Designers talk green
Seven prominent sustainable fashion designers give an afternoon symposium about major issues facing the emerging sustainable fashion movement
- 1-5 p.m. May 18
- Technocultural Studies Building (Art Annex)
- Free and open to the public
More information and to register
Ethical questions
Design students are studying these questions this quarter:
- Is “sustainable fashion” a contradiction in terms?
- How do we ensure garments are living up to their claims?
- Who controls how fabrics get labeled?
- How do we balance our ethics with our desire for new things?
- How far should a T-shirt travel to get to market?
- How can we make sustainability attractive to the consumer?
- Where does fair trade fit into the picture?
- How much clothing do we really need?
Big-time designers AND students push the eco-envelope
You have a hybrid in the garage, solar panels on the roof and drought-resistant native plants in your yard. But what’s in your clothes closet?
That’s the question that UC Davis is posing in a big way this quarter. It’s the focus of: a Design Museum exhibit titled Fashion Conscious and featuring sustainable garments, footwear and accessories (opening May 15); a May 18 designer symposium open to the public; and Associate Professor Susan Taber Avila’s fashion design classes.
For the exhibit, Avila and co-curator Julia Schwartz, a UC Davis alumna, have collected intriguing items ranging from a cork jacket to loafers with rubber-tire soles.
In addition, the public and students are invited to join seven prominent sustainable fashion fashion designers and consultants for the Sunday, May 18, symposium, "Designing with Conscience," sponsored by the UC Davis Design Museum.
The symposium, intended for design students, design professionals, clothing retailers and environmentally conscious consumers, will explore major issues facing the emerging sustainable fashion movement.
‘Green fashion designers seek to reduce the 2.5 billion pounds of post-consumer textile waste generated in the United States each year — the equivalent of 10 pounds for every person.’
How much clothing do we need?
The questions being addressed include how much clothing do we really need, how our desire for new things can be balanced with our concern for the environment, and how sustainability can be made attractive to the consumer.
The symposium will be held from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Technocultural Studies Building on the UC Davis campus (just south of the Art Building). It is free and open to the public.
Among other goals, green fashion designers seek to reduce the 2.5 billion pounds of post-consumer textile waste generated in the United States each year — the equivalent of 10 pounds for every person — and to find alternatives to commercial cotton, whose production consumes 25 percent of all pesticides used in this country.
Some predict eco-fashion will go the way of organic food and drink, which, according to the Organic Trade Association, are now a $23 billion-a-year industry.
Symposium speakers will be:
- Tierra Del Forte, former designer for Mudd Jeans in New York City and now owner of the Oakland, Calif.-based Del Forte Denim company, which features high-end organic cotton clothing.
- Elissa Loughman, environmental analyst at Patagonia in Ventura, Calif., which is pioneering the use of recycled polyester made from used soda bottles and has earned widespread praise for its Common Threads program, in which consumers turn in used clothes for recycling.
- Lynda Grose, of Muir Beach, Calif., a consultant for the Davis-based Sustainable Cotton Project, which promotes California-grown BASIC cotton, a crop that is farmed using techniques that reduce pesticide applications by as much as 73 percent. Grose has been quoted in articles about green chic in the New York Times, Newsweek and other major publications.
- Amanda Shi, a Los Angeles designer whose brand, Avita, relies on such innovative sustainable materials as recycled cashmere.
- Anna Blossom Cohen, former designer for Max Mara, Patrizia Pepe, Guess and Binicocchi in Florence, Italy, and now owner of the Portland, Ore.-based label Anna Cohen, which features sustainable fashion.
- Sasha Duerr, founding director of the San Francisco-based Permacouture Institute, a collaboration with the Trust for Conservation Innovation to encourage the exploration of fashion and textiles from the garden to the hanger.
- Tawny Holt, the Modesto-based owner of Armour sans Anguish, a line of garments constructed entirely from salvaged and recycled materials.
Avila, the associate professor of design, will moderate the discussion.