Frankie’s Zero Waste Skirt Tutorial http://ift.tt/1N0s25r
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Sunday, 2 August 2015
Frankie’s Zero Waste Skirt Tutorial http://ift.tt/1N0s25r If...
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Saturday, 1 August 2015
Frankie's Zero Waste Skirt Tutorial
Frankie’s Zero Waste Skirt Tutorial
We haven’t heard from zero waste extraordinaire Frankie Campbell in a little while. She’s been a busy bee working on a new, exciting collection! Hopefully we’ll see more of that in the coming months, but for now, here she is with a fabulous zero waste skirt for you to sink your teeth into.[Tweet “Can’t wait to have a go at your #zerowaste #skirt @frankicampbell!”]
Fabrics Suitable for lightwe…
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Tuesday, 28 July 2015
Fashion Trade Show Roundup 2015-16
Fashion trade shows are a great opportunity for fashion designers to get noticed. Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur attending the most happening events to understand how the industry works, or you’re looking for design inspiration, or if you’re on the search for avenues to showcase your designs, fashion trade shows are the right place for all your needs.
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Find out all you need to know about the hottest fashion trade shows in the coming seasons through this thoroughly compiled Fashion Trade Show Round Up for 2015-16. The events featured here are mostly held in UK and Europe, and are popular shows for both existing and emerging fashion labels.
Pure London, 2-4 August 2015 Olympia, London
Pure London is the UK’s leading fashion trade show, held twice a year in Olympia, London. The show features fashion-forward dress and footwear collections, from premium brands as well as emerging designers. During the trade show in August, both International and British labels will present their spring and summer collections for 2015-16. Apart from brand displays, the event will also include catwalk performances and daily fashion seminars on the latest industry trends by leading design houses. They also very handily mark the ‘green’ companies in their programme, so if that’s what you are there sourcing you can go straight to them!
Bubble London, 12-13 July 2015 Business Design Centre, London
The most dynamic kid’s trade event in the UK, Bubble London presents the latest trends in kids apparel, accessories, gifts and homeware. The show, which is organized by ITE Moda Ltd, was first launched in 2008 in America, and later moved to Europe, where it underwent phenomenal growth. Bubble London featured over 208 childrenswear collections in the last season. It offers a great platform to meet the world’s best retail buyers. Bubble London also has a comprehensive marketing program, through which it’s exhibitors gain valuable publicity, long before the event opens.
London Edge 6-8 September 2015 Business Design Centre, London
With a focus on cutting edge lifestyle fashion, London Edge brings together thousands of creative designers and fashion buyers from around the world. The carefully curated collection features novel designs and concepts, and has over 30% overseas visitors placing orders every season. With over 30 shows successfully completed to date, London Edge is the one-stop destination for the latest alternative clothing, jewellery, accessories and makeup.
London Fashion Week 18-22 September 2015 Soho, London
The British Fashion Council will host the 62nd edition of London Fashion Week this September. This year, the show takes on a new venue in Brewer Street, Soho, for the first time, to meet its expanding needs. LFW is globally acclaimed as one of the hottest events on the international fashion scene. Featuring designer catwalk shows and exciting designer showrooms, over one hundred designers showcase their latest collections to the UK and global audience every year. LFW features the British Fashion Council supported Esthetica, an innovative platform for sustainable fashion. This exhibition showcases creative collections by designers in the eco-fashion genre.
Moda UK, 9-11 August 2015 and 21 – 23 February 2016, NEC Birmingham
Moda UK is Britain’s largest B2B fashion trade event, and it takes place twice a year. Catering to a wide spectrum of buyers, the show is defined by five specialist sectors: womenswear, footwear, lingerie and swimwear, menswear and accessories. Starting this year, Moda will introduce the BE2B Hub, a destination for business and e-commerce sectors in the show. The venue will have over 1450 international and local brands, with dedicated product zones that allow buyers to easily find exactly what they seek.
Scoop International, 2-4 August and 20-22 Sept 2015 Saatchi Gallery, King’s Road, London
Since its launch in February 2011, Scoop has built an international reputation for it’s impressive line-up of premium collections by niche designers. Keying in on unique designs, the trade show features a carefully compiled collection of diverse brands, that buyers have not seen elsewhere. Over 250 international designers will feature in the August show. Scoop, in collaboration with the London Fashion Week, will launch Scoop London for the first time this year. This program enables buyers at Scoop to gain entry to a hand-picked selection of international and British labels displaying at the LFW in UK, for the first time.
