SUSTAINABLE STYLE
Designers display love of our oceans and work to clean up fashion’s act
Before the novel coronavirus dominated the collective global conversation, there was another buzzword taking up space in our minds:
Sustainability.
With temperatures rising an average of 0.18 C every decade since 1981, according to Climate.gov, and essential resource scarcity such as water being forecast to displace more than 700 million people worldwide by 2030, according to the United Nations, it’s no secret that the world has some serious problems.
Several stakeholders within the fashion industry are hoping to be part of the solution.
While the seemingly universally accepted proclamation that the fashion industry is the second-worst industry contributing to global pollution levels has come under scrutiny, the fact remains that — whether from a resource, textile dye pollution, carbon footprint, or human rights perspective — the industry, undoubtedly, could stand to clean up its act.
“I think it’s fundamentally important, if not the necessity, to provide a sustainable and more responsible option,” says Alexandra Weston, founder of H Project at Holt Renfrew.
The knowledge that the industry should — and could — be doing better is what prompted Weston to spearhead the shop-in-shop concept highlighting fair-trade artisans and sustainable style options, which was rolled out in several of the luxury department store’s locations in 2013.
“I like to think we were early and I think, therefore, we are in a really great place,” Weston says. “We had a lot of learning — good and bad. But, we are definitely not new to the game.”
That experience within the market, she says, has helped to build relationships within the “broader community” of companies and creators who have similar goals of cleaning up the industry’s offering.
“When you’re establishing yourself, you’re the one hustling and going to all the trade shows and calling people and they’re like ‘What? A shop-in-what?’” Weston says. “Now, we have more and more people, even people who are not designers or vendors, just colleagues within the industry, who are like, ‘Have you heard about what’s happening here?’ or ‘Have you heard about this textile innovation?’
“So, I think we definitely are more on top of what’s happening because we have been in the conversation for so long.”
Sustainable style options, and their increasing draw with customers at varying price points, are furthering the industry efforts. Fast-fashion retailers such as H&M have set sustainability targets for their global operations and introduced several ‘conscious’ pieces to their lineup, including a full-season Conscious Exclusive capsule collection; while luxury brands such as the Italian fashion house Prada introduced a collection of six unisex handbags called Re-Nylon, each one crafted from Econyl, a regenerated nylon made from plastic waste found in the oceans. The amount of plastics that can be found in the world’s oceans is the focus of the H Project’s latest capsule campaign.
While Weston is confident the staggering statistics regarding plastic waste in the world’s oceans still will come as a shock to many, she admits she’s rarely shocked any more after more than seven years exploring the impact of fashion — and global business, in general — on the environment.
“Because I’ve been doing this for so long, the shock value has kind of gone. I heard a lot of stats that, early on, really motivated me to keep going,” she says. “From this specific project, the most shocking thing is the pure quantity. We all know that garbage in the oceans is a problem. We all know and are very aware of whales washing up dying because their stomachs are wrapped in plastic.”
Weston admits that, despite her understanding of the overall outlook, the “pure stats” that come from organizations that study ocean contamination and cleanup are still pretty scary.
“I know, having heard this from Oceana, they estimate it’s eight million tonnes per year that get leaked into our oceans,” Weston says. “So, to break that down, that is the equivalent of one garbage truckload full of plastic a minute. A minute!”
While Weston is the first to point out that finding unique ways to reuse the plastic waste floating in the sea is not the final solution to the plastic pollution problem, she says that it’s a very important first step.
“The end solution is a decreased production of plastic, and a decreased dependence — but, in the meantime, we do have a problem,” she says. “We have eight million tonnes of plastic going into our oceans a year. So, if we can economize that, there is no better industry to do that than the fashion industry; an industry that is traditionally seen as harmful ... I believe deeply that, if thought of well, the production, the manufacturing, everything from people’s human rights, to the material aspect of things, is done right, you can swing the pendulum in the opposite direction.
“And, we’re seeing that with a lot of the textiles that are coming out of ocean plastic.”
Vancouver-based eco-conscious swimwear brand OCIN, which is featured in the latest H Project Uncrate Oceans initiative, is an example of a small company that’s set on using materials that are made from recycled and regenerated ocean waste. Similar to the handbags on offer by Prada, OCIN’s swimwear pieces feature Econyl, a nylon yarn developed by the company Aquafil that uses primarily discarded fishing nets.
“To me, being conscious is to think about our impact on the world, through all layers of the business,” company founder Courtney Chew says. “I believe that to be a conscious brand, you really have to have that built into your core. It can’t just be an afterthought.”
Chew’s ambition to be eco-conscious stems beyond the use of recycled textiles in her designs.
“We tried to think of how to reduce our impact when shipping and how we shipped each piece,” Chew says. “And how to offset putting new product out in the world, by encouraging the proper disposal of old product through our recycling program.”
With a hope for an industry shift that sees the ability to drop ‘sustainability’ as an identifier — assuming that all brands are, then, doing their part to be eco-focused — Chew hopes her brand’s creations work to, “challenge the way that we think about what it means to be conscious and sustainable.”
And to prompt people to rethink how they (and the garments they’re wearing) impact and interact with the planet.