A DESIGNER has won a top ethical award at London Fashion Week.

Feng Ho scooped the Innovation Award, which is the country’s highest prize for ethical fashion, beating 130 other designers.

The 30-year-old from East Oxford uses materials including organic cotton, silk hemp, bamboo and soy and all are ethically manufactured in London and India.

She said: “Ethical fashion is definitely the way forward and it needs to be because of the sheer environmental damage of fast disposable fashion.

“Designers are finally starting to stand up and take notice – at London Fashion Week last month, they had their first fully sustainable show.

“I want people to know that it is possible to be both stylish and conscientious.”

Miss Ho first developed a love for fashion at Oxford High School, before graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2005.

She then launched her own label called Feng Ho Ethical Fashion Design in 2006.

She said: “I just love creating things, and making clothes that people want to wear again and again.”

She works out of the Magdalen Road Studios in East Oxford and sells her collections in London, Manchester and, from February, in Henley.

The award was judged by a panel of high-profile fashion professionals, including Vogue website editor Dolly Jones.

Miss Ho said: “I feel so honoured to have won, especially because of the recognition it brings from people in the fashion industry.”

As part of the prize, she got the chance to set up a stand at Pure London – a leading fashion trade event.

She said: “It was just incredible and something I would never have been able to do myself.

“It got me a lot of recognition, as a lot of buyers and ethical shops approached my stand to find out more.

“And these are the people who decide what the next high street fashions will be.”

Miss Ho said she now would continue to build on this success.

She said: “I’m just trying to be a good all-round designer, really.

“The fashion industry has always had a bad reputation for their ethical standards and I think it is time that changed.”