In the journey toward sustainability, our wardrobes play a crucial role. As a Textile Designer and Researcher, I've delved into how we can transform our clothing habits to support a healthier planet. Here are some practical steps to develop a sustainable wardrobe, starting from our everyday lives.
It's time to confront our addiction to excessive fashion consumption and restore some equilibrium.Personal style specialist, Donna Cameron, explains in this book how we can address this issue artfully to create positive change for community and climate.This is not a fashion book, but a guide to understanding how to apply colour and design principles to purchasing decisions. Her strategic approach encourages us to consume fashion in a more curated manner.The book is written in an easy to follow and inclusive style and is beautifully illustrated by Alfia Galimova. It is suitable for people of any gender and age from teens upwards.
From journalist, fashionista, and clothing resale expert Elizabeth L. Cline, “the Michael Pollan of fashion,”* comes the definitive guide to building an ethical, sustainable wardrobe you'll love. Clothing is one of the most personal expressions of who we are. In her landmark investigation Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, Elizabeth L. Cline first revealed fast fashion’s hidden toll on the environment, garment workers, and even our own satisfaction with our clothes. The Conscious Closet shows exactly what we can do about it. Whether your goal is to build an effortless capsule wardrobe, keep up with trends without harming the environment, buy better quality, seek out ethical brands, or all of the above, The Conscious Closet is packed with the vital tools you need. Elizabeth delves into fresh research on fashion’s impacts and shows how we can leverage our everyday fashion choices to change the world through style. Inspired by her own revelatory journey getting off the fast-fashion treadmill, Elizabeth shares exactly how to build a more ethical wardrobe, starting with a mindful closet clean-out and donating, swapping, or selling the clothes you don't love to make way for the closet of your dreams. The Conscious Closet is not just a style guide. It is a call to action to transform one of the most polluting industries on earth—fashion—into a force for good. Readers will learn where our clothes are made and how they’re made, before connecting to a global and impassioned community of stylish fashion revolutionaries. In The Conscious Closet, Elizabeth shows us how we can start to truly love and understand our clothes again—without sacrificing the environment, our morals, or our style in the process. *Michelle Goldberg, Newsweek/The Daily Beast
This guide explores visible mending techniques in both hands-on projects and thoughtful insight about how mending relates to mindful well-being. Mending Matters explores sewing on two levels: First, it includes more than twenty projects that showcase visible mending—styles that are edgy, modern, and bold, yet draw on traditional stitching. It does all this with just four simple mending techniques: exterior patches, interior patches, slow stitches, darning, and weaving. In addition, the book addresses the way mending leads to a more mindful relationship to fashion and to overall well-being. In essays that accompany each how-to chapter, Katrina Rodabaugh explores mending as a metaphor for appreciating our own naturally flawed selves. She also examines the ways in which mending teaches us new skills, self-reliance, and confidence, all gained from making things with our own hands.
Style meets substance in this lavishly illustrated, highly informative, and beautifully designed book on sustainable fashion and beauty. Summer Rayne Oakes, fashion model, eco advocate, and resident expert on Treehugger.com and Discovery Network's Planet Green, shows how to make informed choices when shopping. In addition to explaining the basics (from fair trade to organically grown), Summer Rayne showcases hundreds of her favorite designers such as Stella McCartney and Safia Minney and eco-friendly brands such as Levi's, Loomstate, and Aveda that have made earth-friendly materials and sustainable practices a priority. With over 500 photos, pages of resources, and eco-style stories from the hottest trendsetters, it's the ultimate fashion and beauty bible for women who want to feel good about looking good.
