Let’s face it, going “Green” is a fad trend followed by cosmopolitan residents of the hippest cities in the world. Sustainable design and eco conscious practices have crept into many areas of our lives. For the fashion industry, that  means being more conscious of the product life cycle, manufacturing only what will be sold and incorporating sustainable fabrics into their collections. With more and more designers creating collections sewn with an ethical thread, it is becoming ever more fashionable to be a part of eco fashion movement.

Celebrity Endorsement Of Eco Fashion

Celebrities are a driving force in the eco fashion movement. Recently, Actress Emma Watson collaborated with Alberta Ferretti to create a five piece collection consisting of sustainable pieces made with eco-friendly fabrics, with a portion of the proceeds being donated to charity.  Livia Firth participated in Green Carpet Challenge, where the celebrity wife was challenged to adorn herself only in environmentally friendly attire for all red carpet appearances and Hollywood happenings while also blogging about it.  Celebrities are taking a stand and creating demand. As we all know, a cause in the hands of the RIGHT celebrities and taste makers can create entire movements on the part of the general public.

Eco Conscious Fashion Weeks

Regional fashion weeks and fashion shows are also generating consumers interest in green fashion as most recently seen with Vancouver’s Eco Fashion Week. With a solid community of designers who understand the balance between responsible design and great fashion, consumers are starting to see that it’s not all hemp and a washed out color palette. These emerging labels are raising the bar with the their eco chic collections and setting the standard for what fashion’s impact should be on the environment and the people in it. This small but powerful movement is causing the fashion-loving public to demand this sort of outlook and commitment from all the labels they support.

Because of these reasons (and likely many more), designers are finally starting to listen and understand just how necessary it is to create responsibly stylish design with an element of transparency; especially if they hope to remain relevant in the years to come.

It’s an interesting closed loop scenario, isn’t it? Style savvy consumers want great looking eco-fashion. This demand drives designers to create on-trend and classically stylish eco-friendly pieces. The more consumers see the capability of creating fashionable eco options, the more they want and demand them.

Innovative Brands Lead The Eco Fashion Movement

There are a lot of brands creating earth-friendly lines solely with a mission to be a sustainable label that has significantly less impact on the environment and the people who live in it while still remaining aesthetically pleasing. Brands like SPUN, Edun, Proof, Prophetik, and Nicole Bridger are all exposing consumers to stylish, well made, sustainable and ethical design.

But it’s not just emerging brands that have taken on the responsibility of creating authentic environmentally and socially conscious design. In addition to names like Stella McCartney, Nike, and Levi’s, some rather well known names in fashion have realized the need to start implementing some change into their practices.

Net-A-Porter’s recent Runway to Green featured sustainable clothing from luxury veterans Gucci, Prada, Burberry, Marc Jacobs, Manolo Blahnik, Jason Wu, Rachel Roy, Michael Kors, and Tommy Hilfiger. The collaboration helped raise awareness about the impact of the fashion industry on the environment.  Each designer was invited to design and create a piece of eco-friendly fashion that is sold via Net-A-Porter’s site. Consumers were able to support an important cause while still purchasing from their favorite labels.

In addition to making green design even more accessible, this initiative inspired major brand names in the fashion industry to take a step back, look at the affect they have been having on the global environment and to understand how to implement more sustainable design practices. Our hope here is that these designers are really receiving an education and will start to consider what they’ve learned when designing future collections that aren’t necessarily part of a collaboration with Runway to Green or any other eco initiative.

Until recently, consumers have looked at green clothing with an element of apprehension, not wanting to come across as a hemp-wearing hippie type with a complete lack of style sense.  However, now that they have started to understand that this isn’t the case, they’re not backing down. As time passes, ethical fashion design practices will become less of a novelty and more of an expected element of the design process. Fashion designers who understand this and who are adjusting the way they work and produce are one step ahead of the green fashion game.