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Estethica: London Fashion Week’s eco hub

Matilda Lee | 19.09.11

Before heading to a champagne brunch for ethical fashion exhibition Estethica yesterday, I tried to catch up on what ‘tweeple’ were saying about London Fashion Week. On Twitter’s #LFW, the big news at that minute was Kate Moss giggling next to Kristen Stewart on the front row of the Mulberry pooch-inspired show. On #Estethica, on the other hand, the tone was much more, shall we say, serious. This from @Pachacuti ‘Before #Estethica brunch we’re calculating CO2 emissions on all travel, freight, electric, etc for #fairtrade, #sustainability report.’

Herein lies the problem with ‘sustainable fashion’ in a nutshell. I find it entirely relevant that fashion accessories brand Pachacuti (pictured here in their fairtrade Panamas) is clocking their CO2 emissions for a sustainability report. But how much does it have to do with fashion? ‘Sustainability’ and ‘fashion’ are caught between two cultures, speaking two totally different languages.

Thankfully, there are more and more people trying to iron out these differences.

‘It is vital to expand the definition of ethical fashion.’ says Jessie Brinton, a style writer for the Sunday Times and Harper’s Bazaar who edited the latest Estethica Review. ‘London Fashion Week entices the non-ethically minded. While the fashion world needs to start to engage in sustainability, there is not much more the environmental side can do. Now it is a question of getting people to pay attention to it’. In order to so this, she says, sustainable fashion, ‘needs to be promoted in a sophisticated way.’

It is an inconvenient truth that people do not buy clothes because they are ethical. Before we ask them to be specific about what they buy, we have to ask them to care about their clothes.

Estethica picks

The 18 designers exhibiting at Estethica are helping to shape the new dialogue about sustainable fashion.

I caught up with Orsola de Castro, From Somewhere designer and co-founder of Estethica. From Somewhere was exhibiting its Speedo collection using lycra offcuts in body hugging dresses with a sporty chic look. She hinted at their future plans: gearing up for a new ‘reclaimed to wear’ collection launching in November and ‘something very exciting with Topshop’.

Emesha (pictured here) added 3-D to her signature pleats in a collection with hand painted block prints inspired by 'analog versus digital'. The colour pallet is in simple black and white, with some green and splashes of pink. Why is she considered ethical? ‘I use no man made fibres. Today it is hard to find any big brands that don’t use any man made fibres. But after all, they will biodegrade, ' she says.

On to Rajkumar’s trenches made from natural rubber and organic cotton. Unusually, John Pratt, former director of the University of Lancaster’s Institute for Philosophy and Environment, is promoting the company in the UK. Why the career change, I asked while trying on a white organic cotton trench. ‘I retired, but also with oil running out we will have to go back to renewable resources. Rubber is a fantastic resource.’ All the rubber and organic cotton comes from India.

Michelle Lowe-Holder upcycles vintage ribbons into beautiful cuffs, collars and necklaces. Textiles are a combination of vintage end of line floral ribbons and leather cut-offs. This season she also experimented with innovative fabrics from Italy including hemp and coconut (pictured below).

 Charini Suriyage’s eco-lingerie collection is glamourous and timeless – using the lost heritage crafts of her native Sri Lanka. In terms of sustainability practice she refrains from using elastics, plastics, harmful dying and metal.

Good One continues its signature body con figure flattering silhouettes using reclaimed textiles. The Soil Association had a presence for the first time, with a small collection curated by the Telegraph’s Tamsin Blanchard including Monkee Jeans, Continental Clothing and People Tree.

Finally, a new star is in the making in Eva Zingoni – from Paris by way of Argentina. After 7 years as a stylist at Balenciaga, she decided to branch out with her own sustainable couture collection made from surplus materials from Parisian fashion houses, which she refused to name. There are 4 designer fabrics in the current collection. She got into upcycling fabrics after visiting a warehouse where there were stacks of unused, high quality fabrics. She says, ‘This guy said to me, “you’ve got to take them, they’ve been here for three years. Sometimes they even throw them away.”’

The collection is beautiful, 25 pieces - mainly dresses (including one modelled below) but including shorts, trousers, tops and jackets in a mix of fabrics from wool to silk. Currently stocked in Japan, Spain and Belgium it would be great to be able to buy her designs here in London!

'Greenest government ever'?

Two or three champagne glasses later, when Gregory Barker MP, Minister for Energy and Climate Change (pictured below), finally got to the microphone for his speech the floor was teeming with sustainable fashionistas.

He said: ‘With the Eurozone crisis, and a difficult economy and jobs situation, it is difficult to keep climate change on top of the agenda. It is a challenge for the “greenest government ever”.

He went on to outline how fashion could help. ‘We need to find sustainable paths in an age of recession but it needn’t be difficult to grow and be sustainable. It takes effort and passion.’

The challenge is to communicate sustainability to the public. ‘While only government can run green projects and create a low carbon economy, you [the fashion industry] have much more traction in the public imagination. We need to make what we don’t want to do appealing. ‘Upcycling’ as I’ve learned today demonstrates through actions the ‘greenest government ever’s message.’