A stylish guide to environment-friendly ways of buying, wearing, caring for, and decluttering your wardrobe, illustrated with case studies and tips from eco-fashion pioneers across the world As part of a growing global awareness of the importance of eco-conscious living, both for the planet and as a means of promoting fair labor practices, more people than ever before are seeking to dress in an environmentally friendly way. On a broader scale, initiatives to promote a more sustainable approach to fashion have made headlines and grown like never before, from the release of the high-profile documentary The True Cost to the launch of the worldwide “Fashion Revolution” campaign. This timely book is organized into four chapters—Buy, Wear, Care, and Dispose—each containing a short introduction with essential information followed by practical tips and illustrated case studies to help you make the first step toward a more sustainable wardrobe. A detailed reference section recommends not only the best ethical fashion labels and collections but also eco-friendly fabrics, standards, and certifications; cleaning methods; renting, swapping, and recycling initiatives; and much more.
Wendy Ward teaches you all the skills you need to refashion garments and reuse fabric from existing pieces you already own, plus ways to use leftover scraps to make household items and to customise your clothes. Each chapter focuses on a different technique, for instance novel ways to join small fabric pieces, using larger pieces to make pieced household items and clothing, and easy ways to refashion existing clothing. Her 'minimal waste' mentality will help you to make garments based on your body measurements, and there's a useful section on mending techniques. Wendy also covers the ethical issues involved in buying new, from shopping locally to choosing your fibres carefully and supporting small businesses and other crafters. There is a comprehensive chapter covering all the sewing techniques used, from seam and hem basics through to tips on unpicking recycled garments. Each section includes projects using the techniques covered – a total of 20 makes that can be adapted to the materials you have to hand.
A revolutionary guide to the art of mindful buying that will teach you how to resist cheaply made goods and make smart, fulfilling purchases that last a lifetime. With the whole world trying to convince us to spend our way to happiness, we’ve been left cluttered, stressed, and unfulfilled. Tara Button, founder of BuyMeOnce, is at the forefront of the global movement to change the way we shop and live forever. Tara advocates a life of mindful buying that celebrates what lasts, giving you exercises that help you curb impulses, ignore trends, and discover your true style. Once a shopaholic herself, her groundbreaking mindful curation method reveals the amazing benefits of buying for life and will help you: • Spot the tricks that make you overspend • De-clutter your home • Find the products that serve you best • Rediscover the art of keeping and caring for things • Find happiness, success, and self-worth, beyond buying
'It's important that everyone with an interest in fashion reads this book so we can live on a healthier planet' Arizona Muse 'The most timely book you'll read this year' India Knight * * * * * Running out of space for the clothes you can't stop buying? Curious about how you can make a difference to the environmental challenges our planet faces? Join Orsola's care revolution and learn to make the clothes you love, last longer. This book will equip you with a myriad of ways to mend, rewear and breathe new life into your wardrobe to achieve a more sustainable lifestyle. By teaching you to scrutinise your shopping habits and make sustainable purchases, she will inspire you to buy better, care more and reduce your carbon footprint by simply making your loved clothes last longer. Following Orsola's practical tips to lavish care and attention on the clothes you already own will not only have a positive environmental impact, but will be personally rewarding too: hand wash, steam and spot clean your clothes, air dry instead of tumble drying, or revive your clothes by sewing or crocheting. Fast fashion leaves behind a trail of human and environmental exploitation. Our wardrobes don't have to be the finish line; they can be a starting point. We can all care, repair and rewear. Do you accept the challenge? * * * * * 'An incredibly thoughtful, must-read guide' Kenya Hunt 'A must read for anyone who wants to understand the fashion industry as an outsider and wants direction as to where we go next' Aja Barber
This book examines how sustainability has the potential to transform both the fashion system and the innovators who work within it. Sustainability is arguably the defining theme of the twenty-first century. The issues in fashion are broad-ranging and include labour abuses, toxic chemicals use and conspicuous consumption, giving rise to an undeniable tension between fashion and sustainability. The book is organized in three parts. The first part is concerned with transforming fashion products across the garment's lifecycle and includes innovation in materials, manufacture, distribution, use and re-use. The second part looks at ideas that are transforming the fashion system at root into something more sustainable, including new business models that reduce material throughput. The third section is concerned with transforming the role of fashion designers and looks to examples where the designer changes from a stylist or creator into a communicator, activist or facilitator.