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November 18, 2023admin

British Fashion’s Environmental Gains Undone by Shopaholics – Mother Jones

A person going through an assortment of clothing with different patterns on a rack.

Becca McHaffie/Unsplash

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A fashion industry push to reduce the environmental impact of the clothing it sells is being undermined by an ongoing addiction to buying new clothes, with the average British person buying 28 items every year.

Asos and Primark are among the big names signed up to Wrap’s voluntary environmental pact, Textiles 2030.

While the companies involved have managed to reduce both the carbon intensity and volume of water per metric ton used in their clothing manufacture, in its annual progress report, published today, the climate action NGO warns of hard-won gains being “canceled out” because clothing production is “spiraling upwards.”

Textiles and fashion are responsible for up to 10 percent of global carbon emissions. Catherine David, Wrap’s director of behavior change and business programs, said the progress made by 130 brands and retailers involved showed “it’s possible to change this.” But that at the moment, “as fast as positive improvements happen, they’re canceled out by rising production.”

The companies had reduced the carbon impact of their textiles by 12 percent and water by 4 percent (on a per-ton basis) between 2019 and 2022. However, this was negated by a 13 percent increase in the volume of textiles produced and sold, according to the report. The increased production rates meant overall water use actually rose by 8 percent over the period, while the carbon reduction figure stood at just 2 percent.

Since production is obviously related to consumption, David said consumers had a part to play. “We’re working with companies to improve clothes, but the other part

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October 24, 2023admin

‘The missing link’: is textile recycling the answer to fashion’s waste crisis? | Fashion

The sun is always shining in the Swedish seaside town of Sundsvall, according to the staff of Renewcell, the world’s first commercial-scale textile-to-textile recycling factory.

Renewcell’s enormous warehouse opened last year. It sits on the water’s edge, with easy access for the ships that deliver 400kg bales of shredded cotton and denim from textile waste sorters in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden. Inside the warehouse, the large rectangular bales are stacked in colossal fabric pyramids, each exploding with ribbons of navy blue and black fabric. The towering piles weigh 500 tonnes. Every month, the plant can take 10 times that amount and turn it into a material called Circulose. Circulose looks and feels like chalky craft paper, but it can be used to make viscose rayon (usually made from wood pulp) and, in turn, new clothes.

“Instead of sending [textile waste] to landfill or incineration, we want to pick it up and be that circularity,” says Patrick Lundström, the CEO of Renewcell. “We see ourselves as the missing link in the fashion industry.”

A textile delivery awaits treatment at Renewcell — A drop in the ocean … a textile delivery awaits treatment at Renewcell. Photograph: Felix Odell

The opening of the plant could not come soon enough. The question of what to do with the mountains of textile waste produced by the fashion industry is increasingly pressing. Images of used garments strewn across the beaches of Ghana and the dunes of the Atacama desert in Chile highlight the truth of waste colonialism – the practice of big waste producers such as the UK offloading their waste on to poorer countries without effective waste management – and reveal how overproduction has rendered piles of T-shirts, dresses and jeans worthless to charities and resellers.

But the 60,000 tonnes of textile waste Renewcell will be able to process by next year is

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September 16, 2023admin

What Fashion’s Creative Talent Needs to Know Today

Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion creatives, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or impress in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.

BoF Careers distils business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.

Key articles and need-to-know insights for creatives in fashion today:

1. Can Peter Do Restore Helmut Lang to Its Former Glory?

Peter Do in the Helmut Lang studio in Manhattan. (Cathaleen Chen)

Peter Do wants to dress New York. And when he unveils his debut collection as creative director of Helmut Lang Friday afternoon, New York will see — and judge — what the designer plans to offer: straightforward tops, dresses and jeans that combine the legendary label’s industrial, androgynous sensibility with Do’s own subtle tailoring.

“I just feel like more than ever we need non-fussy clothing,” Do said in an interview ahead of the show. “Things you can go to work in but also go out afterward.” But while Do plans to honour the brand’s roots, the designer says he’s more focused on attracting the next generation of shoppers — most of whom have no idea who Helmut Lang is — with a focus on offering practical, accessible pieces to customers who care less about trends as they do having something nice to wear.

Related Jobs:

Creative Pattern Cutter, Alexander McQueen — London, United Kingdom

Senior Pattern Maker, Cecilie Bahnsen — Copenhagen, Denmark

Associate Art Director, Ralph Lauren — New York, United States

2. Coach’s 10-Year Quest to Be More Than a Handbag

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August 12, 2023admin

Compostable clothes: a solution to fast fashion’s waste problem?

