A passion for eco-fashion

The darker side of the fashion industry is its trail of waste and toxins. A new wave of designers are trying to keep wardrobes planet friendly by using recycled and organic materials. This season there is just one trend predicted to outlast the year: eco-fashion. No, it’s not an oxymoron. Forget dreadlocks and Jesus sandals; environmentalism is becoming oh-so sexy. Just as boho made its way from the protestors to the catwalk, now too is environmental consciousness.

It seems that in the past three years environmental issues have started to pop up in everyday life. Eco-fashion is a buzz word at the moment, but few understand what it really means and why it might be so important. Are the rumours true? Is green really the new black?

It started with food: organic, chemical free, cruelty free, locally grown. Issues rarely thought of a decade earlier were suddenly important when choosing what to eat for dinner. Makeup soon followed. Companies advertised their products as pure and moved away from animal testing.

Five years ago if you mentioned someone’s “footprint” you’d have been talking about the beach or their shoe size, now it’s all about greenhouse gas and climate change. Kate Noble, sustainability representative for the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), explains, “Towards the end of last year people really woke up and realised that climate change is real, it’s impacting on us now”.

Society, however, was a little unsure of what to do with this wake up call. No one wanted to trade in their creature comforts for cold showers and lentils but everyone wanted to do their part for the environment. The solution was for everyday luxuries to become green. Yes, even fashion, the most fickle of industries, is finally showing its softer side.

Of course sustainable food, makeup and fashion have all been around for decades. But it is only recently that they have left the realm of health food stores and entered mainstream culture and couture.

The fact that the fashion industry is mirroring society’s concern over the environment is not surprising. Coco Chanel once said, “Fashion is not something that exists only in dresses. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” Maybe the industry has finally realised that it won’t survive in this changed world without altering its ways. But what exactly does eco-fashion entail?

“A sustainable item doesn’t take much energy to produce, doesn’t need much water and is created using products that are easily renewable,” explains Kate Noble. Cecilia Heffer, fashion and textiles lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), assesses sustainability “in terms of waste products”. Both experts agree that an item of sustainable clothing needed to last more than a season of wear.

Eco-fashion, in theory, limits the use of pesticides, chemicals and dyes. In a social sense, a sustainable item of clothing is made under fair labour practices. Basically, sustainable clothing should be able to be created forever, without the planet suffering as a result.

Unfortunately fashion by nature is an environmentally un-friendly business. “You’ve got a whole industry set up to make money out of fashion changing. That means over consumption,” says Kate Noble. This translates to more clothes being made and thrown away. The traditional process of manufacturing the clothing is extremely damaging to the environment. Growing cotton alone uses 22.5 per cent of the world’s insecticides and 5 per cent of its land. At the other end of the journey clothing takes up a large amount of landfill. Factor in the environmental costs of packaging, transport and washing and it’s a wonder that the poor old planet has survived this long.

Fashion designed using organic cotton and recycled materials come as a welcome and much needed relief to this poisonous industry. Unfortunately, they also come at a price to the consumer. It is hard to sell organic cotton, humanely made t-shirts for over $100 when the same shirts sell for a quarter of that at Supré. The price of sustainable clothing is only this high due to the costs of paying award wages, locally growing organic and/or sustainable crops and sourcing vintage material. Unfortunately this matters little to the average consumer driven customer. This is where the trend factor comes into play.

With eco-fashion now becoming mainstream, the selling point may be celebrity over sustainability. Cecilia Heffer believes that designers using online marketing are contributing to sustainable fashion’s popularity. Models such as Summer Rayne Oakes now have online campaigns for a sustainable planet, “bloggers” are pushing underground green labels and celebrities are jumping on the bandwagon too. Keira Knightly, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hilary Duff, Madonna and George Clooney have all been spotted wearing eco-fashion.

There is the concern that the environmentally friendly fashion trend will result in sustainability becoming just another fad. From an environmentalist’s point of view, though, the popularity is overall a positive. “Fashion is great marketing. If we can harness that marketing to get the sustainability message out there then, absolutely, we should be doing it,” says Kate Noble.

Overseas, particularly in New York and London, the eco-fashion movement is thriving. International labels such as Edun, created by Ali Hewson and husband Bono; Preloved, a label using only recycled material; and Linda Loudermilk are generating a lot of hype. Meanwhile Loomstate, an organic cotton denim company with the provocative tagline “people who give a shit are sexy” and 80s rebellious “it” designer Katherine E. Hamnett are building cult followings. Even well established companies are going green, with Levi recently launching an eco-denim line.

The trend is a little slower to take off in Australia. When retail giants Myer and David Jones were asked if they stocked any eco-fashion labels the result was some very confused public relations representatives. Apparently sustainable fashion is not on their agenda or even their radar.

Despite this, the market is clearly present here at home. A customer service representative at Fat, a local boutique, said that Aussie eco-labels Bassike and Skin and Threads were highly coveted and among their best sellers. Amazingly, boutique Order and Progress nearly sold out of the pricey Katherine E Hamnett t-shirts less than two weeks after getting them in. Clearly the eco-fashion message is alive in Australia even if stores are lagging behind.

But don’t give up hope! From the boutiques and the universities an army of environmentally sustainable designers and innovators is rising in Australia.

Melbourne store, Hunter and Gatherer (linked with the Brotherhood of St Laurence) supports sustainable fashion by stocking quality recycled clothing and sweat shop free new products. Reiko Miyazawa, manager of the Fitzroy store, explains, “We are targeting younger generations to be more responsible, there’s a lot of disposable fashion out there.” Hunter and Gatherer supports local designers and ethical working conditions through the creation of their label’s clothing.

Another mover and shaker in Australian fashion is Rachael Cassar, an up and coming Sydney designer. She uses only vintage fabric for her edgy and unique haute couture. “I wanted to create something sustainable that doesn’t compromise design and everything that people love about fashion,” says Rachael. Her chiffon ball gowns and embellished evening dresses are beautiful and, coincidently, environmentally friendly.

“The only way that people are going to accept eco-fashion is if they’re not sacrificing anything for it,” explains Rachael. The trick is to replace cheaply made fashion with equally appealing but sustainable items. Designers no longer have an excuse for not using alternative materials as technology is constantly improving. Cecilia Heffer insists, “The ranges of hemp are extremely sophisticated now.”

If it all seems a little too much for you, perhaps the easiest and cheapest aspect of eco-fashion to adopt is simply to choose quality over quantity. Replacing “fast fashion” items with well made, classic clothing that can be handed down from generation to generation is beneficial to the environment. Kate Noble says, “Perhaps fashion will go the way where we still have beautiful clothes and changing trends but there might be more of an emphasis on quality and durability rather than a massive turnover of resources”.

Ignore the hype of organic, recycled and sustainable materials and maybe society just needs to invest in pieces that will last a lifetime. Perhaps Chanel had it right all along with her little black dress.

There are countless ways to reduce your fashion footprint. But however you look at it the sustainable fashion movement can only be a good thing. It is free advertising for the environment and good publicity for a sustainable lifestyle in general. Although it may not be huge in Australia yet, it is increasingly present in boutiques and online and is changing the way the public thinks about fashion.

Whether or not you decide to dress head to toe in sustainable materials it is comfort to know that the choice, and the message, of eco-fashion is out there. After all, trends come and go. But fashion (and hopefully the planet) will always be around.