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This morning, despite the massive storm that has hit the east coast, red carpets were unveiled, lights were lit, and thousands of iconic designers descended upon New York City for Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. It is a world-renowned event that showcases the latest trends, designs, people, and even materials in the fashion world. As interest in green increases at breakneck speed, that last part has taken on a new level of importance for clothing design.
In fact, some of the most vocal environmental activists in popular culture focus their efforts on what's happening in fashion. Even celebrities have thrown their hats into the green ring. Jason Mraz, for example, made a splash at the recent Grammys by showing up in a suit made from recycled plastic.
Fashion Week has taken significant strides to addressing sustainability at the event too, announcing earlier this month that it will be carbon neutral, showing how seriously it sees the issue as well.
But all this seems to be talking around what's really at the heart of greening the fashion industry: what does sustainable fashion mean?
What is sustainable fashion?
There was a really interesting article about in the Financial Times recently, of all places, which wondered the exact same thing. Is it about using only organic materials? But then we get into the tricky world of what organic means.
The writer of the Financial Times article talked about pre-organic clothes for instance. When most of us hear the term pre-organic, we can probably imagine happy sheep strolling through lush pastures with babbling brooks and chirping birds--wool that comes from a place untouched by the hands of toxic chemicals and substances. In fact, points out the writer, pre-organic means a material like cotton or wool that came from a place that hasn't received organic certification yet, pretty much the exact opposite of what we'd hope to expect.
If not organic, then what?
Upcycling has become an it word in the green world recently. Upcycling is effectively the process of taking old or discarded items and remanufacturing them into completely different products. Jason Mraz's plastic suit from before is a great example of upcycling, or this woman's handbags made from old leather jackets. Events at Fashion Week will even feature some cool new upcycled designs, like Project Runway winner Irina Shabayeva's new collection made out of Tupperware.
The issue with upcycling is that people are still trying to figure out how to do it on a big enough scale, but it will be incredible when we do get to that point. If you think about it, upcycling not only creates products without necessarily needing to use too many new materials or natural resources, it also often prevents from items ending up in a landfill somewhere. If you want to learn more about how clothes get made, Planet Green TV has a cool new series called, "Blood, Sweat & T-Shirts." It isn't necessarily about upcycling, but gives a really interesting glimpse into how the clothes on our backs end up getting made.
Heirloom design
Innovative ideas like upcycling aside, inventor Saul Griffith has a different idea of what sustainability means when it comes to design or fashion or most other things we use or consume. He calls it heirloom design. You've probably heard of the term heirloom somewhere before (my guess is having to do with antiques or tomatoes) --Griffith calls it something that will not only last through your lifetime and into the next generation, but that you also want to keep that long because it's beautiful, functional, and timeless.
It's about maximizing the usefulness of a piece of clothing so that we're not so quick to chuck it away. Sometimes, as Fashion Week looks to showcase the newest and coolest, it's easy to forget about the things that are built to last--and, more importantly, last past next season. Sheena Matheiken, the woman behind The Uniform Project, however does a great job of reminding all of us that it's possible to be fashionable and stylish and wear the same dress every day.
She pledged to wear one little black dress every day for an entire year as an exercise in sustainable fashion. The project is an effort to raise awareness about children's education in India, but it also proves how much can be done with existing stuff with a little bit of creativity.
For Fashion Week, she'll be recreating her little black dress every day with accessories from local designers in New York City. In the spirit of making sure the items last, The Uniform Project will auction off all the accessories after Fashion Week is over.
Readers, what do you think? What do you consider to be sustainable fashion?
Ashwin Seshagiri is a member of the Green Team at eBay, the world's largest online marketplace for giving old products new lives. To find out more, visit ebay.com/greenteam.