He then looked utterly perplexed as a gaggle of women surrounded him to talk about their sustainable fashion initiatives and give him their business cards.

On my way out, I bumped in to Antony Waller, formerly People Tree PR, who helped set up their high-profile collaborations with Bora Aksu, Richard Nicoll, and Emma Watson, and who is now doing four days a week at Bora Aksu. I asked his opinion on why Christopher Raeburn, formerly of Estethica, and now of the prestigious NewGen programme, has become a darling of the fashion world. Is there a particular look that just fits the fashion bill – or what? ‘Outerwear is easy to sell. His price point is not too high, he has always marketed himself as recycled – but that is not the first thing that you learn about Christopher Raeburn. He is young, hip and cool. His clothes photograph well.’

I think back to Gregory Barker’s comments on repackaging the green paradigm.

The fashion industry of today is a massive marketing machine, with a power to influence people’s lives in a way that the government will never have. Think what could be achieved by bending it to market green ideas.

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Trash to Fashion: 13 Chic & Crazy Upcycled Collections

Greta Jonyniate | 10.01.12

We truly love this article from webecoist, which showcases some superb upcycled fashion designs. These garments have been made out of discarded clothes, recycled plastic and paper, woodchips, festival tents, paraglider sails and parachute nets. Our favourite is Christopher Raeburn’s Fall/Winter 2011 collection featuring salvaged military materials. Which is yours?

Trash to Fashion: 13 Chic & Crazy Upcycled Collections

Rescuing discarded materials like parachutes, military blankets, shower curtains, wood chips and festival tents from the dumpster, eco-minded designers create couture that ranges from the cute and totally wearable to the artistic and avant-garde. Whether it’s ready for the rack or meant for the runway only, these 13 collections of upcycled fashion definitely make surprising and innovative use of items others see only as trash.

Recycled Packaging by Karishma Shahani

(images via: arts.ac.uk)

Designer Karishma Shahani distills the colorful essence of her home country of India into a stunning collection of upcycled fashion. “Yatra” includes recycled plastic packaging mixed with natural fabrics like cotton, silk, linen and muslin that were dip-dyed using plants from a local market.

Dresses from Paraglider Sails by Valerie Pache

(images via: valeriepache.fr)

New life is breathed into old, retired paraglider sails by Valerie Pache, a French designer who creates colorful and quirky upcycled garments. Pache takes this material – which she gets for free – and crafts it into dresses, jackets, accessories and even wedding gowns. “People are very surprised to see dresses in this material, especially paragliders who have no idea what can be done to give a second life to their sails. And that seems to make them really happy.”

Festival Tents into Costumes and Rain Coats

(images via: madeinschool.dk)

Long after they have sheltered thousands of music lovers at Denmark’s Roskilde Festival, event tents can shelter fashionistas from the rain in the form of highly unusual upcycled clothing. Designer Lisa Våglund was inspired to use the material after seeing how much trash is left behind each year.

Discarded Wood Chips into Scaled Couture

(images via: ecouterre)

In the hands of designer Stefanie Nieuwenhuys, wood chips rescued from the floor of a university workshop transform into reptilian scales in soft shades of beige. Nieuwenhuys used this inspiration to create a collection of fascinating ‘biomimetic’ corsets, evening dresses, pants and accessories, working with a bio-waste firm to obtain discarded pieces of plywood which she laser-cuts into shape. The designer told eco fashion website Ecouterre that the scales created a “simulacra of nature, without discarding nature’s inherent harmonies.”

Reclaimed Underwear into ‘Knickers Dress’

(images via: design.nl)

Would you wear a dress made of old panties? Designer Antoine Peters gathered up dozens of undergarments and sewed them all up into this kooky experiment in upcycled fashion. The panties are interwoven, and some of the tags are still showing; the designer tried to use every component so that it would be a zero-waste project.

 

...continue reading HERE

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Eco Hero - Orsola de Castro

Greta Jonyniate | 29.02.12

It's important to make clothes that take into account the environment, the health of consumers and the working conditions of people in the fashion industry. We love Ruth Styles' recent article in the Ecologist about meeting the designer and Estethica founder - Orsola de Castro for a chat about upcycling, showcasing new green talent and why eco-design has earned its place at the top table of British fashion.

She might not have the instant name recognition enjoyed by Livia Firth but Orsola de Castro has done as much, if not more, than the queen of the green carpet, to raise the profile of the UK’s eco designers. What’s more, as the brains behind the British Fashion Council’s Estethica initiative, she’s helped champion young green design talent, all while working on her own label, From Somewhere. But de Castro’s work doesn’t stop there. From Somewhere is known for its collaborations, most famously with Tesco (when the label created a dress made from pre-consumer waste for the supermarket’s Florence and Fred brand) but more recently with swimwear giant, Speedo. Now, de Castro has launched Reclaim to Wear, which she describes as ‘the collaborative arm of my label’ which has just started working with up and coming Central St Martins talent following a successful collection designed with Livia Firth. So is this the future of eco design in action?