Designers & Agents, 18 – 20 September 2016 New York and 12-14 October Los Angeles, USA
Designers and Agents is an international fashion trade fair that brings together well curated, art-directed fashion merchandise from emerging fashion designers and established brands, to buyers from around the globe. It features hundreds of collections in an intimate atmosphere, where designers and buyers of women clothing and fashion accessories work together to build business relationships. Designers and Agents is committed to sustainability. As part of this initiative, they offer gifted space to eco-friendly and ethical businesses, designate green brands with a Green leaf icon and award Green Market status to brands that demonstrate their affinity for ethical and environment-friendly practices.
Paris Sur Mode 2-5 October 2015 Jardin des Tuileries, Paris
This premium trade show will feature over 119 exhibitors showcasing their products in the fashion apparel and clothing industry. This year’s event is based on the theme “The Family.” Focusing on women’s fashion, the trade show attempts to showcase creative and innovative fashion labels, including budding designers. They expose designers to leading buyers, exporters, retailers and fashion houses. The clothing on show includes ready-to-wear collections, bridal wear, casual clothing and formal attire.
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Monday, 27 July 2015
Garment Washing: Stop Your Designs Destroying The Earth
In my previous article I discussed the environmental impact of washing clothes. From causing chemical pollution, to energy and resource wastage, the list is long and worrisome. Now, let’s look at what steps can lessen this environmental impact. Both the consumer and the designer can hugely reduce the damage we do to the environment, and here is how.
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Consumers & Their Role
This article by Dr Kate Fletcher on her Lifetimes project, tells us that the greatest environmental impact of a piece of clothing is while it is in the hands of the consumer. The frequency with which a garment is laundered, the energy used and the chemicals used to clean it, are just some of the factors that contribute to this damage.
Changes At Home
Adopting an earth-friendly laundry regime is the first step to reducing environmental damage. Simple solutions suggested on the Green Living Tips website, include washing full-loads, using the correct wash cycle and choosing greener pre-wash alternatives for stain removal. Switching to an energy-efficient washing machine, that uses less water and energy per load of laundry is also advisable. Our energy consumption is significantly lowered, when we wash clothes in cold water, and when we use line-drying instead of tumble drying. In Europe alone, if every household turned its washing temperature down to 30°C, we could save 12 million tons of CO2 a year.
The other important aspect is cutting chemical pollution. You can use concentrated and bio-degradable detergents. Other suggestions are to avoid ironing unless absolutely necessary and wearing clothes as many times as possible, before giving them a wash.
The Concept of Clean
While reducing the frequency of washing is undoubtedly a sustainable option, our concepts of cleanliness may limit the practicality of this solution. Tullia Jack, in her write-up, “The dirt on Clothes: why washing less is more sustainable”, says that we have a preoccupation with cleanliness. This is mainly attributed to the technological and product developments in this sphere, which encourage us to wash our clothes more often than is actually necessary.
Kate Fletcher’s research on the environmental impact of textiles supports this idea. She mentions that while durable and no-wash clothes are the sensible choice, they are unacceptable to many.
This is where textile designers can influence the consumer, by engaging their image of cleanliness appropriately. Let us look at how this is possible.
Your Role As A Designer
Overcoming The Environmental Impact of Washing Clothes
Tullia Jack decided to find out what would happen if clothes were washed less often. She conducted a three-month study with 31 participants who wore the same jeans for five days a week, without washing between uses. The outcome was that neither did the jeans look dirty, nor did they smell offensive. This tells us that social norms on cleanliness, make us believe that frequent washing is necessary to look and feel presentable. However, the truth is that we needn’t wash our garments more often than when they are actually soiled, to be clean.
As designers, you can work towards changing this perception of cleanliness by trying to influence consumers. One way to do this is to design garments that are resistant to odour and soiling. Fletcher suggests garments that have stain blocking coatings and deodorising fibres to control germ growth. Did you know that most natural fibres have odour resisting properties – check out my series on wool to read more about this.
Another recommendation is to choose fibres that wash well at normal temperatures. When you do this, it is also necessary to educate your customer of this property of the garment, as most people sort laundry based on colour, and not material. Dr Fletcher also suggests modular design, where the garments have detachable parts so only the soiled areas have to be washed.
