Eco-Fashion at FIT

Osklen in collaboration with Coopa-Roca

The Eco fashion panel at FIT presented a range of views from people discussing a quasi-artisanal approach to fashion such as Susan Cianciolo and Johanna Hofring, who produce small runs alongside one-of-a-kind handcrafted clothes to luxury store buyers like Barneys’s Julie Gilhart. Cianciolo, an unwitting early adapter of the slow fashion movement, lyrically described her production of entirely organic garments which involved going through the woods with her mother to find materials for her non-toxic dyes. She also highlighted the potential longevity of design by discussing how her clients often ask her to re-work her pieces after years of wearing them.

Gilhart came from the other end of the spectrum, working in the luxury corporate industry and its need of maximizing profit. However, she gave a compelling and honest talk on the ways in which the sustainable fashion movement is encroaching in the buying practice of Barneys, where buyers started to ask about sourcing and compliance, while the store produced an eco-fashion line in collaboration with Loomstate. She stressed the importance of good design both in terms of echo-fashion which should stand on its own as a design piece, as well as in terms of fashion more generally, where good design could hopefully supersede a trend-driven consumption.

Another perspective was given by Sass Brown who focused on social ecology and discussed the work of a Brazilian women-run co-op Coopa-Roca which collaborates with fashion designers (i.e. Carlos Miele), product designers (i.e. Tord Boontje) and artists (Ernesto Neto). What went undiscussed was the way FIT addressed sustainability in its teaching and its practice, besides the singular experience of Brown, who is also a professor at FIT.

Attention to sustainable issues, I believe, is sorely missing from the school, where a few years ago, upon asking about the need to use toxic substances (i.e foorwear glues and various dyes) in the classroom, I was told that it was just the reality of the industry. Hopefully that will change—yet for this change to occur, the impulse does need to start within education institutions like FIT.

Francesca

Sans, Spring/Summer 2008

Sans, SS08, Photograph Sarah Scaturro

Sustainable fashion in New York seems to be finally gaining momentum. One of the more interesting developments is still provided by Sans—the design duo comprised of Lika Volkova and Alessandro de Vito.

Their most recent collection continues an exploration of themes of utilitarian modular clothing paired this time with a clinical (yet at times ironic) aesthetic. A see-through theme is articulated via sheer materials and slashed garments. Particularly interesting was their use of oversized pockets, as well as their precisely tailored pants. What’s impressive about Sans is the fact that they are not only one of a still-small crop (comparatively to Europe) of New York designers working towards sustainable fashion, but they are also among the few to produce experimental design within the city’s rather conservative fashion climate.

Francesca

Fashioning an Ethical Industry Conference

This post is long in the making. In March, I attended the Fashioning an Ethical Industry Conference at the Zandra Rhodes Museum, in London. Organized by Labour Behind the Label the conference focused on different ways to achieve an ethical fashion industry and featured a range of speakers, from Ineke Zeldenrust (one of the founders of the Clean Clothes Campaign) to Trish Clarke (who works on corporate social responsibility at Topman) to Kate Fletcher (a freelance sustainable consultant and promoter of slow fashion). Interviews with a number of the speakers can now be found on the conference site.

Concomitantly with the conference was an installation by the Amsterdam-based artist Siobhan Wall titled the Clothes She Wears. It consisted of eight outfits, which constituted the clothes worn by eight different woman working in the garment district in different countries. Each outfit was accompanied by a tag describing the women's relation to the outfits, as well as with the garment industry. Partially founded by the Clean Clothes Campaign, the installation was subtle and moving. (You can find a small catalogue of the exhibit on the Clean Clothes Campaign website.)

Francesca

Sustainable Fashion

The Symposium Terra Matter organized by Material Connexion on occasion of design week had a surprisingly large number of people discussing fashion design. Leslie Hoffman, executive director of Earth Pledge, was among the most interesting speakers, as she underlined how fashion (from textile production to clothing care) is the new and (alas, as yet unexplored) frontier in sustainable design. She announced that Earth Pledge will follow their very successful fashion show organized around the Fall/Winter 2005 New York Fashion Week (which featured an array of designers—Tess Giberson Maria Cornejo, Norma Kamali, Mary Ping) with a number of new fashion initiatives and shows offering an ever-increasing number of sustainable materials for designers’ use.

Francesca