‘We [Reclaim to Wear] started with a series of collaborations and Central Saint Martins is the first that we're doing within education,’ says de Castro, in her Italian accented English. ‘It has proved so successful that we're hoping to make it an annual appointment for Estethica. Reclaim to Wear is really a way of showing our knowledge and taking it to another level and to as many people as possible, whether it's to students, the high street, established designers, young designers, and so to do it with Central Saint Martins as part of their autumn theme project was an incredible opportunity for us and the creativity has been amazing. The results are wonderful.’ Like de Castro’s From Somewhere label, Reclaim to Wear works mostly with pre-consumer waste, or to put it in layman’s terms, leftover textile offcuts. I wonder how sustainable upcycling really is for a label, because, surely, if you work with offcuts, you lose consistency, which can be a real issue for the consumer. Not surprisingly, de Castro doesn’t agree, and says that it can work – no matter what sort of scale you’re dealing with.

‘No, that's not true, that's not true,’ she exclaims, getting slightly agitated. ‘Unfortunately this is still embargoed but we are doing a Reclaim to Wear project with a giant of the high street and that will use a completely different principle. It depends on what you're working with. I mean if you're working with liability stock you can achieve any amounts of reproduce-ability. The collection that we did with Livia Firth (launched under the Reclaim to Wear banner and sold on Yoox.com) that was also fully reproducible. So it's a designer choice whether you want to make it reproducible or unique, and entirely [depends] on where you're going to sell it. So, as I said, it's perfectly commercial. It makes a lot of sense. It saves a lot of money as well as water and energy to have good housekeeping in terms of your textile use. ‘

‘So, then,’ I ask, ‘if it's cheaper and the quality is good, why don't more designers do it?’ ‘Because it's a question of signature. It's a little more time consuming and the cutting is different. But it's also very much of a signature and in the industry most young designers do it now. It's not rocket science, or it's not being done or it's forgotten, people have forgotten how to do it on a natural level. But it's only really in the last 25 years since over-consumption has created such a massive problem - the textile industry generally has operated a very successful system of recycling itself. Upcycling is a novelty; in the sense there is no chemical of other industrial intervention in terms of recycling and shredding and all of that. So upcycling is relatively new. And more and more people are doing it and more and more students want to learn in such schools, so as I said it's a relatively new technique that will become more and more commercially viable in the future.’

De Castro has raised another interesting point: that of what’s in store for eco fashion over the next 20 years. Should it stay niche? Should green fashion become the mainstream? Is that even possible? And most importantly, are we seeing a real shift in consumer attitudes towards fashion, or is this just another trend? De Castro is optimistic. ‘I think particularly at a time like this when people just don't have the money to go and spend on an extra t-shirt, it becomes very interesting. People are thinking about the community price of what five t-shirts would have cost and [instead] are buying just one, which they know is the one that they want. So not only are people beginning to re-engage emotionally with what they're buying because they're buying better, they're buying because they want to rather than because they can, which is a very, very different attitude.’ This, she believes, will have positive results for the greener end of the fashion spectrum. ‘Upcycling is very powerful because it speaks - you will recognise something is upcycled - so it has the same value as a slogan t shirt in terms of what you actually want to say about yourself. It’s very intriguing to the younger generation - kids coming out of colleges are absolutely hell-bent in using upcycling as part of their collection. We're seeing that more and more in more and more colleges and young designers. And of course as you know, we have Christopher Raeburn, who is green and an upcycler, being named the Emerging Talent for Menswear at the 2011 British Fashion Awards. That has a profound impact on the way that young people see upcycling.’

Raeburn, whose career highlights include being the first designer to be awarded both men’s and womenswear NEWGEN sponsorship and winning the Ethical Fashion Forum’s INNOVATION competition in 2009, is at the forefront of the wave of green talent that has emerged over the last decade, and de Castro doesn’t see the flow abating any time soon. In part, of course, that’s down to her and the platform for green talent that Estethica has provided. So is she proud of what her initiative has achieved? ‘It [eco design] is very cool right now and I do believe that Estethica has very much changed the stakes in terms of eco-fashion, so I'm very proud and delighted to have been a part of this,’ she smiles.

‘I also believe that it is the responsibility of the industry to change and I am also very much a believer that the uncool, kind of hippy-dippy image of eco-fashion was on the way out before it started, because inevitably, you have to look at the full industry to see what fashion is. When Estethica started in 2006, it was a little bit Holland & Baratts circa 1989, and it was obvious that it was going to change.’ Obvious to who though? Wouldn't you say eco fashion still has a whiff of homespun about it as far as many consumers are concerned? According to de Castro, the homespun hemp perception of eco-fashion has been consigned to the history books. ‘I don't think the people in any way, shape or form associate it with hippy-dippy any longer,’ she argues. ‘I think it's much more cutting edge and I think it has earned its place in the fashion industry for good.’

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