Eco Fashion World

AHILYA

ETHICAL SOURCE EXPO 2010, the annual fashion industry trade show for ethical sourcing, held this month in London was a great success. This year, the event took place alongside the prestigious RITE Group Conference on Sustainability at the City Hall, Westminster.

SELITA-BANKS

Costumes are the biggest part of most people’s Halloween celebrations and with the holiday peering right around the corner, those of you who have not yet planned your ensemble could maybe use a few tips. Following the spirit of sustainability, consider some or all of these creative options in putting together your costume this year:

MS.OCTOBER

The Uniform Project (U.P) started in 2009 when Sheena Matheiken pledged to wear the same Little Black Dress for an entire year as a creative fundraiser. After Sheena's 365 days came to a close last May, having raised over $100k for the Akanksha Foundation, supporters of the project let her know that they wanted more. As a result, the U.P launched Year Two: 1 Dress. 1 Month. 1 Cause. The 1st of every month U.P will unveil a new girl wearing her ideal version of the staple LBD, designed in collaboration with U.P to raise funds for a cause of her choice.

LEAKEY

When you were little, you might recall complaining to your parents that “It’s not fair!” if you weren’t allowed to do something, or in my case, had to go to bed earlier than my friends did. Fair is one of those attributes that our parents tried to instill in us, even though we’ve all experienced at one time or another that “life just isn’t always fair.” Today, however, there’s a growing social and environmental movement which relies on fairness and it’s having a positive, global impact on the lives of women and children world-wide; it’s called Fair Trade.

EMESHA

This season saw a number of new designers ESTETHICA, the eco-fashion initiative at London Fashion Week. Many of the designers took inspiration from nature, history and art, with a number of them collaborating with high street retailers to produce special edition collections. Other inspirations include strings and geometric shapes in the beautiful feminine and ultra clean silhouettes of EMESHA, a young but fast growing sustainable brand. Her covetable AW10 collection combines strong masculine and ultra feminine elements, representing the ever changing emotions of a woman - with inspiration coming from the emotional extremes of love and hate, happiness and sadness, soft and rough. These feelings are reflected in the mix of shapes, colours and fabrics, combining draping with cutting edge tailoring, to all blend into a visually balanced collection.

SAMANTHA PLEET

After a summer of white-hot eco fashion news, September ushers in a golden line up of fashion week events and designer showcases. The official kick off to these festivities is definitely The GreenShows Eco Fashion Week, on September 12-14 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, in NYC's Chelsea Arts District. As the premiere green offshoot of NYFW's Lincoln Center's events, The GreenShows will feature a diverse line up of eco fashion designer collections to celebrate.

Last Saturday March 20, “The Green Initiative – Humanitarian Fashion Show” took place as part of The Gallery LA’s “Fashion Weekend” at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood. The show was organized by Mikey Koffman of The Gallery LA and Ally Maize, founder of The Green Youth Movement (G.Y.M.*) and dubbed LA’s “green teen”. The event was very energizing for the fact that designers were willing to take risks and emerge from the shadow of economic malaise. These were my favourites...

Fashion Fusion Expo is a brand new event set to raise consumer awareness about fashion and sustainability in the UK. Showcasing the very best in sustainable designers including ethical clothing, shoes and accessories, this two-day event aims to attract more than 6,000 visitors. Catwalk shows and seminar talks will take place on both days, including tips on styling by ethical stylist Lupe Castro starting from 12:30 pm. Some of the designers include: Julia Smith, CRED Jewellery, Juzi, Choolips, Trousers London, Embellished Truth, THTC, By Stamo and Side Effects. Fashion Fusion Expo is taking place on 12th - 13th March from 9am-7pm at The Old Truman Brewery - 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 6QL. Don’t miss the biggest event this year celebrating Sustainable fashion!

If the Eco Fashion Forward party was any indication, Vancouver is about to go to a whole new level with the upcoming Vancouver Eco Fashion Week in April 2010. The event is the brainchild of Miriam Laroche and draws from her 15 years of experience working in the fashion industry. Vancouver Eco Fashion Week seeks to put the “glamour” into the Ethical Fashion scene in Vancouver.

The ESTETHICA exhibition, now in its seventh year at London Fashion Week, has evolved to become the epicentre of London's ethical fashion industry. The success of this initiative – which is the strongest of its kind – is evident in its rapid growth. From its first season of 13 designers, 9 new labels joined for SS10, making ESTETHICA a collective of 28 designers. This is a British Fashion Council’s (BFC) eco-sustainable initiative sponsored by MONSOON. At the press day on November 11th the BFC announced the winners of a programme to develop eco fashion businesses as part of its ethical fashion initiative, ESTETHICA. Six designer businesses have been selected to receive 1-on-1 expert support from one of three industry mentors: Brand Consultants Susanne Tide-Frater, Yasmin Sewell and Buying Consultant Bev Malik. The designers selected are Ada Zanditon, Christopher Raeburn, Goodone, Minna, Nina Dolcetti and The North Circular.

With Fashion Weeks going on full swing from NY to London and the Olympic Games to follow, it’s easy to get lost, to make it easy on you, here is our recap of this week’s best in eco fashion!

It was just over a year ago that we interviewed John Patrick ORGANIC for EFW’s magazine, and since then this American eco fashion pioneer has continued to fine tune his vision of creating timeless organic clothes, as well as being a well-deserving recipient of this year’s Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation’s Sustainable Design Award. Ecco Domani’s award categories for the 2009 - 2010 season include four womenswear awards, a menswear award, an accessories award, and the new sustainable design award worth $25,000.

Eco-passion meets fashion at the 50th edition of Manila F.A.M.E. International, a bi-annual trade platform for home and fashion lifestyle products. At Manila F.A.M.E.’s first Eco-Pinoy Fashion Design Competition held on October 15 at the World Trade Center, student designers transformed old seat covers, fishnets, discarded x-ray films, plastic bags as well as sinamay, abaca, and bamboo into wearable pieces.

Vancouver being the greenest city in Canada, it’s no wonder its fashion week reflects these eco-conscious credentials. Last year EFW sponsored a showcase of eco friendly designers at an independent venue, you can still catch all the beautiful shows here.

Portland, Oregon is no doubt one of the greenest and most livable cities in the U.S., so it is exciting to see that significant inroads are also being made on the eco fashion frontier with Portland Fashion Week (PFW), currently underway on the West Coast. Portland is definitely a global leader in the activewear industry, but with an internationally recognized fashion week now on the agenda, ready-to-wear and eco-couture collections by regional and designers are receiving international praise and spotlight.

Now in its sixth year, the Ethical Fashion Show in Paris is a much anticipated fall event that will feature over 100 international designers dedicated to showing off all that is sustainable, chic and innovative from October 1st to 4th 2009.

With London Fashion Week having now come to a close and all eyes shifting over the channel to Paris for the haute couture and ready-to-wear presentations, ethical fashion continues to build momentum and gain recognition in cosmopolitan cities and on style horizons internationally. The Ethical Fashion Show in Paris has been creating a platform for ethical fashion since 2004, along with London Fashion Week’s Estethica, now in its seventh season. But it is rather exciting to report that Ethical Fashion NYC 2009 made its debut at the conclusion of this September’s New York fashion week. Inaugurated with an ethical fashion exhibition and recycling room at The International Fashion Trade Show The Train New York, it is evident that this is just the beginning of bringing a full-scale Ethical Fashion Show event to New York’s fashion weeks to come.