What if you could put your old knickers in the compost bin with your potato peels and coffee grinds? Well, now you can

When Katie Lopes set out to create a women’s underwear brand, she wanted her products to be comfortable and hip — and eventually disappear into a pile of coffee grounds, eggshells and potato peels in her garden.

“I was beginning to become more aware of the damage the fashion industry was doing to the planet, so it would have been irresponsible not to take this information into account,” said Lopes, who founded Stripe & Stare, an intimate apparel brand, in 2017. Lopes said she chose to focus on underwear because so few people feel comfortable buying it secondhand. “Producing it right and avoiding the landfill was very important,” she said.

UK-based Stripe & Stare is among a growing number of clothing brands, including H&M and Stella McCartney, marketing biodegradable clothing that they say can be disposed of in a compost bin.

The fashion industry accounts for up to eight per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. That’s more than global shipping and air travel combined. Most of those clothes — about 84 per cent — end up in landfills or incinerators.

It doesn’t have to be that way, said Natalie Patricia, the founder of Harvest & Mill, whose clothes are made entirely from US-sourced organic cotton. “Organic cotton is a plant grown on a farm just like our food is. And so it can and should be composted and returned to the soil,” Patricia said.

Composting refers to the process of recycling organic matter — in most households, that means food scraps and yard waste, like leaves — into fertiliser. Because composting is an aerobic process, it

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June 8, 2023admin

Chic Pickleball Clothes for Women: A Guide to the Shopping Fashion’s Latest Sports Craze

Is pickleball the new tennis? If Moda Operandi has anything to say about it, the answer is yes. So much so that the e-commerce retailer is offering a pickleball paddle and pickleballs as a part of its new Club Moda summer capsule collection. And they’re not the only ones who are leaning into the fashion side of the sport. In recent months, Norma Kamali started selling her own pickleball dress, while Alice + Olivia and Nike have also dipped their toes in pickleball merch. Pickleball has been declared America’s fastest-growing sport, according to a 2022 report by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.

But what does pickleball fashion look like? The idea of pickleball itself may be camp, and its fashion interpretation even more so. After all, it’s a low-risk, low-impact sport that was previously mainly enjoyed by an older crowd before its recent spike in popularity. In dressing for pickleball, one could theoretically wear the same kind of outfit as one might for tennis, but getting a little bit more specific makes it all the more fun. Think the Yuppie aesthetic combined with ’90s New England prepsters or a sporty Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. Or, on the other hand: lots of color, as professional pickleball players like Anna Leigh Waters often gravitate towards neon pinks and electric greens.

For Moda Operandi’s Club Moda summer collection, for example, the retailer partnered with 24 established and emerging designers—including Brandon Maxwell, Jil Sander, Rosie Assoulin, House of Aama, and The Frankie Shop—to design pieces 70 exclusive styles, such as little pleated skirts, striped wool crepe mini dresses and more, alongside the aforementioned pickleball set created in collaboration with the pickleball gear brand Recess. “One of my favorite summer destinations is Nantucket; for our capsule with Moda, we transformed some of our

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February 21, 2023admin

Cheap, cool and kind to nature: how secondhand became UK fashion’s main attraction | Fashion

If clothes swaps have traditionally been about bobbly jumpers and past-it denim, the format was certainly elevated last week. The Absolut Swap Shop opened in London with rooms full of preloved and “deadstock” clothing (clothes that were never sold in the first place) chosen by sustainability influencer Venetia La Manna, body positivity campaigner Nyome Nicholas-Williams and Harry Lambert, the celebrity stylist who works with Harry Styles, Emma Corrin and Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Between them, they have nearly a million Instagram followers. The sold-out event gave shoppers the chance to swap anything from their wardrobe for secondhand clothing.

Lambert says the event appealed to him because he has recently changed how he thinks about fashion. “When I was younger, I’d buy stuff and wear it a few times and I would throw it away,” he says. Now he says he is trying to put himself on a more sustainable path and he hopes the Swap Shop will encourage others to do the same.

A retail space in Brent Cross shopping centre that once housed a Topshop has also just opened as Charity.Super.Mkt, a department store of secondhand clothes masterminded by former Red or Dead designer Wayne Hemingway and Maria Chenoweth, chief executive of Traid. Many middle-market companies such as Cos, Joules and Toast started reselling preloved online alongside their new season collection or organising their own clothes swaps in the last year. Love Island, a reality show once sponsored by fast fashion brand Pretty Little Thing, has now been sponsored by eBay for the second series running, and Depop (which allows people to buy and sell vintage clothing online) has had stars including Olivia Rodrigo sell their clothes on the app. Childrenswear is now the fastest growing sector of secondhand.

These are all examples of how preloved fashion has moved

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