[SustainableTompkins] Soy replaces silk in the world of sustainable fashion

Mon Aug 21 18:05:41 PDT 2006

 (http://www.csmonitor.com/) 

    from the August 18, 2006 edition -  
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0818/p13s03-lign.html  
Soy replaces silk in the world of sustainable  fashion 
By Teresa Méndez | Staff writer of The Christian  Science Monitor  
Today  it's possible to walk into a trendy boutique, flip through the racks  
of hangers, and find, mixed in with the usual wool suits and silk  skirts, a 
pair of wide-legged pants sewn from bamboo, a funky  shirred shirt constructed 
out of corn, or an iridescent tank dress  made from wood pulp.  
It's a far cry from the early days of environmentally friendly  but drab 
organic cotton, and hemp that resembled burlap. While those  fibers, often blended 
with luscious organic silks and cashmeres,  have become a staple of 
sustainable fashion, the newest materials -  including corn, seaweed, and soy - seem 
somehow better suited to a  dinner plate. 
Well aware of the frumpy stigma that dogged sustainable fashion's  first wave 
in the early '90s, a new generation of designers is as  interested in 
creating fabulous clothing as good stewardship. With  these new materials as their 
canvas, they're putting the  fashion back in ecofashion. 
Trumpeting slogans such as "eco can be edgy," green designers and  boutiques 
are promising both "style and sustainability." And they're  delivering. 
"Oh, my gosh, it's so beautiful." That's the reaction Hellen Yuan  is hoping 
for when someone sees one of her line's diaphanous blouses  or fluidly draped 
pants. Ms. Yuan, the senior designer for Linda  Loudermilk in Los Angeles - 
perhaps the best known and most  successful high-end designer of ecofriendly 
fashion - wants people  to recognize the environmental benefits as well. But if 
they don't,  that's OK, too. Their textile choices make a difference, she  
says.Hundreds of ecofriendly designers  
True to fashion's cyclical nature, it was around 2001, about a  decade after 
Esprit first launched its Ecollection, that ecofashion  staged a return. Since 
then, environmentalism has become more  mainstream, and fashion magazines now 
devote regular small spreads  to sustainable fashion. In May of this year, 
Elle was the first to  devote an entire issue to green fashion, printing the 
magazine on  recycled paper. 
But even five years ago there were only 10 or 20 designers who  "were doing 
interesting things," says Summer Rayne Oakes, a model  and environmental 
activist who blogs about fashion for _eco-chick.com_ (http://eco-chick.com/) . 
Today, there are hundreds. She's compiled a list of at least 500  
ecodesigners worldwide, including those using ecofabrics but not  overtly marketing 
themselves as green. 
Nina Valenti of Nature vs. Future is among them. Without reading  the label, 
a shopper who picks up one of her neutral tops, shirred  across the chest, or 
a boldly geometric shirt dress might never know  they were made of ingeo, one 
of the buzzier new fabrics derived from  corn sugar. 
Ms. Valenti, who designs the line out of Brooklyn, N.Y., didn't  set out to 
make ecofashion, and only a few of the stores that sell  her clothes are 
"green" boutiques. Yet each season, 50 to 75 percent  of her designs are constructed 
from sustainable fabrics including  bamboo, soy, and recycled soda bottles. 
Her martini dress, an  ecofriendly take on the traditional black cocktail 
dress, is a  hemp-silk blend. 
Like Yuan and Valenti, designer Carol Young says she doesn't want  a customer 
buying a piece from her Undesigned line "just because I'm  making it out of 
hemp or bamboo." 
"For me that's great," she says. "But it's icing on the  cake." 
Fashion-savvy shoppers agree. "I'm always attracted to the  clothes first, 
and then the material is a nice little extra," says  Layla Delridge, a fashion 
student and one of Ms. Young's loyal  customers, who has also modeled for the 
Los Angeles designer. 
At Greenloop, a boutique devoted to sustainable fashion in West  Linn, Ore., 
most of the customers who wander in are drawn by  something in the window that 
catches their eye. 
"The environmental aspect is added value," says owner Aysia  Wright. And she 
says she's delighted to "convert" customers who  "haven't found they fit into 
the category of hippy." 
Her online store (_thegreenloop.com_ (http://thegreenloop.com/) ), however, 
is trafficked mainly  by people deliberately searching for ecofashion. The 
lines that  Greenloop carries, including Valenti's Nature vs. Future and Young's  
Undesigned, are "the cream of the crop," says Ms. Wright. "They are  
painstakingly made by designers who are "building a brand not just  on sustainability 
but on image." 
Prices are about what you'd find at a high-end department store  such as 
Bergdorf Goodman or Barneys: T-shirts cost between $17 and  $180, jeans run from 
$70 to $200, and cocktail dresses and suits  sell for up to $400. 
Wright says she gets some strong reactions to the high prices.  "There are 
really angry, upset people who feel like we're preying on  their guilt to 
swindle money out of them," she says. 
For smaller designers, the biggest challenge in working with  ecofabrics also 
may be cost. Using organic rather than regular  cotton can cost a designer up 
to 30 percent more, which is why so  few are able to make their lines 100 
percent ecofriendly.Pine  wood and Japanese leaves  
At the forefront of the second wave of ecofashion when it  launched five 
years ago, Loudermilk has successfully created and  marketed itself as "luxury 
eco," a category it created. The label  continues to experiment successfully with 
some of the most unusual  fibers available. Last year's collections included 
pieces utilizing  fabric made from soybean oil; a Japanese leaf called 
sasawashi;  lenpur, from a sustainably harvested pine wood pulp; and recycled  
plastic bottles. 
This year, in addition to bamboo, Yuan is working with ingeo. In  October the 
company plans to open a flagship "eco hub" housed in a  green building on 
Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. 
For those constantly on the lookout for the new black, green may  be it. 
_Full HTML  version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and  
related links_ (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0818/p13s03-lign.html)   

***************************************
Gay Nicholson, Ph.D.  

607-533-7312 (home office)
607-279-6618 (cell)

1 Maple  Avenue
Lansing, NY 14882
gaynicholson at aol.com

Sustainable Tompkins  
Program Coordinator  (http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/) 
w_ww.sustainabletompkins.org_ (http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/) 

Southern Tier Energy$mart Communities
Regional  Coordinator
Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County
615 Willow  Ave., Ithaca, NY 14850
agn1 at cornell.edu