With the cost of living rising and government support for students receding, many of us are now facing a difficult dilemma on the high street: ethics versus affordability. For years now, Edinburgh has been lacking in budget alternatives to student-focused brands such as Topshop and Urban Outfitters. With a new branch of Primark set to open on Princes Street at the beginning of December, the issue of finding cheap clothes will be replaced with the question of whether or not we should buy them.

The rise of Primark has been well-documented in recent years. The media have been quick to criticize the ethics of the high street giant which now takes £1 of every £10 spent on clothes in the UK. The BBC alone has produced several documentaries exposing conditions which are markedly different from those described on Primark’s ethical trading website. Have the media been too quick to condemn Primark and too slow to investigate other brands? After the award-winning Panorama documentary “Primark: On the Rack”, which showed forced child labour in the company’s suppliers in India, was aired, the BBC was forced to apologise after it was decided that images of child workers had been fabricated.

In response to the documentary, Primark ceased all trading with their Indian suppliers despite the allegations regarding the authenticity if the footage. Even this measure seems poorly thought out, as simply refusing to participate in the economy of such nations will deprive these people of jobs. It seems that high street stores such as Primark need to work to help improve the working conditions of workers across the world, not just their own public reputation.What of Primark’s high street counterparts? Research carried out by The Student shows that student favourite Topshop is considered to be an ethical brand in comparison with Primark. The question of public perception of price is key here. As one second year student put it “People just seem to base ethics on a hunch – largely to do with how much things cost.” It appears that we feel more confident that the clothes we buy have been manufactured ethically if they cost more, and that what makes Primark stands out is it’s ‘high on style, low on price’ philosophy.

A scratch beneath the surface reveals that the comparatively expensive brand Topshop has more questionable ethics than one might expect when paying £30 for a top. Topshop’s parent company Arcadia has been criticized for buying clothing from a Cambodian factory judged to have some of the worst working conditions in the world, with as many as 600 workers working with chemicals in unventilated rooms. Topman was found to have been using Uzbekistani cotton harvested by young children enslaved by the government during the cotton picking season. In recent years Topshop has developed a fair-trade range, however I can’t help but wonder if this is just to distract consumers from the horrendous conditions for workers producing their main line products. All of this adds up to an increasingly depressing picture of a retail market with little conscience, whatever end of the price range you choose.

When students can have so little confidence in high street brands, can we be blamed for flocking to one that offers us such affordability? It seems that for students, not only in Edinburgh but across the UK, the only way to avoid capitalist vacuum of the high street may be to start doing it ourselves. Knitting class anyone?