FEED DID YOU KNOW? It can take 2,700 gallons of water to make onecottonT-shirt.^ Less than one percent of material used to produce clothing
offersasustainable-fashion“howto”guidethataimsto“takethecomplexideaofsustainabilityandsimplifyitintoclear,digestibleresourcesandactions.”Theguideis233pages.Rose-PetalSylk
HOW IT FEELS:Soft and
slippery, very much like silk.
UPSIDE:The process for
making it is similar to that for
viscose but better because
it doesn’t rely on wood pulp.
Viscose is made from
regenerated cellulose, which is
found in plant material, usually
wood pulp. But 150 million
trees are deforested each
year to make it, and a lot of
chemicals are involved.
According to Nicole Rycroft,
up to 80 percent of a tree is
wasted making viscose.
DOWNSIDE: There aren’t
enough discarded rose petals
to replace the millions of trees
viscose uses, so Canopy works
with companies employing
next-generation materials, like
straw or lab-grown cellulose,
or a closed-loop system so
chemicals aren’t wasted.EXPERIMENTSFood for Clothes?
Pineapple leather sounds like something
a California parent would serve a toddler.
Turns out it actually makes a pretty good bag.
So we gave ve designers some of the
latest ecofabrics and challenged them to make
us something we’d want to wear. By Sarah Spellings
PICKING THE DESIGNERS
The five companies we worked with on this project—Kate Spade, Collina
Strada, Hunting Season, Zero + Maria Cornejo, and Rachel Comey—
were selected in part because they have already been experimenting in
this area. The Cut provided each of them with enough material to make
a garment or an accessory of their own design. This was no simple exer-
cise. As Comey explained, her line is working to make conscious choices—
sending waste fabric to be recycled and reused, making the garments
locally, using sustainable fabrics—but that it’s hard to figure out the best
route. “There are many fabrics now on the market, and it’s hard to find
accurate information about their actual ecological e ects,” Comey said. “I
wish the CFDA or another large organization would build some regula-
tions or standards that we designers could turn to. Companies with huge
resources, who advertise and market their environmental actions and
accomplishments, could be more transparent with their findings. This is
only good for the planet at large, and isn’t that the point?”PICKING THE FABRICS
When Zara’s parent company, Inditex, announced its sustainability
goals, one statistic reported by Women’s Wear Daily stood out: the idea
of using “100 percent sustainable fabrics by 2025.” But what is a “sus-
tainable fabric”? Well, we know it’s not virgin polyester, cotton grown
with pesticides, or rayon made from ancient forests. Inditex outlines
alternatives: organic/recycled cotton, recycled polyester, and viscose
made without wood from endangered or ancient forests. Scientists,
designers, and industry experts say there’s much to be excited about
outside those—mycelium fabric, lab-grown leather, lace sprung from
strawberries. Nicole Rycroft of the conservation nonprofit Canopy said
the group looks for three categories in innovative textiles: those that
divert waste from landfills by using materials such as water bottles,
those that use agricultural residues like orange peels and cornstalks,
and the “cool, crazy science techniques.” We were looking for fabrics that
had already scaled a little bit. Piñatex, made from pineapple, has
enjoyed some success. Bananatex was reviewed on Ecocult, an ecofash-
ion website. Ferragamo has experimented with orange fiber. Designer
Maggie Marilyn has used rose-petal sylk. And Frances Kozen at Cornell
University directed us to Sea Leather Wear, a company that turns dis-
carded skins from carp, salmon, and bass into leather.PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF COLLINA STRADA (TAYMOUR); INEZ & VINOODH/COURTESY OF KATE SPADE (GLASS); ANDRES OYUELA/COURTESY OF HUNTING SEASON (CORONA); MARTIEN MULDER/COURTESY OF ZERO + MARIA CORNEJO (CORNEJO); VICTORIA STEVENS/COURTESY OF RACHEL COMEY (COMEY)
ROSE
PETALSYLK
DRESS
by COLLINA
STRADA“By making
fabrics from
trash and from
plastic water
bottles and
things like this,
we can start
using resources
that already
exist in the
world to create
fabrics.”
—Hillary
Taymour,
Collina Strada32 THE CUT AUGUST SEPTEMBER ,