Eco-fashion
As the Craft Council's exhibition 'Well Fashioned: Eco Style in the UK' begins its nationwide tour, Lucy Lethbridge tells us more about 'green' couture in Europe.
The very idea of environmentally-friendly fashion may seem a contradiction in terms. Clothes that are fairly traded, vegetable-dyed, animal-loving, free of pesticides, harmful chemicals and toxic bleach and made entirely by adults paid a living wage? You must be talking hemp jerkins or homespun cardigans dyed with woad - it's surely not haute couture, or even faintly trendy.
But think again. Fashion designers, boutiques and clothing companies all over Europe are the latest to ride the wave of ethical, environmental, sustainable, ecologically-aware products that currently account for a massive £24 billion of the UK market alone. The success of eco-friendly designers like the Dutch firm Kuyichi demonstrates that there is increasing interest in where your clothing comes from as well as what it looks like. This business is about more than just shopping and fashion: Kuyichi advertises itself first and foremost by its ethical credentials: the company has been responsible for "5,000,000 metres of organic yarn"; 450 farmers growing our organic cotton in India; 15 per cent of our profits go to the people who help make Kuyichi". Who wouldn't want to be part of such a beneficent world force - even if it meant paying a lot more for a t-shirt than in Primark or Matalan? The fact is that once you know that cotton growing is so heavy on the use of chemicals that 25 per cent of the world's pesticides are used on cotton alone - well, it rather puts you off that cheap T-shirt in bright, bright white. (Take a look at the Clean Clothes Campaign - ww.cleanclothes.org - supported by Oxfam and other European NGOs for some firsthand information on the truth behind the T-shirt - and don't think that if it was made in an eastern Europe sweatshop it makes it more ethical than one made in an Asian sweatshop.) Environmental NGO Greenpeace are active campaigners in support of textiles that demonstrate an environmentally and socially responsible source. They have compiled a detailed directory, Natural Matters, (www.naturalmatters.net) of organic cotton manufacturers and sustainable clothing producers. As one designer said to me, "You need to be on one of these green directories - it gives credibility".
There are jeans made with organic denim; recycled jumpers, saris and evening dresses; clothes and jewellery made in co-operatives that pay fair wages to women in developing countries; a booming industry in pesticide-free baby clothes; shoes made with vegetable-dyed leather from happy cows. What is more, they all look pretty good: sharp, cosmopolitan, fashionable - and not remotely like the smelly, saggy sackcloth of the hippyish past. Eco-fashion is now attracting the interest of top designers as well as fashion graduates who are setting up businesses allied with organisations, banks and NGOs such as Solidaridad, the Dutch campaigners for organic and fairly-traded cotton, the Soil Association, the British campaign group for organic agriculture, and Triodos (www.triodos.com), the Europe-wide bank, founded in the Netherlands, which lends only to enterprises concerned sustainable and ethical businesses, that makes "positive contributions to the environment and to social projects". James Niven of Triodos in Bristol says that the interest is growing: "Ethical fashion is not just an outside runner but a really good and robust business proposition". The European Union itself has established an "EU Eco-label" in the shape of a flower logo which is awarded to companies that have been checked by independent experts who will vouch for their eco-credentials. The Soil Association in Britain has an accredited list of organic textile suppliers including growers of hemp - perhaps the most environmentally friendly and under-used of crops.
The imagination and ingenuity of these emerging designers is inspiring. Kate Goldsworthy lectures on sustainable textiles and fashion at Chelsea College of Art in London, one of the only art colleges in Europe to offer a course on sustainability and fashion. She has noticed a "massive" rise in the number of students wanting to apply for the course: "There is now a much more ingrained ethos about sustainability. People are beginning to react against the speed and profligacy of the fashion cycle". Instead of worrying about quick-change fashion's next season, eco-designers are concerned about creating clothing that won't be thrown away, but will be handed down for generations. Take Amy Twigger, of Keep & Share, based in Shropshire, who makes beautiful, hand-made jumpers - only one at a time and to order: Twigger says: "I'm trying to create pieces that people will keep and will rise above trends. They are perennial classics". As fashion historian Jane Mulvagh puts it: "In fact what is happening is that people are beginning to rediscover the make-do and mend ethos of their grandparents - a period when cuffs were turned, stockings were darned and clothes were made to last. If it means paying more, it also means that you take care of these clothes because you respect the craftsmanship that has gone into them".
