teeth and sold bits and bobs of "organic" this and "Fairtrade" that, meanwhile muttering about how there wasn't enough organic cotton in the world to source, especially after M&S started selling a few knickers and vests in it. Last summer, every chain-store you can think of started putting up cardboard signs saying ORGANIC in front of the odd rail of creamy- coloured calico frocks. It gave retailers something good to say on their annual reports. H&M recently issued this: "H&M started using organic cotton in 2004, and has since been increasing its use. It is estimated it will use 1,100 tonnes of the cotton this year." Fabulous! But organic cotton is less than 1 per cent of the world's annual cotton crop.

I've often wondered what Sir Philip Green thought about having ethically wonderful People Tree in Topshop. His company Arcadia has not signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative, where companies pledge "to address workers' conditions" throughout the supply- chain. When he took little Kate Moss (another British icon) on his arm to the London fashion shows last year and said she was "designing for Topshop", Shepherdson left the company only days later. No connection, she said. "I find it slightly exasperating that my decision to move on will be forever linked with Kate Moss." Anyway, she's now on the board of People Tree. She is also talking to Oxfam about how to turn their smelly hell-holes full of dead clothes into an ethically conscious fashion destination. "It'll take time," she said. "But it has to start somewhere."