As Milan prepares to welcome fashion week, an international event with more than 70 runway shows full of luxury and creativity, high fashion also discovers a “green" soul, dedicated to creative recycling that aims to raise awareness among fashion addicts on issues of sustainability, without sacrificing style. The new trend is called "Recycled Fashion” with the cry of "Reduce, reuse, wear” and aims to lower the fashion industry’s impact on the planet. To celebrate recycled fashion, an event will be held on September 18th, sponsored by the environmental movement Let's Do It!, Italy Torre del Greco. in the province of Naples.
The role of the designers
Designers are the key to the success of the so-called "green fashion", since the clothes must be designed in a particular way, making them trendy and easily reusable. Therefore, we are faced with a totally new way of looking at fashion design which not only aims to create a new product but enhances its value over time. The stylists must have an environmental sensitivity that guides them towards the creation of ethical collections, including through the use of innovative technologies. In order to frame the phenomenon, just think that more than one million tons of fabric are “discarded” each year only in the UK (Ethical fashion forum data), 50% of which would be recycled and reused.
Venette Waste, Queen of the recovery labels
Redheaded fashion designer from Milan: Rossana Diana, inside of her fashion house in Milan, kicked off a revolution in the fashion world, designing "waste couture" as the industry pioneer, using waste to create high fashion collections. Her label, originating from waste is called "Venette Waste" and uses not only fabrics recovered from waste but also the overlooked items for hanging clothes and boxes rejected for having a bad print.
After working 25 years for the traditional industry, Rossana, in the early 2000s, began to feel a certain impatience and understood that the proper way to make sustainability is to work with waste. "The textile companies are full of wonderful products that have never been used, because it is an industrial system that makes so much waste, so fast that it cannot absorb it all," explained Diana - “I am a small example of how one can make Made in Italy fashion without having a negative impact on the environment."
Why love waste
Recovering and recycling waste materials produces important environmental benefits: it reduces land consumption and pollution (given that the textile fibers are not biodegradable) and permits the use of less resources and energy. With the principle of reuse, stylists and designers can launch high-fashion clothing with great aesthetic value on the catwalks. Green fashion features not only clothing but also jewelry and other trendy accessories like sunglasses, belts, shoes and cases for iPads and other devices. When the fabric isn’t recycled, the raw material used in eco-friendly fashion should be organic, such as cotton grown without pesticides and fabric dyes free of chemicals and possibly from a fair trade program. Green Fashion clothing and accessories should also be made to last and, once their life cycle is finished, should not be a problem to dispose.