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SUSTAINABLE FUTURES
March 3, 2010
The Sustainable Futures exhibition opens later this month at London’s Design Museum, showcasing cutting-edge and forward-thinking movements in ecologically conscious architecture and design. The show celebrates the excitement of how design can positively contribute to a more sustainable future. Sadly, fashion is lacking from the showcase—albeit as the scope of the show is to mostly highlight architecure and green building practices. Still, the fashion industry needs to step more boldly into this dialogue. True, Green Fashion Week just took place last month in New York and that is to be applauded, but many of the major players in the industry still haven’t moved beyond simply using the green chic bandwagon in some of their ad campaigns, regardless of whether any of their business practices and manufacturing are green at all. It’s time for fashion to fully embrace sustainability in actual practice, rather than in just empty rhetoric. Author Celestyna Brozek penned an excellent article at Green by Design about how fashion, often overlooked in its historical importance, is actually one of the most important tools for the historian, as it is a visual display of democracy, but also acts as a harbinger of paradigm shifts. The article goes on to applaud Alexander McQueen’s vision:
Style.com reviewed his Spring 2010 collection with these words: “Then the models came out, dressed in short, reptile-patterned, digitally printed dresses, their gangly legs sunk in grotesque shoes that looked like the armored heads of a fantastical breed of antediluvian sea monster. McQueen … was casting an apocalyptic forecast of the future ecological meltdown of the world: Humankind is made up of creatures that evolved from the sea, and we may be heading back to an underwater future as the ice cap dissolves.”
Thus far, there are two schools of thought. There are the aesthetically forward, but mostly polluting, exploiting, fur-addicted major players in the scene. And, then there is the other camp: green-do-gooders who manifest their creations mostly in a populous, folksy, crafty, often-etsy-store manner, which rarely ends up being aesthetically forward, and begs the question of whether its fashion, or just clothing? There are exceptions of course to both camps, and I don’t mean to demean either one as both parties bring exceptional qualities to the table. But, c’mon! The industry needs to catch up with architecture, product design, graphic design–why does the fashion industry currently feel it can be so lazy and apathetic and deserving of a free pass? Isn’t fashion about seeing things anew, being forward-thinking, challenging ourselves to be brash and embracing a bolder future?
I love the Rick Owens and Gareth Pughs of the world (not that there are that many). But, what if we could have the visual forwardness of Owens and Pugh, but with an ecological forwardness as well? The industry needs to question its addiction to animal products and the exploitation of our environment. Otherwise, the fashion industry is merely just a regressive commercial enterprise.
I want art.
I use the image above of the Ann Demeulemeester store in Seoul, South Korea (designed by Mass Studies) as inspiration for this montage as a reminder of what fashion can and should be. Green nylon suit by Loden Dager paired with a contrasting 100% cotton tee-shirt (Alternative Apparel), Rachel Comey vegan captoes with green rubber sole (Steven Alan), Bosky bamboo low-rise briefs in fetching green (by Piado), vintage brass feather charm pendant (AK Vinatge Jewelry) …and look boldly into your bright new future with these Bamboo spectacle frames (via Yii Collection).