Yes, Peacocks is a fast fashion brand.
Peacocks is one of four brands in the Edinburgh Woollen Mill retail group, who specialises in high street fast fashion brands. The group includes: Bonmarché, Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Peacocks, Jane Norman.
Founded in 1946 by white Scottish businessman Drew Stevenson, the group is now wholly owned by white British businessman Philip Day (worth £1 billion).
As a collective trading group, the brands bring in £88 million annually, but – for some reason – they are yet to pay their garment factories due to covid-19.
These labour issues are not new. In 2013, Peacocks’ sister brand Bonmarché was one of the fashion retailers associated with the Rana Plaza factory collapse. The brand later signed an agreement to provide compensation to the families of the 1,134 garment workers who lost their lives, and the 2,500 people who were injured.
Still, to date there is almost no information about the business’ supply chains, sustainability, or people other than the Day family on EWM’s site.
In 2019, Bonmarché launched a sustainable collection that was nothing more than a poor attempt at greenwashing.
Even The Telegraph newspaper pointed out how Philip Day blundered his takeover of Bonmarché, so who knows how well people or planet are treated even outside of the pandemic or in the future.
Transparency Rating: N/A
Sustainability Rating: 1/5 for Jane Norman
This snippet is part of a larger guide to UK fast fashion brands, which goes into more detail about the issues with fast fashion, why it will never be sustainable, and how to make your wardrobe more sustainable.
Data for this review is taken from the brand’s website, corporate website, and Wikipedia. The Transparency Rating is from Fashion Transparency Index 2020. The Sustainability Rating is from Good On You.