"In the past two months, I've done the same amount of business as my first six," says eco-couture designer Terri Spaek-Merrick, whose online cut-sew-and-ship dressmaking business is barely a year-old. The veteran Portland designer, who maintains a physical bridal studio called Embellish, is expanding online to reach green-conscious customers who shop on the Web.
Her Olivia Luca website is essentially a digital game of dressup, where users can click on options from skin tone to eco-fabric before submitting the order. Not only does the designer promote the use of sustainable fabrics on the site, she also designed the concept right into her business. To minimize overhead costs and waste, she doesn't order any materials until she can confirm a design job. Pieces are produced in-house using couture technique, which means a lot of hand rather than machine sewing with a minimal carbon footprint. As a result, her custom-eco-formal wear prices are quite accessible, even for the average green conscious customer. An Olivia Luca custom gown might run a couple hundred dollars, while a Vera Wang Luxe Collection starts at $6,000 -- and the Luca is eco-chic and shipped directly to your home.
Unlike greenKarat or Olivia Luca, Mink isn't really a green fashion company. It is a high-end vegan footwear brand created by vegan stylist Rebecca Brough out of frustration that sexy yet animal-cruelty-free shoes didn't exist back in 2002. As it turns out, what's animal-friendly tends to be good for the environment.
Determined to create leather-free high heels that belong on the same shelf as Gucci and Prada, Brough spent one and a half years in Italy finding a willing shoemaker to give vegan shoes a try. From four-inch heel stilettos in scarlet to bold lines of sequins cascading over the foot, it's hard to remember the trend-setting products are earth-friendly. Not only are embellishments like sequins and buckles sourced from vintage surplus stores, some heels are made of recycled cork or wood, organic cotton fabrics instead of leather, and each shoe is handmade for minimal energy consumption, not to mention maximum comfort.
Department stores that just a few years ago wouldn't give her the time of day are actively approaching her to retail her shoes. While Brough still relies on styling gigs to finance her vegan shoe business, she knows that what she's doing is better for the environment. "This is the right thing to do, even if it means I won't get rich from it," she says.
Ultimately, going green in fashion isn't about riding on an imaginary train through clever marketing. For businesses, it's about recognizing the environmental costs involved in every decision and finding innovative ways to minimize that cost. For consumers, it's realizing the influence spending holds on businesses and leveraging that for positive change.
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Recent Comments | 10 Total
May 29, 2008 at 10:57am by Michael De'Shazer
Complete marketing hype. It makes the sales. They are drawing on the newly-found sensibilities of a culture of green freaks. Thank you Gore. This is not sarcastic. Im really happy about all this, although I'm wondering how "going green" as a culture is becoming a bit of a pretentious group of Chai-Latte toting Fifth Avenuers and Suburban housewives...
May 29, 2008 at 2:02pm by Nicole Valentino
Maybe 5 or 10 years ago being green was only for pretentious latte drinkers, but today, anyone can get in on the deal, which is great. If Barney's is carrying a line of green fashions, more power to them. Anyway, are chai-latte's still pretentious?
May 29, 2008 at 2:41pm by Darren Shield
Sure for some of the big players it might just be hype for now, but I think the shift to a strong environmental conciousness on a global level that is spurring this capitilization will drive this to become a fundamental shift for the fashion industry. If the designers and consumers are on board, the decision makers will have to take notice... if they themselves aren't swayed by the green revolution themselves!
May 30, 2008 at 12:44am by Jo Nelgadde
I actually think "green fashion" awaiting a backlash very soon. This is akin to biofuels once embraced by environmentalists and green-wannabes alike and touted as good for the people. Now biofuels are bearing the brunt of the anger felt by many who feel that they're making the already-bad global foos crisis even worse. Million of people are starving and food which can feed them is instead being used to make fuel (which really hasn't proven to be THAT cost-effective and environmentally friendly). Same goes for green-fashion. Same food which could go to feeding those millions is instead used to make some clothes??? This defies global social responsibility and very ironic.
May 31, 2008 at 4:58am by Darren Shield
I don't think the analogy fits. "Green" is a very broad appellation being attached to many things. Green fashion isn't about switching to a scare commodity, its about sustainability. Instead of growing cotton, grow hemp or bamboo (that farm is just switching what its producing), or like greenKarat, aiming at recycling existing material instead of going out and mining more gold. I fail to see where the backlash will come from. Sure there may be some unforeseen counter-productive results as there were with biofuels, but its certainly not the removal of already scare material.
June 1, 2008 at 2:22pm by Marianne Bellotti
I'm not sure how accurate that information about biofuels is in the first place. US corn is federally subsidized, if it wasn't being used to make fuel it wouldn't go to starving people it would be used to make corn syrup to pack in US processed foods or it wouldn't be grown at all.
That aside, the biggest problem for green fashion is that fashion is inherently shallow and right now green fashions are all bland basics. Mink shoes looks cool, you could easily see a company like Steve Madden picking something like that up, and the Olivia Luca site was very entertaining.
...But at the end of the day, if a woman is going to drop $400 on a dress she wants it to be something everyone in the room is going to turn around and go "WOW!" to.
October 27, 2008 at 3:18pm by Jacob Eberhart
July 30, 2009 at 3:44am by Carl Haufman
I think it is more than just marketing hype, as usual people jumping on the bandwagon. I think that if you go back to the source and followed the production of an item from start to finish you will probably end up with the same carbon footprint for each product.
I also see that America and the UK are not the only countries embracing green culture.
Green Clothing in Asia and earth friendly clothing in Australia
Everyone will get bored and move on soon, it will be green toilets before we know it!
November 20, 2009 at 10:30am by Fiona Robbins
Green fashion will only become mainstream if it can be made as easy to look after and wear as today's dresses, and as stylish. If not, it will become just another fad.
November 26, 2009 at 7:59am by Kim Ramsey
I am so sick and tired of this "save the planet" movement. Use green underwear and you will save our beloved planet. Comon people, lets face it, is just BS.
Kim Ramsey