ECO Fashion Week Vancouver, September 30th, 2010 // Day three: Panel & Audience Q&A Panel & Audience Q&A Panel Members // Myriam Laroche, President, ECO Fashion Week Vancouver Summer Rayne Oakes, Source4Style Jeff Garner, Prophetik Paul Raybin, AirDye® Mark Trotzuk, Boardroom Eco Apparel Nicole Bridger Lindsay Coulter, David Suzuki’s Queen of Green Q&A // Lindsey, David Suzuki Foundation Q: Does the David Suzuki Foundation have any plans to launch a consumer awareness campaign on the impacts of the fashion industry? Similarly to the sustainable seafood initiative? A: Not at this time, we are focusing on improving the policies...
Garment Care
Wash Less // Emma Rigby transforms taboo through ‘Energy Water Fashion’
“Wearing unclean clothes is a social taboo. Yet behind this everyday routine there are some major resource, pollution and social problems.” (Designer Emma Rigby, Energy Water Fashion) Emma Rigby investigates the nature of behaviours and rituals surrounding fashion and clothing, allowing a cross-disciplinary approach to best practices in design to help mitigate the negative impact of excessive laundering, in her work Energy Water Fashion. Rigby has used her transdisciplinary approach toward design to create a line of projects that reduce environmental impact: “ach garment incorporates a unique design feature to encourage the wearer to wash the garment less often.”...
Fashion High// Educating Youth on Responsible Fashion Consumption
I recently had the pleasure of stepping in as a guest speaker at Balmoral Jr. Secondary School, in North Vancouver (BC, Canada), to talk responsible fashion consumption with a fantastic group of Grade 10’s (thanks Ms. Thomson!). Why? We got to talking recently at SA about how many of the resources we’re aggregating for fashion designers/students/educators are easily translated into resources for youth (pre-16). In fact, thanks to groups like Fashioning an Ethical Industry and TRAID (to name just a couple), so many resources on responsible fashion dedicated to students within this age bracket already exist. Because we want to...
FASHION EVOLUTION
Our friends over at Re-dress in Ireland have been BUSY! In less than one month, Re-dress will present FASHION EVOLUTION, Ireland’s 3rd ethical fashion week: “Fashion Evolution aims to re-vitalise the spirit of the Irish fashion industry, with a schedule of exciting events catering for consumers, producers, retailers and supporters of fashion alike.” (Re-dress) “Our mission is to provide the Irish fashion sector with the tools needed to make more sustainable fashion choices.” (Re-dress) We don’t think they’ll have any trouble accomplishing this goal–just take a look at what they have planned! What: Re-dress ETHICAL FASHION CALENDAR LAUNCH When:...
Social Alterations// Slides
Nadira and I both promised to make the slides from our presentations at the FEI conference available online, and here they are, along with a slideshow of some of the images we captured from the event. I’ve reposted the videos of the presentations for convenience. Thanks to everyone who offered feedback, we were so grateful for your considerations. Please, keep let’s keep the conversation going! Be sure to contact us with any questions! Social Alterations: An Education Lab for Socially Responsible Fashion Design View more presentations from socialalterations. Social Alterations @ FEI from Social Alterations on Vimeo. CSR Trends...
WATCH// Social Alterations @ FEI
Here are just two of the videos we took at the conference. We have more videos to come, so stay tuned for those. The first video is of my Pecha Kucha talk. I’ll be posting the slides and my notes a little later on. Please contact us if you have any questions on the works cited in the presentation. Social Alterations @ FEI from Social Alterations on Vimeo. The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) held the table next to ours during the Market Place on day two of the conference. We asked them what exactly responsible fashion meant to the...
Social Alterations @ FEI
So here we are in London for the Fashioning an Ethical Industry Conference: Fast Forward. Today, Nadira and I will both be presenting at the conference, and with Katrine in attendance, this will mark the first time the SA team is all together in the same place at the same time! We will be doing lots of blogging and twitter (ing?) from the event, and will have our presentations uploaded later tonight for you to check out, so be sure to tune in. Follow on twitter via @maryhanlon for that feed. Wish us luck!
Tracing Trash
Trash of Your Society (T.O.Y.S.), an art project of theSYNdicate, is on tour investigating the after-life-cycle of products, or artefacts (a.k.a. trash). Do you know what happens to your products once you’ve tossed them? Here is part of ‘The Concept’: The footsteps or traces that refuse leaves internationally, are the subject of the art project of theSYNdicate: how countries deal with refuse in different parts of the world; the global cycle of refuse; the dimensions of European refuse in Africa. Transport routes of primary products as well as of finished consumer goods cover long distances, in this globalised world,...
Can Design Change Behaviour?
This question was answered recently by Banny Banerjee, Director of the Stanford Design Program and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. In short, his answer is YES! ““Our behavior is deeply influenced by the norms and frameworks that surround us and design can be used to create systems and experiences that work with an underlying understanding of human behavior and cause people to fall into entirely new patterns of behavior,” says Banerjee, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. Because behavior can be influenced—not just observed—it provides an important opportunity for tackling complex challenges such as sustainability.” “That opportunity is perhaps...
Green Carpet Challenge
“We can’t celebrate good intentions, we have to celebrate beauty” (Dilys Williams, London College of Fashion) We’ve really been enjoying watching Mr. Darcy actor Colin Firth’s wife Livia Firth challenge herself to take on ethical fashion this award season. Livia is no stranger to ethical style, however, considering she’s the owner of ethical shop Eco Age in London. She’s been blogging about the Green Carpet Challenge over at Vogue UK, so that we can follow along with her on this incredible journey. Along the way, she’s been interviewing ethical fashion gurus like London College of Fashion Dilys Williams and...