Projects Targeting Minimum Wash Garments
Many designers have already pioneered sustainable designs by targeting minimum washing. F-ABRIC by the Swiss company Freitag, has taken sustainability to new heights through its range of hard-wearing, biodegradable material. Their clothes can simply be thrown into the garbage pile after use, to decompose naturally. Find out more in this article on the Guardian. The company also owns the patent for reusable buttons, that can be unscrewed off an existing garment and used elsewhere. Additionally, Freitag has a collaboration project, Algaemy, with Blond and Beiber. This innovative project uses micro algae to produce eco-friendly fabric dye that is unique in its property to change colours over time.
Another clothing company, Wool & Prince, used Kickstarter to fund production of a button-down shirt, which is low maintenance and odour-free. The shirt is made from sheep wool, that is specially processed to make it soft, flat, wrinkle resistant and odour resistant. The company owner, Mac Bishop, tested the success of the design, by wearing the shirt for one hundred days in a row without washing!
The trend for raw denim with brands like Nudie shows a growing acceptance of ‘less washing’. The longer you go without washing your jeans the more character they have. There are whole online communities like Rawr Denim full of hints and tips for maintaining your unwashed denim. Which just goes to know it is something consumers can get on board with!
These examples inspire us to consider how we can make efforts in this direction to create products that are sustainable, through minimum laundering requirements. If more designers target this goal, consumers will also adapt to the concept. Together, we can make significant strides in helping the environment by minimizing garment washing and restore the ecological balance that garment washing has disrupted.
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Thursday, 23 July 2015
Competition! Would You Change How We Produce & Buy Food?...
Competition! Would You Change How We Produce & Buy Food? http://ift.tt/1KmuRgS
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Tuesday, 21 July 2015
We Catch Up With The Eco Designer Of The Future 2015!
Earlier this year we ran our Eco Designer Of The Future 2015 student sponsorship competition. With entrants from all over the world, we wanted to showcase today’s students with a passion for sustainability and incredible dedication to ethical design.
We had some fabulous entries, but once we opened the vote up to the public there was one clear winner. With a staggering 902 votes it was Chloe Wright from Falmouth University. We caught up with Chloe to check out her final collection and talk to her about why being ethical is so important.
Celebrating the #Eco #Designers of the #Future,
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Why Do You Want To Be An Eco Designer?
I became an eco designer after being awarded the opportunity to attend the Hay Festival fashion event, which was run by the Environmental Justice Foundation and The Centre for Sustainable Fashion (at LCF). It was a one week course where we created an outfit using sustainable fabrics. We were taught about sustainable fashion and at the end of the week met Katharine Hamnett, who critiqued our outfits. She also choose two out of the nine attendees to be interviewed with her by The Telegraph and at the Hay Festival event on the Saturday. I was fortunate enough to be chosen for both events. Going through this experience allowed me to learn a lot about the benefits of creating sustainable fashion.
Was Working Ethically Part Of Your Course, Or Something You Decided On Your Own?
It was something I decided on my own, if I am honest most people would forget my collection was sustainable because it doesn’t look sustainable. Also it isn’t something I often discussed – I wanted to create sustainable garments, because I wanted to.
Were There Any Challenges You Faced In Making This Decision?
Trying to source a navy coloured silk! It took me weeks trying to find one, only to end up unsuccessful. I ended up buying white silk from Offset Warehouse and hand dying it. Unfortunately the methods available in my textiles departments weren’t sustainable, so I had to make the decision to compromise, and went for the alternative that I would be able to do if I were to produce this garment on a larger scale.
What Are Your Plans Now?
I am currently back at home in Bristol. I’ve just got a part-time in store role at Austin Reed. So I am currently applying for studio work, design internships and assisting roles. I want to learn more about the industry and hopefully more about sustainable fashion.
What Advice Would You Give To Other Students Considering Being Eco?
Do it! It’s challenging but worth it, the results are always beautiful because you are starting with fabrics which you know are made correctly, no underpaid workers weaving your fabrics or children picking the cotton buds. I think knowing how and where my fabrics were made makes me feel like I am contributing to the fashion world correctly. Obviously, I still have a lot to learn and I want to. For me using sustainably sourced fabrics is just the start, but its a great place to begin.
What a fantastic collection! Chloe sourced all of her fabrics sustainably from Offset Warehouse and other sources. She showed real dedication to the cause, and we’re incredibly proud to have named her our Eco Designer of The Future 2015. Thank you for your words of wisdom – we can’t wait to see what you do next.