The ingenuity and imagination of the new generation of designers is dazzling. They have taken recycling out of the thrift shops and converted them into marvels of one-off chic. Edson Raupp, for example, a Brazilian-German designer, based in London, makes bags out of classically tailored English suits that had been consigned to the dustbin or the charity shop. A chalk-striped suit, beautifully tailored of the finest cloth, can make four witty bags. The buttons are then collected, dyed in different colours and sewn onto evening bags in long trailing strands held together by plastic label tags. Finally the suits' labels are cut out and sewn onto other bags in collages. Raupp buys secondhand suits in bulk. He started by purchasing them in charity shops but now finds he needs to go to the organisations that supply the shops to have them delivered in the quantity he now needs.
The Indian Sari is another garment that has undergone a remarkable transformation. Sittal Hari of Sari Couture buys up unwanted or second-hand saris in enormous quantities and has them made into beautiful jackets, skirts and coats. British-born Hari was inspired to start her business when she visited relatives in India bringing with her old saris as presents from her family. She found her relatives didn't want them, and wondering what she could do with these beautiful lengths of fabric she came up with the idea of Sari Couture. All the garments (which start at £200) are made in a factory in London as Hari wants to keep the production local. "We are totally dedicated to recycling" she says, "and we see it as part of our company ethos to go out and talk to schools and give workshops on how to reuse and re-make beautiful things". Hittal set up Sari Couture with a grant of £5000 from London Re-made, an initiative to help recycling projects established by the Mayor of London's office (http://www.londonremade.com). It has a brief to support what the Office calls "enviro-entrepeneurs", small and medium-sized businesses with a recycling and environmental policy - and it has a fund of £1.8 million from the London Development Agency behind it. Among the other ethical businesses it has sponsored is Beyond Skin, a vegetarian shoe label.
Lancelot Clark, of the Clark Shoes dynasty, and his son Galahad, have continued the Quaker ideals of their shoemaking forebears with the Worn Again range of their shoe company Terra Plana. Their anti-apathy trainers are made from materials such as old tyres, used coffee-bags, army surplus jackets and scrap car-seat leather. And they look really pretty good. At a different end of the market, in France, Michele and Olivier Chatenet make divine clothing from second-hand haute couture pieces - an Yves St Laurent evening dress remodelled into a two-piece suit perhaps or a silk skirt. In Finland, for the sportier, lumberjacking kind of fashionisti, Globe Hope make heavy-duty utilitarian pieces out of old hospital textiles and army uniforms.
Eco-fashion is not just the concern of a few idealists content to pay over the odds for an unbleached baby-gro. With shoppers more informed now about the real story behind a new T-shirt or a pair of jeans or trainers, it makes good business sense to look for ethical ways to make and market fashion products. Caring, saving, recycling - it's beginning to hit the catwalk. And you don't have to be a vegetarian to get in on the act either. The designers behind Romp, makers of the most luxurious fur, leather and suede coats (all of them the product of happy, free-range, organically-fed animals identified by name and destined for food anyway) puts it like this: "If you don't care at all you are probably quite sad and lonely and I hope that you get some love and learn to smile again soon".
Yes, I know, some of those virtuous "mission statements" can be annoying: but don't let them put you off, this is booming business and makes good sense for everyone from designer to maker to wearer.
The Craft Council's Touring exhibition 'Well Fashioned: Eco Style in the UK' can be seen here:
- The City Gallery, Leicester: 15 July to 26 Aug 2006
- The Design Centre, Barnsley: 7 Sep to 20 Oct 2006
- City Museum & Records Office, Portsmouth: 4 Nov 2006 to 7 Jan 2007
- Bilston Craft Gallery, Wolverhampton: 20 Jan to 3 March 2007
© Lucy Lethbridge. All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to the European Commission.