Fair Share: Soho’s Ethical Goldmine

There are some that believe that shopping, beyond buying the essentials, is one of the great ills that afflict our society.

Quite aside from the fact that these people have clearly never found the perfect summer dress, they have clearly never been to Fair Share, a beautiful, exclusively fair trade store down the market end of Berwick Street.

I discovered this gem one hungover morning whilst my friend and I were stumbling around Soho on the hunt for a breakfast that would soak up the sins of the night before. I’m not sure what propelled us past the unassuming shop front located next to an impressively long fruit stall.

The first things to attract my bleary eyes were an assortment of hand-carved wooden items from jewellery boxes and bowls to Balian sofa cats whose cheeky individualised faces caused me to continue looking at them long past the recognition phase. Everything had a twist to the norm from the curvy silver spoons to the metal coaster spelling out the word HOT in capitals. Even toilet paper, a bog standard item, came enclosed in packaging that proudly stated ‘I’m flushing away unfair trade’.

This day of discovery was also a day close to the end of the month when cash was not flowing too freely. However, I wanted to commit then and there to this wonderful oasis of individuality in a sea of mass production. Having protested against the Israel occupation of Gaza, it felt consistent to buy some Palestinian olives. These were taken from the food section which stocked the sort of produce that is already on our fair trade radar: coffee, tea, chocolate, jams and various other goodies.

I then found a card section. The designs came from kids in Peru whose photos were on the back of the cards. Being able to look at the face of a person who designed the card you are holding makes the distant land they inhabit seem less removed.

A nod also has to go to Ellen, the only permanent member of staff on a team made of 30 volunteers, for her delightfully chilled-out attitude. And also for furnishing me with the back story to the knitted dolls with sweet round faces that stood behind the counter. A 95-year-old lady called Etti, who has lived on the same street for all of her life, knits these cheery creations and, as luck would have it, I met this near centurion as she popped into the shop to demonstrate some curious, curly wool.

It’s funny, I thought, as I made my way back to the main thoroughfare, to think of the tourists who roll up and down Oxford Street like mechanised cars over the same piece of track, unaware that they could dart down a side street and get their fair share of the real goods.

Fair Share
102 Berwick Street
Soho
W1F 0QP

Tel: 020 7287 8827