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Thursday, 16 July 2015
The Damage I Cause When I Wash My Clothes
Washing clothes is a mundane task we all have to do regularly. Although you may not give it much thought, garment washing has a bigger impact on the environment, than you probably realise. Did you know that a single synthetic garment washed in a domestic washing machine gives off around 1900 individual fibres, which can end up in our oceans? These pollutants can then make their way into the food chain and even enter our systems.
This is just one of the consequences of garment washing. Apart from polluting our water systems, garment washing also contributes to a significant carbon footprint, causes excessive water and energy wastage. Let’s take a look at each of these factors in greater detail, to get a better picture of what this means.
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Microfibres In The Sea
Ecologist Mark Browne, in his research on microplastics, found that the shorelines around the world were contaminated with synthetic fibres, such as nylon and acrylic. This cannot be easily dismissed, as these synthetic fibres form up to 85% of the man-made materials on the shorelines.
Several toxic chemicals are used in the construction of synthetic fibres. When such fabrics break down and their fibres make their way to domestic sewage systems, hazardous chemicals are introduced into our water systems.
Although environmental groups like Greenpeace put pressure on clothing makers to eliminate toxic chemicals from their production system, research on how to tackle synthetic microfibre migration to water systems is lacking. Mark Browne proposed the Benign by Design program, to research more on this subject. However, he has been unable to obtain support from garment and appliance manufacturers to take it forward, and the danger remains unchecked.
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Chemical Pollution
When you think about it, it’s kind of a no brainer that common laundry soaps and fabric softeners aren’t environmentally friendly, as they wash chemicals into the water supply. This article on Treehugger also draws our attention to the fact that laundry detergents contain APEs that damage the immune system and act as hormone disruptors. Enzymes, bleaches, perfumes and colourants used in chemical detergents are absorbed into our bodies when they come into contact with our skin. Some of these toxic chemicals have even been linked to cancer, allergies and birth defects.
Similarly, chlorine bleach contaminates drinking water, is caustic and can react with other cleaners to release toxic fumes. Phosphates in laundry detergents that enter aquatic systems, promote algal blooms, causing imbalances in the ecosystem.
The Green Choices website sheds light on the dangers of using non-biodegradable laundry detergents. Those that do not break down, persist in the system, polluting our water bodies and finding their way into our drinking water supply.
Carbon Footprint
Human activities introduce certain gases like methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases contribute to climatic changes like global warming, and have a long-term impact. What we mean by carbon footprint, is the extent of impact that an activity we do, causes the environment.
Washing clothes contributes to our total carbon footprint, and it is quite significant. This article on the Guardian mentions that washing and drying a 5 kg load of laundry every two days creates nearly 440 kg of carbon dioxide emissions in a year. For a typical wash at 40°C, 75% of the carbon footprint is attributed to the drying phase using a tumble drier. So, you can reduce your carbon footprint significantly by skipping the drying phase, and choosing to line dry our clothes instead.
Water & Energy Wastage
Energy Star puts the average household’s water consumption for garment washing using a top loading machine, at 13500 gallons of water per year. These older machines use nearly 40 gallons of water per wash. This is twice as much water as a front loading machine needs.
By simply switching to a front loading machine, you can save up to 7000 gallons of water in a year. Considering that the average life of such a machine is 11 years, that’s enough water supply for the lifetime of six people – shocking, isn’t it!?
Where energy is concerned, both washing machines and dryers use electricity to generate heat and drive the motors. 90% of the energy consumed is used to heat up the water. When we do our laundry in cold water with a suitable detergent, there is a significant reduction in the amount of energy required for each wash.
We should also consider the extent to which dryers use up energy. A single tumble dryer cycle uses up to four kWh of energy, which creates more than a tonne of carbon dioxide per year.
Most dryers use a vented model, where the heat that is generated in it is simply pumped out and wasted. The green solution is to completely skip the dryer, and use a clothes line to dry clothes instead. Switch off your dryer and you not only increase the lifespan of your clothes, but also help the environment.
I hope that this article has enlightened you on the overall effect that the simple act of garment washing, has on the environment. However, our discussion is incomplete, until we explore how we can minimise these adverse effects through making the right choices, and how designers can alleviate the issue by designing for minimum environmental impact. More on this in my next article!
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