Designer samples life in £2-a-day sweatshops

A young fashion designer from London was sent to work in a backstreet sweatshop in India to experience the conditions in which clothes sold in Britain's high streets are made.

Tara Scott said she was left shocked and angered with the fashion industry after labouring alongside workers who earn as little as £2 for an eight-hour day.

She was one of six fashionloving Britons who travelled to India for a new BBC3 series called Blood, Sweat And T-Shirts.

The 21-year-old from Bexley said today: "I haven't been in a high street fashion shop since I got back - I just no longer have the desire to because they are not open about how things are made.

"In the fashion industry people make ridiculous amounts of money, yet I saw people in India working 18 hours for hardly anything. I was shocked and angry.

"Everyone in the whole industry - the designers, manufacturers, buyers and stores - need to take responsibility of how their actions are supporting this."

In the first episode, the group work in Shahi Enterprises, a New Delhi factory which churns out three million garments a month for high street stores including Zara, Next and Marks & Spencer. They learn to sew before joining the production lines where every worker has targets, such as sewing collars on to shirts at the rate of one a minute.

Supervisors patrol the lines to make sure workers do not talk to each other and at lunch men and women must sit apart. The Britons also stayed with workers and their families, experiencing their humble living conditions where every rupee is rationed.

The group later moved to a smaller, backstreet workshop - also catering for the UK market - where workers eat and sleep next to their sewing machines.

Miss Scott said: "Shahi Enterprises was a palace compared to these workshops. My mum is a fashion designer and I work with her. We have a concession in Top Shop and earn decent money for what we make but I found it difficult to deal with the fact that people in India with similar skills are living in poverty.

"After seeing the other side of the industry, my advice to people is simply to ask more questions. When you buy something from a company you are condoning everything it stands for."

Miss Scott described making the programme as an "incredible journey". She has since contacted a fair trade company in Mumbai called Creative Handicrafts and is considering having some of her mother's dress range made there.

To coincide with the series, the BBC has launched Thread, an online ethical fashion magazine.