Choosing a name for a new Internet fashion company is a difficult task. Most businesses would hold a brainstorming session with an advertising agency, perhaps. But finance director Chris Powles decided to ask his local priest.

Mr Powles, who has had a long career in private investment, was born in Kenya and was delighted when he discovered that the Rev David Kaboleh, associate priest at Kirtlington Church, came from the same area.

So when Mr Powles found himself helping to set up an ethical fashion company, he asked Mr Kaboleh for ideas. He suggested Adili, which means "ethical and just" in Swahili.

Mr Kaboleh, who is now vicar of the Worminghall group of parishes, said: "Western Kenya is part of our roots and Chris said he was looking for a good name which would capture what his business was about.

"Having been brought up in the developing world, I am aware that local people who are investing a lot of their time and labour end up with so little, because the middle-man or woman doesn't give them the right kind of deal.

"Adili is a word which could help to describe the heart behind the venture."

Mr Powles said: "It just clicked - my colleagues were captivated. Also, it started with A', which is a great help in directories. Our alternative name was Redress, which just didn't work."

Adili aims to offer fashion that is stylish and modern, while trading fairly and directly with producers, as well as focusing on the environmental cost of growing and producing fibre and fabric.

The company hopes to repeat the success of online fashion retailer Asos, which has seen stellar sales growth since its flotation on the London Stock Exchange in 2001. Investors include Quentin Griffiths, co-founder of Asos.

At the moment, the website - www.adili.com - offers fashion from a range of producers who meet most of its ethical criteria. Eventually, it will produce its own products with the launch of its own-label collection.

Adili chief executive Adam Smith believes that as it grows in size, the company will be able to produce ethical fashion for the same price as standard high street clothes.

Investors include former John Lewis managing director Luke Mayhew, and its stockmarket flotation in December raised £1.5m, with the company valued at £4.5m. Some £170,000 of shares are going to the Adili Foundation, a charity which will fund social and environmental projects linked to fashion.

Creative director Sim Scavazza, former buyer at Next, Arcadia and Bay Trading, is passionate about the ethical cost of cheap clothes, and the way the fashion industry exploits suppliers in developing countries.

The 40 million (mainly female) workers in the global textile trade pay the price for cheap clothing through long hours, poor wages, unsafe working conditions, abuse, harassment and discrimination.

Then there is cotton, which accounts for just three per cent of the world's agriculture, yet uses 25 per cent of all insecticides and 10 per cent of all pesticides.

Elaine Gardiner, a former Oxfam worker from Charlton-on-Otmoor, who now lives in northern Rwanda, is one of Adili's ethical trading consultants.

"She trains producer groups to make things that are fashionable and will sell," said Mr Powles. "She will work up the design until we have something we are happy with in terms of quality and style."

Mr Powles is involved with the Rwanda Gorilla Project and has had a lifelong interest in conservation - partly because his grandfather founded the Mount Elgon National Park, home to a rare group of troglodyte elephants.

He said: "We are working with a Rwanda producer group, for example, to get their product right. If we can help people to get the design right, they will suddenly have access to an international market through the Adili website."

Mr Powles, who left Kenya when he was six, said he was finally realising a lifelong dream of uniting his professional life with his environmental beliefs. His career in private investment started when he visited California and started Pi Capital, a syndicate which invested in high-tech start-ups, including Oxfordshire companies Cozart and Immersive Education.

He said: "Pi Capital was agressively managed, which enabled us to grab the interest of investors who were captains of industry, high net-worth individuals. Asos was highly successful and I made it my business to know people like Quentin Griffiths, who is a serial online fashion entrepreneur.

"I said to him that his next project should be ethical fashion and he was rapidly convinced."

Mr Powles added: "Our products are incredibly trendy. We have a purse woven from recycled sweet wrappers by street children in Mexico, which was picked up by Grazia magazine, and it epitomises what we are trying to do.

"We want to show that ethical fashion can be stylish."