Eco Fashion World

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.

Forsya

Take a walk down Main Street in Vancouver and you will be seduced by at least one of the many independent boutiques in this eclectic shopping district. Recently, I had a chance to speak with Julie Hebb, owner of Forsya Boutique, who also launched a small line of women’s attire in Spring 2010.

EVGENI PETKOV

With fashion weeks in major cities now having come to a close, the future of eco and ethical fashion is shining ever brighter as momentum continues to build for authentic sustainable fashion offerings. From NY’s The GreenShows to London’s Estethica to Vancouver’s Eco Fashion Week to Hong Kong’s EcoChic Asia, the word is definitely out that a global shift is taking place as designers adopt strategies to responsibly source and produce their latest collections. In certain regions, eco fashion initiatives still do not have the same organized support, but talented individuals are finding resourceful ways of contributing within their communities to the green fashion phenomenon. Given that I will be reporting from Eastern Europe for the next few months, I thought that a round up of talent from this corner of the globe might demonstrate just how varied the offerings are here. Evgeni Petkov, Ceca Georgieva, Reet Aus, and Isabell de Hillerin are all standout designers and artists who use local materials as original expressions of Eastern European cultural and ecological awareness.

NIXXI Photo by Peter Holst Photography

It was an absolute pleasure to attend the many events at the first annual Eco Fashion Week here in Vancouver Canada! Sponsored by Aveda, the opening night gala was the perfect hot spot to meet everyone involved. A few words were spoken by Myriam Laroche, Eco fashion Week President and Nicole Bridger, a local Vancouver designer who recently won the Fashion Takes Action Design Forward Award for Canada’s Favourite Eco Fashion Designer.

The British Fashion Council founded ESTETHICA, sponsored by Monsoon, over four years ago to showcase the growing movement of cutting edge designers committed to working sustainably. ESTETHICA, now in its ninth season has evolved to become the hub of London's ethical fashion industry. The success of this initiative, the internationally strongest of its kind, is evident in its rapid growth from its first season of 13 designers to 37 designers in this season’s ESTETHICA collective.

Source4Style has officially launched! Hurry to the site to check out the easy to shop categories which include bast fibers, cotton, leather, manufactured fibers, silk, tree-based/wood, wool and a category labeled ‘other.’