You can’t have a conversation in Vancouver about eco fashion without ending talking about Myriam Laroche. Vancouver hasn’t had the best fashion reputation over the years, and Vancouverite style was synonymous with fleece sweaters, rain coats and yoga pants.  However, in the past few years a dramatically increasing number of markets, pop-up shops and local retailers have brought mainstream attention to local and eco designers.  Vancouver’s Eco Fashion Week, the event created by Myriam Laroche, is working to change the face of the fashion landscape in more ways than just style.

The Essentials

GoLDFABRIK Online Shop & Atelier is a unique initiative of jewelry designer Nadine Kieft. The designer runs her own succesful jewelry label since 2007. Her work is published in many magazines like ELLE and Marie-Claire. Her jewelry was also featured on the covers of Nouveau and Glossy. 

In 2012 the official label for Fairtrade & Fairmined gold was launched in the Netherlands. As one of the first dutch licensees of the fairtrade label, she designed a new ethically sourced gold line. With her belief in fair mining and sustainability she started GoLDFABRIK, an online shop for one of a kind jewelry made of Fairtrade & Fairmined gold. 

The Essentials

Re-fashioned offers unique, stylish and high quality fashion items. Eleanor Bland, the creative director of Re-fashioned, creates fabulous new fashion items from recycled pre-loved garments, fabrics (and just about anything else that takes her fancy). Eleanor's fascination with recycling started with a small project at university, for which she turned a bed sheet into a dress and from then on she was hooked! Eleanor says she loves the challenge that it presents turning an old, sometimes seemingly uninspiring item into something desirable.

Amsterdam Fashion Week A/W 13/14 was marked by its great efforts in broadening the visibility of local designers worldwide and raising serious questions about the future of fashion. While the shows presented advances in design aesthetics in the approach of distinct techniques and abstract thinking, deeper conversations on the use of fur, investments in quality crafts in opposition to marketing capitalization, and other major issues, enunciating old x new paradigms, were taking place at the Firestarters and Sustainable Stories talking sessions.