Why don’t luxury fashion designers use more environmentally friendly materials?
This is a question that many “green-conscious” women have asked for the past few years. At least, I hope. Coming from a high-end retail background, the fashion industry can be a toxic workplace. That doesn’t mean it has to be though, as more fashion houses take on Eco Fashion.
Luxury fashion actually has a historical past. Gucci stemmed from a small leather goods shop in Florence, Italy. They took extreme pride in their craft, and still do, with the main focus being quality of product.
Recently, they took a big first step in welcoming new materials for their iconic sunglasses. Instead of using plastic, they used biodegradable liquid wood, which repurposes otherwise unusable dried-out or spongy wood. As good of a step it is, they could do a lot more, such as offering faux leather options, like their very own subsidiary: Stella McCartney.
As a devoted vegetarian and eco-activist, Stella McCartney exclusively designs environmentally friendly luxury fashion. Her designs always evoke a 1970s mentality, a notion probably from her father, Beatles member, Paul McCartney. Year after year, Stella makes clothes that women actually WANT to wear: clean lines, fun prints, and quality with function.
Although her latest collection did not show at London Fashion Week, her Pre-Fall 2013 Lookbook involved: jumpsuits, tailored overcoats, piping, prints on prints, pops of tangerine, and an ode to the classic beauty. These are women who wear the clothes; the clothes do not wear them.
She doesn’t stop there though. Stella also designs a line for Adidas appropriately called Stella McCartney for Adidas. She combines environmentally friendly fashion and function once more, only this time in athletic apparel + accessories. The athletic world was in great need of this for quite some time. Adidas took charge with the huge success of other fashion forward thinking brands, such as: Lululemon, Underarmour, and Nike.
I hope with the advance of technology, more designers and fashion houses take the environment more into consideration. It is quite obvious that it can be very successful for the brand.
Here’s to the new frontier, and may we be open to the idea of others.
I feel that luxury fashion designers have a very important role in helping raise the awareness of eco fashion. Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood are to my mind the best two. Yet others send mixed messages with one off eco garnment or capsule eco collections which can look like “greenwash”. Eco Fashion